Description

General

Subscribe to Fully Vested at FullyVested.co or through your podcast app of choice.

Major trends

Each one of these could probably get its own episode of Fully Vested, but it's important to mention them briefly here. It's hard to believe all these mechanics were at work all in the first months of 2021.

• New POTUS.
• U.S. COVID-19 vaccination campaign kicks off in earnest. Variants of Concern spread worldwide. All eyes are on India and Brazil.
• Cryptocurrency market surges. NFTs gain (temporary) traction.
• Pre-merger SPAC valuations may have peaked (temporarily?) as sidelined cash goes in search of work amid ZIRP environment.
• Venture capital funding continues its multi-year surge in total dollar volume.
• Major U.S. stock indices ended the quarter at or near all-time highs.

Some highlights of VC funding data

Globally

• Crunchbase reports that Q1 2021 hit a high water mark for total venture capital dollar volume. Crunchbase's reported totals for the quarter was $125 billion, up 50% QoQ and up a massive 94% compared to Q1 2020 (which, keep in mind, was affected by the emerging coronavirus pandemic)
• Crunchbase reports that angel and seed-stage deal counts continued their decline, falling 19% from the prior quarter. Seed-stage dollar volume remains largely flat though. This might be attributable to reporting delays.
• Crunchbase reports that early-stage activity (defined as Series A and Series B, with a subset of other round types based on deal size) is up markedly. With reported dollar volume at $35.5B globally, Q1 2021 saw a 45% QoQ increase and a 63% jump over Q1 of 2020. Deal volume is also up QoQ but down relative to the same time last year. Of course, this is also affected by data reporting lags.
• Late-stage (Series C and later) and technology growth (PE rounds raised by privately-held previously venture-backed startups) activity is where the world saw the most growth. With $85.6B in dollar volume reported across 751 deals, late-stage dealmaking drove global totals higher. Dollar volume grew 56% QoQ and a massive 122% relative to Q1 of 2020

U.S. & Canada

• North American seed and angel deal and dollar volume are down relative to last quarter. Dollar volume is reported to be slightly up from the same quarter last year.
• Early-stage deal and dollar volume are also up relative to last quarter, as well as last year. Similar to global figures, it's clear that average deal size at this stage is up markedly.
• Late-stage and tech growth deals in North America reflect global trends: Crunchbase reports that Q1 2021 dollar volume clocks in at $51B vs $29.8B in Q4 2020 and vs $21.3B in Q1 2020.

Links to various data companies' Q1 '21 VC reports

• Crunchbase News' Q1 '21 Global VC report (by Gene Teare)
  • Disclosure: Jason was previously on the Crunchbase News team and has a minor stake in Crunchbase via exercise of stock options granted to him as an employee of the company.
• KPMG's Venture Pulse reports for Q1 2021
• PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor
  • "Three-quarters of all VC investment dollars in the US were deployed in late-stage deals, the highest portion since 2010."
• PwC & CB Insights' Venture Capital Funding Headline Report Q1 2021

Links to Q1 2021 VC market commentary

• Inside the US’ epic first-quarter venture capital results (Alex Wilhelm and Anna Helm for TechCrunch)
• [U.S.] Venture funding soared to record $64 billion in Q1 (Ari Levi covering findings from Ernst & Young, for CNBC)

About The Co-Hosts

• Jason D. Rowley is a researcher and writer at Golden.com. He volunteers with startup outreach for the open-source community and sends occasional newsletters from Rowley.Report.
• Graham C. Peck is a Venture Partner with Cultivation Capital and additionally helps companies build technology development teams in partnership with Brightgrove and other technology development organizations.