Peter Walker

Carta

Senior Director, Insights

Director, Insights

Created the insights practice within Carta focused on sharing key narratives from the 29,000+ startups on platform.

Senior Manager, Insights

The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic

Creating compelling, useful data visualization to enhance public understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as managing a group of over 80 presentation volunteers.

The COVID Tracking Project is a volunteer-driven initiative incubated at The Atlantic. We collect and publish the most complete COVID-19 data available for US states and territories. Explore the data at https://covidtracking.com/data/charts

Team Lead - Data Visualization

Barometer

Barometer is a new approach to employee feedback. We unlock insights hidden inside free text responses on Glassdoor, Indeed, or internal surveys. With Barometer, you move beyond star ratings and 1-5 pulses to a comprehensive picture of how employees truly feel. Layer in analysis of your competitors' reviews and gain a whole new perspective on workplace culture.

Change the way you recruit, retain, and engage talent.

VP of Growth

PublicRelay

Head Of Marketing

Director, Product Marketing

Senior Manager, Business Analytics

Manager, Business Operations

Analyst Team Lead

Senior Media Analyst

Media Analyst & Account Manager

State of Glow

Founded online retail store & ranking community for music festivals. We sold original festival merchandise in 26 states to fund website growth. I managed all accounting, taxes, and inventory for the company as we grew company revenues alongside a fivefold increase in website viewership.

Founder

Head of Insights @ Carta | Data Storyteller

Weaving data into brand storytelling for the next generation of company owners.

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Founders - your startup will get at least 50% of the options you issue to employees back.

In 2024, 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝟳𝟱%(!) of vested equity was not exercised before it expired.

Typically an equity grant is expiring because the employees left the company, either by choice or through layoff. So basically this chart shows the percent of employees who just let that equity go.

Wait, why would an employee not take ownership of their own equity? They earned it after all.

Employees aren't exercising because:

• They don't know they have to. 
  
• If they do know, they don't have the cash on hand to pay the exercise cost
  
• If they do have the money, they don't think the equity will be worth a lot in the future
  
• If they do think the equity will be worth enough, they may not think they'll have a chance to sell it before an M&A or IPO event (and that could be years)

Startup equity is a power law game, just like startups themselves. If the vast majority of startups don't end up working, it follows that the vast majority of startup equity isn't worth much.

For employees - don't join a startup for a shiny equity figure that's unlikely to ever become cash. Join because you want the responsibility, because you love the space, because you believe in the founders.

For founders - go ahead, be generous with those equity grants. You'll probably get much of that pool back in any case.

#startups #employeeequity #founders #equity #equitycomp 

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Should you take that director-level offer at a startup worth $30 million or $300 million?

When it comes to base salary, the gap might not be as large as you expect.

Look at a director in Data Science, for instance. At a startup worth $30 million, the base salary for that position is currently around $188,000. At a much larger company worth $300M, the salary starts at $215,000.

That's a solid 14.3% jump! But 14% is not a chasm.

There are certain functions like Marketing or Operations where the gap is higher, but on the whole candidates should expect between a 15%-20% boost in base for a 10x jump in company valuation.

BTW - a $30M company is likely ~Seed or Series A while a $300M valuation is around Series C-D.

𝗕𝘂 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆?

On the one hand, equity grants at the larger company will be much smaller. Probably something like 75% less equity (expressed as a percentage of total diluted shares) than the offer from the $30M company.

On the other hand, the equity from the $300M scale-up is much more likely to end up resulting in some value, as the equity from the small company remains at high risk of becoming a zero.

Is the comfort of a 20% salary increase worth the decreased equity? Is the equity risk level at the small company too much for your risk appetite?

Maybe the biggest point is that the content of the role is likely very different. 

𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝘁 $𝟯𝟬𝗠 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆: in the weeds every day building the function. Lots of IC work. Dips toes into all sorts of problems and projects.

𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝘁 $𝟯𝟬𝟬𝗠 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆: much more about managing teams, communicating cross-functionally, managing up, generally speaking. 

No right answer! Everyone has different risk tolerance, need for current cash, etc. 

Startup comp introduces all sorts of questions in a way that compensation at Big Tech mostly avoids. Just another hurdle that great founders need to clear as they attract the best talent to their startups.

#startups #salary #equity #founders #startupjobs

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What is a pre-seed round?

