👋 Hi, I’m Andre and welcome to my newsletter Data Driven VC which is all about becoming a better investor with data and AI.
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Welcome to another Data Driven VC “Insights” episode where we cover the most interesting research and reports about startups, VCs, LPs, AI & automation.
Seed Valuations Reach New Highs
Peter Walker at Carta tracked a decade of Q2 seed valuation benchmarks and found the top of the market accelerating faster than ever.
95th Percentile Hits $200.4M: Top US seed valuations reached $200.4M in Q2 2026, up from $72.2M in Q2 2025, across 3,671 seed rounds tracked on Carta since 2018.
177.6% Growth in 12 Months: Top-decile seed valuations outpaced even the 92.2% jump seen during the 2020-2021 funding frenzy.
Broad-Based Acceleration: The 90th, 75th, and 50th percentiles also hit their fastest rate of change on record, even as fewer companies get funded at these high prices.
✈️ KEY TAKEAWAYS
Top-decile seed pricing has compounded at a pace last seen in 2021, spread across a shrinking pool of companies. LPs should expect the outlier bar for seed-stage returns to rise alongside these entry prices.
The Individual Versus the Firm
Dan Gray at The Odin Times argues venture firms suffer diseconomies of scale much like operating companies, and that raising bigger funds works against the mechanics of good investing.
Fund Size, U-Shaped Valuation: A cited 2010 study finds fund size and firm valuation move in a convex, U-shaped pattern, while fund size and successful exit odds move in a concave, inverted-U pattern.
Little "Organisational Capital" in VC: A cited 2013 study found most of a firm's value sits in its partners' combined human capital, with fundraising the main reason GPs join larger platforms.
Smallest Funds, Outlier DPI: Small-fund outperformance is tied to power law returns, since consensus-driven committees catch mistakes but miss non-obvious winners.
✈️ KEY TAKEAWAYS
Bigger funds solve the fundraising problem while straining the investing one. GPs sizing funds around AUM growth rather than return discipline may be trading performance for platform scale.
Less Junior Investors, More Engineers
Our new Data Driven VC Landscape Report 2026 shows firms shifting headcount from junior investment roles to engineering as AI reshapes analyst work.
49% Plan to Add Engineers: Half of DDVCs plan at least one engineering hire in the next 12 months, none plan cuts, and 51% expect flat eng headcount.
45% Plan to Cut Junior Investor Roles: Compared to just 2% planning to add a junior investor, with 53% holding steady.
First Time Engineering Outpaces Investing Headcount: This is the first cycle where engineering teams are expected to grow faster than junior investment teams, as firms automate analyst and associate work.
✈️ KEY TAKEAWAYS
The junior investor track is shrinking as the engineering track expands, a structural shift rather than a budget adjustment. LPs should ask GPs how they'll develop future partners without the traditional associate pipeline.
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New Fundraising Benchmarks
Peter Walker at Carta published fresh benchmarks across 1,133 US software rounds raised in the last six months, from seed through Series D.
Seed Medians: $24.3M Valuation on $4.1M Raised: Median seed dilution sits at 18%, a figure that has been ticking down for months.
Series A Dilution Hits a Multi-Year Low: Median $80.0M valuation on $14.4M raised, with 18% dilution lower than at any point in the past few years, per Carta's own commentary.
Series D Sees the Lowest Dilution of Any Stage: Median $789.4M valuation on $63.2M raised, at just 8.1%.
✈️ KEY TAKEAWAYS
Dilution keeps compressing at every stage, so founders are giving up less ownership per dollar raised. Walker's own caveat: medians are a reference point for negotiation, not a template for underwriting any single deal.
Claude Can Do All of This. Most People Have No Idea.
A widely shared guide catalogs the Claude features most users never turn on, from Projects and Memory to Claude Code and Scheduled Tasks.
90% Cost Cut via Prompt Caching: Anthropic's prompt caching discounts repeated context blocks like system prompts by up to 90%, with a 5-minute cache window that refreshes on each use.
17 Features and Prompts, Many Off by Default: The guide catalogs 17 features and ready-to-use prompts, several requiring manual setup.
Claude in Chrome Acts on Live Pages: The browser extension reads a page, clicks links, and fills forms from a plain English instruction, no copy-paste required.
✈️ KEY TAKEAWAYS
The gap between what Claude can do and what the guide claims most people actually use is mostly a matter of turning features on. Worth a look for lean investment teams and portfolio ops functions chasing quick efficiency wins.
Founder Content Is a System
Anson Lin breaks down the repeatable post formats used by successful founders who reuse the same six structures with new inputs.
12K+ Inbound Applications in 4 Months: The author's own company generated 100+ posts and 20M+ impressions, driving over 12,000 inbound applications for an enterprise offering.
Three Creators, $50M+ in Outcomes: The piece attributes over $50M in combined outcomes to three founders running the same six formats for years.
One Spreadsheet to $15K MRR: Nomad List's first post got 85 likes in 2014, yet the crowdsourced spreadsheet it launched still generates $15K a month a decade later.
✈️ KEY TAKEAWAYS
The playbook argues format matters less than raw material, specific numbers, honest failures, and build logs told plainly. GPs advising founders on audience building have a structured framework here instead of ad hoc social media advice.
That’s it for today!
Stay driven,
Andre
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