For now, the late-stage venture world simply isn’t as bad as we expected

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

This morning we’re taking a look at mega-rounds: funding events of $100 million or more.

What’s fun about these rounds is that they experience less temporal lag than other venture financings. Generally speaking, the larger a venture round is, the faster it becomes public knowledge. This is why seed rounds are the laggiest of all startup rounds and as you progress up the Series ladder (from A to B to C to D), the rounds that you hear about are increasingly fresh.

If we wanted to take a look at 2020’s largest rounds to date, for example, instead of staring at an incomplete picture that might tell us nothing at all, we could get a reasonable handle on what’s going on in the very late-stages of private equity financings.

This morning we’re looking at $100 million and greater rounds from January, February and March (through the 23rd) for both 2019 and 2020. As you will see, the data shows us that the late-stage private market for startup investments is in better health than we might have expected. This is true despite spotting weaknesses in other parts of the global venture scene (China venture data remains very weak, for example).

The unicorn era, for better or for worse, appears to be still standing for now, despite the chaos that surrounds it.

$100 million or bust