Fundraising: definition, how it works and the state of the market

A startup that wants to grow faster than its revenue allows has two options: take on debt or open up its capital. Fundraising is the second route, and in this article you will find a list of all the organisations that can bring you money, the stages at which they step in and the amounts involved. IntoTheMinds works with organisations all over Europe (they all commission market research 😉), so do not hesitate to get in touch.

Since 2020, Europe has seen tens of thousands of such deals. The first 10 months of 2026 show €55.2 billion raised, against €39.1 billion over the same period of 2025. But this rebound rests on a handful of mega-rounds. The median deal, for its part, remains between €3 million and €4 million. This is why our market research firm offers you this guide. We have added the experience of founders interviewed in our podcasts and the views of leading figures of American venture capital. And our expertise runs through the whole article, because our studies and our surveys serve startups that want to measure a market’s potential just as much as VCs that need to check how solid a startup is before investing in it.

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Fundraising: a capital contribution in exchange for a share of the company

Before we talk about timing or investors, allow us to lay down the legal and financial basics. Below you will see what the company gains and what it gives up.

A capital contribution, not a loan

A funding round (levée de fonds or tour de table in French, the terms you will meet in French-language sources) is the operation by which a company issues new shares that investors subscribe to. Legally, it is a capital increase with a share premium. The company receives fresh money as equity. The investors become shareholders and share the risks as well as the future gains.

The difference with a bank loan is clear. A loan is repaid, a capital contribution is not. But the arrival of an investor comes with a shareholders’ agreement and often with new governance (a board seat, veto rights, reporting). Equity financing mainly concerns startups, whose business model relies on growth beyond what their revenue would allow. Fewer than 1% of French companies raise equity.

Be careful with an announced amount: it does not always say how much the company received. In a primary round, the money goes into the company. In a secondary transaction, new investors buy the shares of existing shareholders, and the money goes to those sellers. Odoo’s €500 million in 2024, at a €5 billion valuation, falls into this second category.
In the interview below, Fabien Pinckaers explains the same distinction with Odoo’s own case: the €500 million of 2024 was a secondary transaction, and the company has not taken in fresh money since 2014.

The case is far from isolated. By checking the largest deals in our database one by one, we found several record “rounds” without a single euro of fresh money: €180 million at Odoo as early as 2021, €340 million at Vinted in 2024, €1.2 billion at Trade Republic at the end of 2025. Conversely, an announced amount may add together equity, debt and subsidies. Of the more than €2 billion announced by Verkor in 2023, €850 million was equity; the rest came from a European Investment Bank loan (€600 million) and public aid (around €650 million).

What is the money raised used for? Our data is clear. When the purpose is announced, here is how it breaks down:

• product development and R&D: 68% of cases;
• sales acceleration: 12%;
• industrialisation: 8%.

So the startup first finances the building of its offering. Aymeric Grange, co-founder of 900.care, reminded us in our podcast that the round is only a step: his funds were to be used to build the team, develop communication and distribution, then finance R&D.

“Fundraising, first of all, is not an end in itself. […] It is a means to reach a goal, and that goal is a business goal, a company-building goal.”
Aymeric Grange, co-founder of 900.care (translated from the French)

Dilution, valuation and loss of control

The pre-money valuation, that is the value of the company before the investors come in, sets the percentage given up. The post-money valuation adds the amount raised. A simple example: €100,000 raised in exchange for 10% of the capital corresponds to a €1 million valuation. If 3 founders hold 1,000 shares and 110 new shares are issued, they keep 90% and the investors take 10%.

Two famous stories show this mechanism at work. In 1995, Jeff Bezos says he sold 20% of Amazon for $1 million, a $5 million valuation. In 2008, Brian Chesky was looking for $150,000 for Airbnb, at a post-money valuation of about $1.5 million as he remembers it: exactly the 10% of our example. The investor who said no to him thought the market was too small.

