2025

The Startup Fundraising Report

What Investors Want & How to Raise Capital

Executive summary

How startups are adapting in today's evolving fundraising environment

Startup fundraising strategies are shifting to meet VC demands. In Q1 2024, 23% of investment rounds were down rounds, the highest share in more than five years — and the median time between fundraising rounds has increased for early-stage startups. Early-stage deal counts are slow—so how are startups responding?

After analyzing survey results from 500 early-stage startup founders—seeking Seed to Series B funding—across the United States and Europe in July, here are our top takeaways on startup fundraising in H2 2024.

It takes dozens of pitches to secure an initial round of startup funding

52% of founders pitched between 10 and 50 investors or funding sources before securing any funding for their startup.

Founders are using a combo of traditional fundraising methods and new tech

The most effective fundraising methods for pre-seed and seed fundraising are warm and cold intros and online fundraising platforms.

Startups are leveraging CRMs to enhance their fundraising strategies

For 1 in 5 founders, a CRM is the most effective tool for optimizing their investor outreach and engagement.

AI-based startups are finding success with cold outreach

AI-based startups are more likely to use cold outreach to connect with investors, and twice as likely to find cold outreach to be effective than non-AI-based startups.

AI startups are attracting investor attention

53% of startups raising the most funds (over $4M) during their seed round are AI-based.

Fundraising timelines are slowing down

Today, it takes an average of 3-4 months to raise seed funding, 14-18 months to reach Series A, and 20-24 months to get to Series B.

percentage of founders who pitched between 10 & 50 investors before getting funding

approximate number of founders who use a CRM to manage investor outreach

percentage of startups raising $4M+ that are AI-based

Methodology

To gather the data for this report, HubSpot for Startups partnered with Datalily to survey 500 pre-seed to Series B startup founders in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and France via Pollfish in July 2024.

Expert Commentary

In addition to the data collected from the survey respondents, HubSpot for Startups interviewed investors and founders over the past few months to glean insights on fundraising and scaling in the current landscape. Some were interviewed for this report specifically, and others were part of our Startups Scaling Smarter series.

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