The 87.5% problem

This week

The headlines aren’t about you

Every week brings another nine- or ten-figure round. AI labs raising tens of billions. Seed rounds priced like Series Bs. If you’re raising $2M right now, it can feel like showing up to a yacht party in a kayak.

The data tells a different story.

Megadeals of $100M or more captured 87.5% of the $412.7 billion deployed in US venture in H1 2026, and AI alone took 86% of the dollars (PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor).

Read that again.

Roughly one dollar in eight went to every round under $100 million combined.

The data

More money, fewer winners

Underneath the headlines, fewer companies are getting funded. Seed startups on Carta raised $2.7 billion across 381 rounds in Q1 2026, versus $2.2 billion across 481 rounds a year before (Carta). More dollars. A hundred fewer companies.

The fund side looks the same. Three firms raised 48.1% of all new US venture capital, while first-time fund formation is on pace for its weakest year since 2016 (PitchBook).

From the field

What it looks like from where we sit

Most of the investors in our network will never write a $100 million check. They’re angels, family offices, micro-VCs and syndicates, and they’re the real market for nearly every founder reading this.

That’s the part the headlines miss. When the biggest funds crowd into the same handful of names, everything below the line gets less crowded. But fewer rounds closing means the bar went up, not down. A smaller check isn’t an easier check.

The playbook

A playbook for raising below the megadeal line

1. 1

   Find who’s actually writing checks at your size.

   Pull up five companies in your space that are one stage ahead of you and look at who backed their last round. Crunchbase lists investors on announced rounds. SEC Form D filings on EDGAR show which companies recently raised, often before any announcement. The names that repeat are your list.

2. 2

   Qualify before you pitch.

   Ask three questions in the first ten minutes:

   • When did you last invest at this stage?
   • What’s your typical check size?
   • Who else has to say yes?

   You’ll save weeks chasing investors who were never going to write the check.

3. 3

   Pitch each investor type differently.

   Angels often decide quickly and bet heavily on the founder.

   Family offices move on their own timeline and tend to value fewer, deeper relationships, so expect more than one conversation.

   Micro-VCs need you to fit their thesis and ownership targets, so know their portfolio before the call.

4. 4

   Build the round, not just the lead.

   Without a big fund leading, most rounds under $5M come together as several checks. Land one committed anchor first, then use it.

   “We have $500K committed from a family office” moves the next conversation faster than any deck slide.

5. 5

   Benchmark against the median, not the outliers.

   The valuations in the headlines belong to a small group at the top. Pricing your round off them can stall this raise and make the next one harder.

6. 6

   Keep the “not yets” warm.

   Send a short monthly update to every investor who passed for now: what happened, two or three key numbers, one specific ask. A “not yet” from March is often a yes by September.

Investor Signals

Where we come in

This is the market we work in every day. Investor Signals connects founders with the angels, family offices, VCs and syndicates writing checks below the megadeal line, through warm, pre-confirmed introductions.

More next week.

The Investor Signals team

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Sister company

Synapse Network

Our sister company, Synapse Network, is an invitation-only network for fund managers, LPs, family offices and lenders.