A valuation that climbs fast reduces the share to give up for the same amount raised. Recent European trajectories show how far this mechanism can go. Mistral AI’s valuation went from about €240 million in June 2023 to more than €21 billion in September 2026, 88 times more in 39 months. Sweden’s Lovable raised a $7.5 million pre-seed in October 2024, then a Series C at a $13.3 billion valuation in August 2026.
Three benchmarks help manage dilution. The founder preferably keeps at least 51% of the capital to retain control. They set aside 5 to 10% for future key employees. And they anticipate the following rounds, which will reduce their share. Overvaluing the company is a trap: overly optimistic projections or a comparison with more mature competitors complicate the search for investors and the following rounds. Juan Hernandez, co-founder of Accélérateur Capital Partners, already saw this in 2016 as the most frequent mistake: wanting to raise too much at an unjustified valuation, spending months pitching, then burning one’s bridges with investors. At the time, he put the dilution of a round at between 20 and 40%.
In the video below, Y Combinator reviews the fundraising mistakes its own founders made, starting with raising more than needed and losing sight of ownership.

Holding the majority does not protect against everything, though. Fabien Pinckaers, the Belgian founder of Odoo, learnt this after his €3 million round of 2010. Two years later, the cash had been burnt and a few weeks of runway remained. According to his account, investors refused a €400,000 injection and offered €2 million at a valuation below that of the previous round, even though revenue had been multiplied by 3 or 4. He laid off nearly 30% of the staff to become self-sufficient again.

“I still have the majority. So they have no power, but the only power they have is psychological. So it is quite hard.”
Fabien Pinckaers, founder of Odoo, on Finscale (translated from the French)

Fabien Pinckaers tells the full story in the interview below: €3 million raised at a €7 million pre-money valuation, 30% of the company given away, and two weeks of cash left two years later.

Our database holds 3,052 seed rounds for only 147 Series C rounds.

Funding rounds, from pre-seed to Series D: amounts and objectives

A startup does not raise once but in successive rounds, timed to its maturity. The table below summarises the medians from our database of 20,212 European rounds (2020-2026).

Our data confirms this progression of objectives. When the use of funds is announced, product and R&D motivate 68% of seed rounds, but only 45% of Series C rounds and beyond. Sales and the conquest of new markets take over: from 17% at seed to 39% at Series C and beyond.

Pre-seed and seed: from idea to first market

Seed capital finances the launch. Pre-seed covers the step from idea to prototype, for example a first minimum viable product, while seed is used to find the market. In France, a seed round commonly reaches €100,000 to €500,000, love money and business angels combined. Each business angel’s ticket varies with their investment capacity and the number of co-investors gathered around the project.

These small tickets often fly under the radar, because they are rarely announced. Among the seed rounds made public in Europe and recorded in our database, the median reaches €2 million, and only 13% are below €500,000. At the other extreme, artificial intelligence has blown the ceilings away. Mistral AI raised €105 million at seed as early as June 2023, and the UK’s Ineffable Intelligence $1.1 billion in April 2026, the largest seed round ever raised in Europe.
Here are a few recent seed-stage rounds recorded in our database, from the most common scale to the records.

Business angels can bring much more than money. In our podcast, Pierre-Adrien Giroguy tells how Skwad, at the end of 2022, in the middle of the funding slump, first brought in advertising specialists as consultants. Six became business angels, and their experience created leverage with the banks.

Series A and B: proving the model, then accelerating

Development capital takes over from Series A onwards. This round assumes monthly recurring revenue that proves market validation. At Series B, investors expect sustained growth over several quarters. Each step multiplies the amount by 3 to 5: a median seed round of €2 million becomes a €10 million Series A, then a €32 million Series B. The spread remains wide, since a quarter of Series A rounds exceed €17 million while another quarter stay below €5.5 million. When we follow the same startups from one round to the next in our database, the Series A comes 16 months after the seed and multiplies the amount by 3.7 at the median.
A few recent Series A and B rounds recorded in our database, from eight countries, illustrate these orders of magnitude.

Series C, D and growth: scaling up

Beyond Series D, we speak of growth rounds, often above €100 million and led by specialised funds. Rounds become rarer the higher you go.
In our database, recent rounds at this stage run into hundreds of millions, with announced valuations in the billions. Some no longer even carry a series letter.

Raising a lot is not free, though. American investor Bill Gurley describes the unicorn trap: companies raise more than they need out of fear of their competitor, spend massively, then find themselves, when the money dries up, with liquidation preferences sometimes higher than their value. He mentions companies that have accumulated $300 million to $400 million of venture capital for $100 million of revenue, 10% growth and a value possibly close to one year of revenue.

Europe has its own counter-example. Sweden’s Northvolt signed in 2021 the second-largest equity round in our database (€2.2 billion), strung together equity and debt financings until 2024, then went bankrupt in March 2025.

