Hi distribution innovators - and welcome to 2024!
We’re coming off one of the worst years in tech investing, so 2024 should naturally be much better. With a pretty low bar from 2023, an election year and decreasing interest rates - 2024 is already trending positive. The first part of our newsletter will recap insights from CB Insight’s 2023 State of Venture Report. The second part is our 5 predictions for 2024.
Next week, we’ll share insights from our Distribution Tech Index and how it benchmarks to the rest of the VC market.
2023 Venture Recap
US deal volume at a 10-year low. US-based companies raised just 2,182 equity deals in Q4’23 — down 21% QoQ to the lowest quarterly level since 2013.
Late-stage deal size has fallen more than 50% since 2021. Investors aren’t comfortable funding huge losses anymore. The median late-stage deal size is now $21M, very different from 2021’s $50M.
Fewest VC-backed IPOs since 2013. With less than 200 VC-backed IPOs globally in 2023, the market for VC-backed IPOs was the lowest since 2013.
2023 saw 71 new unicorns — a 7-year low, and down 73% from 2022. Among 2023’s new unicorns, roughly half (35) came from the US. Asia and Europe contributed 18 and 12, respectively. The number of private companies reaching $1B+ valuations was the lowest since 2016.
A Bright Spot: Early Stage Deals.
Early-stage rounds (seed/angel and Series A) in 2023 were the highest deal share in over a decade. Early stage rounds have remained consistent the past two years at 70%.
To view the full report, you can download it for free from CB Insights.
Five 2024 Predictions
And, yes AI is part of them.
One of our top 50 B2B Marketplaces will IPO this year
This will mark the second IPO for the three years that we’ve been publishing the ranking. The first IPO was Xometry, which was in our inaugural ranking until they IPO’d in summer of 2021.
AI will make a real difference in B2B Distributors’ P&L
Some examples how…
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