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TC+ dug into the late-stage funding market yesterday using recent data from Carta to explore how the largest startup rounds are changing. Catching up those who missed the piece: We are seeing late-stage startup rounds shrink rapidly, even if valuations for the startups closest to going public are proving stickier than we perhaps expected.

Today we’re flipping the script, and looking at the earliest startup stage, using the same dataset before. Why seed? Because if you want to understand the startup market, tracking how investors are placing wagers on the youngest companies is the only to way grok what comes later; today’s seed companies are tomorrow’s recalcitrant unicorns clinging to paper valuations taller than Olympus Mons, after all!

Seed is holding up better than late-stage investing in some important ways, pushing back against the narrative that we’re in some sort of startup recession. Indeed, times appear to be pretty good for brand-new startups hunting for capital.