The stages of a funding round, from preparation to closing

A funding round generally takes 9 to 12 months in total between the decision to raise and the payment of the funds. One person often devotes their full time to it for most of that period.

Preparing the fundraising materials and starting to target investors

Preparation takes 2 to 3 months. Before approaching investors, have at least 18 months of runway: starting the search when short of cash is a frequent mistake. Here are the documents to put together:

1. the funding requirement, quantified according to the stage of the project;
2. a pitch deck of 10 to 15 slides: product, team, key metrics, use of funds;
3. a business plan with realistic financial projections over 3 to 5 years and a clear exit strategy;
4. a data room, a virtual folder that gathers the legal, accounting and commercial documents (articles of association, intellectual property, contracts, tax).

Revenue, even modest, carries a lot of weight in these materials. Pierre-Adrien Giroguy experienced this with Skwad: “Already having identified sources of revenue is hugely reassuring for the people you talk to” (translated from the French).

Next comes the targeting, or roadshow (1 to 3 months). The team lists potential investors by stage, sector and ticket size, then lines up the meetings. The verbal pitch lasts 3 to 5 minutes.

Michael Seibel, a partner at Y Combinator, says he has conducted more than 2,000 interviews. His advice comes down to one rule: stand out through concision. You must be able to say what the company does in 2 sentences, then give a concrete example. His must-haves: what you do, the team, traction, what you know that others do not, the size of the market, and what you are asking for.

“If I don’t know what your company does, I can’t fund you.”
Michael Seibel, Y Combinator

Prepare for endurance too. For his first million, Jeff Bezos had to organise 60 meetings: about 40 refusals and 22 business angels, at about $50,000 each. He warned the people he met that, in his view, they had a 70% chance of losing their stake, and describes that round as “the hardest thing” he has ever done.

A round with 22 investors remains the exception. In the European rounds for which we know the list of investors (a sample of 396 deals), the median is 2 investors, and a third of rounds have only one. The table gets bigger with the amount: above €20 million, one round in three brings together five investors or more.
A refusal does not tell the whole story of the project. Brad Flora, of Y Combinator, ranks the idea that a rejection proves the startup is bad among the myths of fundraising. On networking, opinions differ: for Brad Flora, a product that people want can be enough to get the meetings, whereas Juan Hernandez considers it very rare for a fund to finance a project that arrived without an introduction.

In the video below, Aaron Harris, then a partner at Y Combinator, explains how to get meetings with investors and why a good cold email can work.

From term sheet to due diligence

Interested investors formalise their offer in a term sheet, or letter of intent, which is non-binding. It covers valuation, amount, governance, liquidation preference, anti-dilution and veto rights. Due diligence then takes 1 to 2 months. The investors audit the accounts, contracts, intellectual property, technology and team. Any inconsistency with the initial pitch can cause the round to fail, hence the importance of staying available and mobilising the teams.

Do not read only the valuation line. Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell point out that an investor can grant the price asked and make up for it in more technical clauses. They cite founders who gave up control of their board to raise $1 million, then were fired. Their defence: standard documents and a lawyer well versed in startups, because the investor negotiates every day while the founder is discovering the exercise. They also warn against a misleading phrase: “come back when you have found your lead investor” often means no.

Shareholders’ agreement and closing

The final negotiation leads to the shareholders’ agreement: pre-emption rights, exit clauses, governance, cap table. At closing, the capital increase is voted. The agreement, the amended articles of association, the share subscription forms and the minutes of the general meeting are signed, then the funds are paid. After the round, expect monthly reporting of 2 to 3 pages and quarterly meetings.

Timing matters too. January concentrates 12.3% of the year’s announced amounts and September 11.1%, while August (4.9%) and April (5.2%) are the quietest months. The median gap between two rounds is 16 months: the next round is prepared as soon as the previous one ends. A third of the startups that raise again do so less than a year after their previous round, one in ten waits more than three years. And many never raise again: among the 4,498 startups whose first round recorded in our database dates from 2020 or 2021, only 32% have announced a new round since.

The announcement itself has value. Germain Michou-Tonning, co-founder of Alvo, tells how his round, picked up by the media, sharply increased the platform’s traffic. With some work on SEO, it quickly reached 100 new sign-ups per week.

Half of European rounds account for less than 4% of the amounts raised.

Who invests in a funding round, and who supports it?

Each type of investor steps in at a specific stage, with tickets of a different order of magnitude. The following table will help you target your search for investors.

