I would challenge "there’s more capital than ever out there."
Even if it's true in absolute numbers, and the few IPOs and valuation stagnation suggest otherwise, it wouldn't matter that much to startups. What matters is the supply/demand dynamic.
In other words, it doesn't matter if the investors have twice as much money if there are 5x times as many startups around pitching for that money.
Availability of the money—defined through the chances a startup would secure an investment—went significantly down for the last couple of years, and, at least so far, stays so.
Also, the data was gathered before we knew the whole tariff war thing, so the uncertainty levels went even higher now.
I would challenge "there’s more capital than ever out there."
Even if it's true in absolute numbers, and the few IPOs and valuation stagnation suggest otherwise, it wouldn't matter that much to startups. What matters is the supply/demand dynamic.
In other words, it doesn't matter if the investors have twice as much money if there are 5x times as many startups around pitching for that money.
And that's kinda what we see: https://bit.ly/3Z8I5vj
Availability of the money—defined through the chances a startup would secure an investment—went significantly down for the last couple of years, and, at least so far, stays so.
Also, the data was gathered before we knew the whole tariff war thing, so the uncertainty levels went even higher now.
There's more context on this here: https://pawelbrodzinski.substack.com/p/support-network-for-earliest-stage (it's focused on early-stage startups, but the investment scene is all interconnected).