That might be high, but it doesn’t seem terribly off to me.
From the moment of founding the failure rate for startups is something like 90-95% depending on what sources I trust. So, there’s plenty of room for 80% of series C companies to not exit even if most failures happen earlier than that. On top of that, like others said, that 80% figure probably includes companies that never exit or fail, but just continue to operate as profitable businesses.
And I’m not sure I believe your claim that most series C companies are valued at 9 figures. I think series C companies with very good growth prospects are in that range in some industries, but plenty of struggling companies manage to keep raising funds to continue operations for a surprisingly long time, especially if they have low burn rates and don’t need large rounds, or are just right around breakeven in terms of cash flow without much need for large hiring sprees or capex.
That might be high, but it doesn’t seem terribly off to me.
From the moment of founding the failure rate for startups is something like 90-95% depending on what sources I trust. So, there’s plenty of room for 80% of series C companies to not exit even if most failures happen earlier than that. On top of that, like others said, that 80% figure probably includes companies that never exit or fail, but just continue to operate as profitable businesses.
And I’m not sure I believe your claim that most series C companies are valued at 9 figures. I think series C companies with very good growth prospects are in that range in some industries, but plenty of struggling companies manage to keep raising funds to continue operations for a surprisingly long time, especially if they have low burn rates and don’t need large rounds, or are just right around breakeven in terms of cash flow without much need for large hiring sprees or capex.