A business angel looks first for an innovation capable of strong growth, carried by founders with complementary skills and backed by credible forecasts. Venture capital firms target a scalable market and an exit within a few years, through a trade sale or an IPO, with a capital gain expected at around 5 years. Family offices step in at every stage. In continental Europe, public players co-invest with private funds: Bpifrance in France, finance&invest.brussels, PMV and Wallonie Entreprendre in Belgium, and the European Investment Fund.

Our data confirms these orders of magnitude. The crowdfunding rounds recorded in our database reach €0.7 million at the median, half of them falling between €0.4 million and €1.8 million. The table below moves from categories to names: it lists investors active in Europe, from business angel networks to growth funds, with rounds from our database in which they took part (mostly 2020-2021, supplemented by large recent deals). The amounts are those of the whole round, not just the investor’s ticket.

To understand a fund, you have to understand its returns. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, takes up a conventional statistic of the American market: of the roughly 4,000 companies that seek venture capital each year, 200 are funded by the top funds, and about fifteen generate around 97% of the returns. A fund therefore looks for the exception, not the decent project. Hence his preference for extreme strength, even if it means accepting real flaws. This logic sheds light on our own figures: in Europe too, 4% of deals concentrate 54% of the amounts, even if these two measures do not describe the same thing. Our database shows it at every level. Half of European deals, those below €3.6 million, do not even account for 4% of the amounts, while 1% of deals concentrate 31% of them. Excluding debt, rounds of €100 million and more still represent 3% of rounds and 43% of equity amounts. And the concentration is growing: the 5 companies that raise the most capture 31% of mega-round amounts in 2025-2026, against 12% in 2021-2022.

“Venture capital is 100% a game of outliers.”
Marc Andreessen, a16z (clip shared by Startup Archive)

The interests of the investor and the founder do not always coincide. For Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell, a company that is profitable but not fast enough is a bad scenario for an investor, not necessarily for a founder. And a fund that targets a given share of the capital may push to raise more than necessary. Patience is therefore chosen upstream. Maxime Patte, founder of Veesual, had not planned for the 2 years of R&D that preceded the launch of his product: “You have to find good investors who understand the vision, who are patient” (translated from the French), and stay frugal so as not to burn the cash raised.

Some projects also depend on public money. Philippe Notton, head of SiPearl, cites as the key figure of his success the €17.5 million obtained from the European Innovation Council: €15 million in equity and €2.5 million in grants. He believes a European microprocessor could not have existed without this continent-scale seed money.

For the company, the fundraising advisor is a paid intermediary who supports the round, structures the materials and opens up their network. The specialised lawyer negotiates the term sheet and the shareholders’ agreement, the chartered accountant secures the financial projections.

When should you raise funds? Timing and alternatives

Launch the round once the market has been validated by first recurring customers. A more advanced project negotiates higher amounts with less dilution. Context matters too: the stimulus plans and low interest rates that followed the health crisis made money abundant, whereas inflation and geopolitical tensions have brought fundraising down.

Do you really need to raise? Toinon Georget, CEO of Waalaxy, whose company says it generates €10 million of revenue a year without raising, suggests 3 questions:

1. Can I raise? An agency or a subscription box, without strong growth potential, will struggle to interest a fund.
2. Do I need to raise? Yes, almost always, in deeptech or on a marketplace where the first mover takes the market. Not necessarily for software that sells early.
3. Why am I an entrepreneur? His answer contrasts “putting your life at the service of your business” with “putting your business at the service of your life” (translated from the French).

The Y Combinator video below sets out the same choice: bootstrap or raise venture capital, and which questions to ask before deciding.

His most useful argument for the negotiation: a company that does not need to raise gets the best terms, because it can say no. Fabien Pinckaers sums up a similar choice: his goal was to keep control and build over decades, and he only raised because his change of business model required it and the banks refused to lend.
In the interview below, Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, explains when raising money makes sense in his view, and when it does not.

Raising is not compulsory. Here are the main alternatives for financing the creation of a company or its development:

• bootstrapping, with the founders’ own funds and the revenue generated;
• bank credit, with no dilution but harder to access;
• factoring, which sells customer receivables in exchange for a fee;
• leasing, which finances equipment but not cash flow;
• convertible debt or venture debt;
• crowdfunding, governed by the European ECSP regulation and its crowdfunding service provider licence, with campaigns raising €100,000 to €1 million over 45 to 90 days.

