Good Morning,
A special welcome to the 55 readers that subscribed since Monday – and a big thanks to those who referred them.
The 1H 2021 in Review series continues today:
Preview ✔ – missed it? it's here.
Deals ✔ – missed it? it's here.
Startups – you're reading it.
People – Friday.
In August we revert to once a month.
Asks for Today:1) Be one of CTV's first Twitter Followers. 2) Forward this to your most startup-curious friend.
Ok, onward...
We're the Big Deals
14 startups raised more than $50M, 26 startups raised more than $30M, and 47 raised more than $15M during the half. Those 47 startups represent the top 20% funding rounds, and in aggregate, represented 79% of total funding.
The Pareto principle strikes again!
Galloping unicorns
Safety Culture, Go1, and Octopus Deploy* all joined the unicorn clan during the half – while Canva, Judo and Airwallex continued their rise through the unicorn ranks.
While these are paper gains, unicorn-sized liquidity events should eventually follow. Large exits typically deliver immense wealth to early employees, and wealthy employees often become founders themselves. This startup creation flywheel leads to exponential ecosystem growth and is reason to be excited.
*Octopus Deploy's valuation is unconfirmed
Aging gracefully
It’s easy to forget that most founder journeys begin bootstrapped or backed by supportive friends and family. First half data provided a reminder of this: the average Accelerator or Seed supported startups were 2.5 years old. Overnight success takes a long time!
Average deal size increased linearly between the 1-7 years old range, then dipped for the more mature 8-year-plus startups. Mature ‘scaleups’ Phocas and QBiotics were outliers amongst the 10-year-plus startups, dragging up the average funding secured considerably for that cohort.
Covid babies
While the jury is still out on the effect of COVID on global human birthrates, COVID-era startups boomed in 1H21. LinkedIn data suggests that 55 of the funded startups were founded in 2020 or 2021, and these startups accounted for 11.5% of total local venture funding. The average round size of these budding businesses was $5.8M, ~40% higher than the average Seed round.
Fintech starred, accounting for >50% of total deal value flowing to the COVID cohort. B2B software startups missed a beat, which countered the global trend that saw many "work from home" B2B software solutions funded.
That's it. See you Friday.
– Chris
Data Disclaimer: Extreme care is taken to ensure the accuracy of Cut Through Venture data. That said, today and tomorrow's data came from some newer data sources, which we've assumed is accurate. You can feel comfortable with the accuracy of the data presented here, but it's possible that it contains the odd unintended error.
Report any errors here.
