2013 has been another banner year in seed financing for U.S. tech startups. In aggregate, 2013 saw $893 million invested across 843 seed VC deals. In fact, 2013 saw the highest amount of seed VC deals since 2009. Seed VC deal activity in 2013 jumped 11% from 2012 levels and a whopping 173% from 2010 as the number of active seed venture investors continued to stay strong. By way of definition, seed venture capital rounds included in this brief are early stage investments (typically less than $1.5 million) that specifically include the participation of a venture capital and/or corporate venture capital investor (angel rounds were excluded from this analysis).
Seed Funding
Overall seed VC dollars deployed also hit a four-year high in 2013. Compared to 2012 and 2011, seed funding dollars rose 22% and 74%, respectively. On a quarterly basis, Q3’13 was the biggest quarter for seed VC financing over the past four years and saw $257M invested across 252 unique seed deals.
Peeling back seed VC deal size, we see that the average and median seed deal sizes have shown a steady uptick since 2010. In Q4 2013, they bumped up to their highest levels in four years with the average hitting $1.5 million and the median at $1.3 million.
Seed VC Deals and Dollar Trend by Industry
Looking at seed VC activity by sub-industry within the Internet and mobile sectors, we see areas like Human Capital Management tech and Collaboration and Project Management seeing large growth in deals. Ed Tech, which saw its share of mega rounds in 2013, also realized a significant increase in year-over-year seed deals. (Note: Only industries that saw 15 or more seed venture capital deals each year were included in the chart.)
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