Debt is not reserved for small companies. The debt deals recorded in our database reach €9.4 million at the median, and some scale-ups finance most of their growth this way. Germany’s Enpal, which installs and leases solar panels to households, has raised about €10 of debt for every €1 of equity.

Crowdfunding covers very different realities. 900.care launched its products through pre-sales on Ulule and KissKissBankBank, which financed production before its €10 million round and proved that the public was ready to pay. Its backers were, according to Aymeric Grange, “mini-investors in a way” (translated from the French), without holding any shares. With Look&Fin, we are talking about loans, not equity: Dominique Wroblewski, its COO, cites €1.5 million gathered in 19 seconds for one project.

Remember that a funding round does not solve a working capital requirement: inventory and payment terms call for other tools.

€392.7 billion raised in Europe in 6 years, 30.3% of it in the United Kingdom.

The European fundraising market, country by country

The geography is highly concentrated: 4 countries (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden) capture more than 70% of the amounts.

The median round tells a different story from the amounts. Germany funds each startup more generously (€5.2 million at the median), while Spain and Italy stay around €2.5 million. In Sweden, 78% of the amounts go through rounds of €100 million and more, led by Northvolt.

A cycle from 2020 to 2026: euphoria, trough and rebound

The post-Covid euphoria peaked in 2021 at €96.5 billion. The correction led to the trough of 2023 (€45.5 billion). Then 2026 marks the turnaround: €55.2 billion in 10 months, up 41% year on year, driven mainly by artificial intelligence and Mistral AI (€3 billion). The number of deals nevertheless remains stable, between 3,100 and 3,400 a year since 2022. Retail, the star of our 2021 study, has fallen from €9.9 billion to €0.6 billion a year.

In ten months, 2026 already counts more deals of €100 million and more (98) than the whole of 2025 (94), while the median round has barely moved. Artificial intelligence explains a good part of the rebound: startups with AI at the core of their business capture 28% of European amounts in 2026, against 17% in 2025 and 1% in 2021. Defence and space follow the same slope, with €5.0 billion raised in ten months, more than in 2024 and 2025 combined (€3.8 billion).

United Kingdom and Germany: two heavyweights with distinct profiles

The United Kingdom totals €119.0 billion over 5,758 deals, or 30.3% of European amounts. London concentrates €81.4 billion, followed by Cambridge (€5.0 billion) and Oxford (€3.0 billion). Banking and insurance capture 24.3% of national amounts. In 2026, the United Kingdom has already raised €17.8 billion in ten months, against €13.6 billion for the whole of 2025.

Germany follows with €69.8 billion (17.8%) over 2,829 rounds and the highest average amount among the large countries (€24.7 million). Berlin (€30.2 billion) and Munich (€15.2 billion) share the activity. No sector dominates: IT accounts for only 20.4%. In 2026, defence and robotics (Helsing, Quantum Systems, NEURA Robotics) are clearly driving the rise in amounts raised.

Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland: contrasting profiles

These mid-sized markets diverge sharply. Here are their signatures:

• Sweden: €33.6 billion over 778 rounds, €43.2 million on average and a record €3,176 per inhabitant, with 43.7% of the amounts in the environment sector, led by Northvolt before its bankruptcy in 2025;
• Netherlands: €16.1 billion over 942 rounds, including €9.0 billion in Amsterdam, and €891 per inhabitant;
• Spain: €16.2 billion over 1,152 rounds, Barcelona (€6.7 billion) ahead of Madrid (€5.3 billion), but only €326 per inhabitant;
• Switzerland: €15.6 billion over 1,095 rounds, 123 rounds per million inhabitants and 32.7% of the amounts in pharma.

At the other end, Italy raises only €138 per inhabitant and Poland €44, while Estonia reaches 196 rounds per million inhabitants.

France and Belgium: two markets with different dynamics

We finish with the 2 French-speaking markets, whose recent trajectories diverge sharply.

France: Europe’s third-largest fundraising market

France captures 15% of European amounts over 2020-2026, behind the United Kingdom and Germany. Its cycle is shifted by one year: the trough dates from 2024 (€6.7 billion). With €9.8 billion raised in 10 months, 2026 already exceeds 2024 and 2025. Mistral AI weighs heavily: 7 deals since 2023 for more than €6.5 billion, or more than 11% of what France has raised in 6 years. Paris represents 9% of European amounts. Female founders account for 10.9% there. That is slightly above the European average (10.4%), and everywhere, the share of women melts away as the round gets bigger: 13.6% of founders in rounds below €2 million, 4.9% from €50 million upwards, as detailed in our study on women in fundraising.