...no really, I'm asking for some help defining this stuff 😅

Currently this is how we at Carta create data on the subject:

1. Strip out all rounds that happen on priced equity (leaving just SAFE and Convertible Note financing)
   
2. Define a "round" when using SAFEs as: the total amount of dollars raised on a single valuation cap.
   
3. Stratify those rounds into the buckets below. 
   
Then we get:
• Angel: Under $500K
• Pre-seed: $500K-$2.4M
• Seed (on SAFEs): $2.5M and up

So....is this right?

Caveat here on the information we have available. Obviously it would be nice to have things like traction in revenue, number of customers, quality or progress of product, etc. But no one has those things in a trackable database, so we're defaulting by necessity to cash raised.

But the terms matter! Founders get so annoyed at investors who say they are pre-seed but demand seed-level traction (...whatever that is). Investors also get testy when founders come in with unreasonable expectations without a product or customer base.

It's all tricky and the current wording is not really helping.

So help me! Give me your definitions in the comments, point out what we should be doing differently so we can report on this part of the market with more accuracy.

Full report on funding through SAFEs and Notes out this coming week covering data through Q4 2024, by the way. 

#startups #preseed #SAFEs #founders

4,369 startups founded in 2018 were seeking to raise venture capital. How far along the venture path have they gotten in 6 years?

Data looks only at US companies using Carta for cap table. 

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝟭: Carta did not have a free tier in 2018 (but we do now!) which probably accounts for the rather large percentage that made it to Priced Seed (ie if a company is paying Carta they were more confident in raising a seed round). 

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝟮: If a company had not raised any priced funding as of Jan 1, 2025 I put them in the closed bucket. As such, "closed" might be slightly overcounted.

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝟯: "Live" in this graphic means the company is still in business and that stage was the most recent primary fundraise they have reported.

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝟰: It's likely this cohort looks a bit different than prior years due to the VC fundraising bubble that hit in 2021 and the subsequent funding winter. 

𝗕𝘆 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗝𝗮𝗻 𝟭, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱

• 2,464 raised a seed round (56.4%)

• 1,588 have raised Series A (36.4%)
 
• 643 have raised Series B (14.8%)
 
• 194 have raised Series C (4.4%)
 
• 50 have raised Series D or beyond (1.1%)

𝗕𝘆 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗝𝗮𝗻 𝟭, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱

• 15 are now public companies (0.34%)
 
• 239 have been acquired (5.5%)
 
• 57 are currently private unicorns (1.3%)
 
• 1,408 are still in business (32.2%)
 
• 2.707 have closed down (61.9%)

Big respect to the founders tilting at these venture windmills 🙏

#startups #founders #venturecapital #venturefunnel

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VC round sizes are exploding - or are they?

How much cash VC-backed companies raise in a given round is an interesting trend indicator. At the moment there are two competing theories of startup cash needs.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝟭
AI is making everything about company-building cheaper. Startups need less cash than ever before.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝟮
AI is lowering the barrier to company creation, thereby increasing competition, thereby making the cash advantage actually more important as startups scale. Yes you can get started for less but ultimately winning a category will cost more than ever.

What does the data say?

In the chart below, we compared the size of a US primary round in each venture stage (seed through Series E) raised in 2020 vs 2024.

Of course lots of stuff has happened in those 5 years. So we show both the absolute difference (in the black bars) and the inflation-adjusted difference (in orange).

𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀

• Seed rounds (at least the priced version) have gotten much bigger. 53% bigger in aggregate, 31% inflation-adjusted, but any way you slice it seed rounds have done some healthy growing.
  
• Every other stage besides Seed has either been effectively flat or actually shrunk when you look at inflation-adjusted round sizes. Late-stage rounds are 40%-50% smaller than they used to be—and yes, that includes many wildly large AI fundraises.
  
• Not shown in the chart but important: pre-seed funding on SAFEs has ballooned over this period, meaning the standard venture saying "Seed is the new Series A" should actually be "Pre-Seed is the new Seed" probably.

Of course this is only comparing medians, so there's a whole range of round sizes across every stage. But it's fascinating to see that scale rounds seem to abide by Theory 1 while Seed is playing its own game. 

Final idea here: the increased Seed round size 𝘮𝘢𝘺 be due in part to companies explicitly raising a seed-strap round (name from Natasha Mascarenhas) where they only expect to raise a single venture round ever. New company build unlocked, perhaps.

How much cash does your business need?

#startups #founders #venturecapital #ventureround #roundsize 

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