In France, venture capital has already exceeded in 2026 the annual totals of 2024 and 2025. Ten mega-rounds capture 62% of the capital and the Île-de-France region 86%. Artificial intelligence accounts for 59% of the amounts raised there in 2026, twice the European average (28%).

In Belgium, tech excluding biotech raised €772 million in 2025, against €1.46 billion in 2024.

Belgium: a fundraising market without a dominant capital

Belgium ranks eleventh in Europe: 410 rounds and €6.6 billion over 2020-2026, or 1.7% of the amounts. Excluding deals unrelated to startup financing (including Euroclear, €709 million in 2021), the total comes down to €5.1 billion for 405 rounds. The Belgian median (€3.5 million) is in line with the European average, but the country raises only €562 per inhabitant, against €852 in France.

Its singularity lies in its polycentrism: Brussels counts 73 rounds (€2.0 billion), Ghent 74 (€0.8 billion), Antwerp 34 and Leuven 27. Pharma leads (19.4%) ahead of IT (17.2%). Collibra (€218 million) and Deliverect (€134 million) signed the largest equity rounds; Odoo’s €181 million in 2021 was a sale of existing shares. According to Agoria, Belgian tech fell back in 2025 to €772 million over 133 rounds, with AI present in about half of the companies funded.

The vocabulary of fundraising: levée de fonds, funding round and term sheet

The jargon is largely English, even in French-speaking markets. Here are the terms to master to follow a negotiation:

• Levée de fonds: the French term for fundraising, which you will meet in French and Belgian sources.
• Funding round (tour de table in French): a fundraising campaign with a group of investors, and by extension those investors themselves.
• Term sheet: a non-binding letter of intent that sets out the main terms.
• BSA-AIR: the French equivalent of a SAFE, an instrument converted into shares at the next round without setting a valuation.
• SAFE: an American instrument popularised by Y Combinator, similar in logic to the BSA-AIR. According to Brad Flora, it grants neither a board seat nor information rights.
• Lead investor: the main investor, who leads the round and often sets its terms.
• Secondary round: the purchase of shares from existing shareholders, with no fresh money for the company.
• Liquidation preference: the right of certain investors to be paid before the other shareholders in the event of a sale or closure.
• Exit: the sale of the shareholdings through a trade sale or an IPO.
• Mega-round: a round of €100 million or more.
• Unicorn: a startup valued at more than one billion dollars.

FAQ: the questions you are asking

How do you raise funds for a start-up?

First validate your market with recurring customers, then prepare a pitch deck, a business plan and a data room. Then target the investors suited to your stage. A B2B market research study lends credibility to the announced market size.

Who carries out the fundraising?

The founders lead it, often with a fundraising advisor, a lawyer and a chartered accountant. The money comes from business angels, venture capital funds, family offices or public players.

Can a start-up raise funds before it is profitable?

Yes, it is even the rule at pre-seed and seed. The investor bets on growth potential, the team and the market, with a targeted gain sometimes in the order of 100 times the stake.

Can an SME raise funds like a start-up?

Yes, but fewer than 1% of French companies do so. An SME without strong growth will often find better-suited solutions in bank credit, factoring or leasing.

How much does a start-up raise on average in Europe?

Half of European rounds exceed €3.6 million (the 2020-2026 median of our database). The amount depends mainly on the stage: €2 million at seed, €10 million at Series A, €31.6 million at Series B. The average, close to €20 million, is pulled upwards by a few mega-rounds.

How much time passes between two funding rounds?

16 months at the median. A third of the start-ups that raise again do so in less than a year, but many never raise again: only 32% of the start-ups funded in 2020 or 2021 have announced a new round since.

How do you prove your product’s traction to investors?

With measured indicators: recurring revenue, retention, satisfaction. A satisfaction survey or a B2C market research study brings solid evidence to the file.

Does a funding round mean losing control of the company?

Not automatically. It all depends on the share given up, the shareholders’ agreement and the composition of the board. A founder can lose control by giving up the board for a small amount, and come under strong pressure while remaining the majority shareholder. Have the terms reviewed by a specialised lawyer.