The Vanishing Series A: The money hasn’t disappeared, but the pathway is getting harder.

But lately Series A feels like it has become more elusive. It’s not that the capital isn’t there. Investors still have funds to deploy, and deals are being done. But they’re not being spread across the same breadth of companies. The bar for what qualifies as “Series A ready” has quietly, but significantly, moved.

Where $1M ARR once signalled you were ready to scale, many VCs are now holding out for $2M, sometimes $3M — and not just revenue, but momentum. They want to see products that are spreading organically. Metrics that slope upwards and to the right. Early signs of market leadership, not just potential.

Carta’s latest data puts numbers to the shift. Only 15.4% of startups that raised a seed round in H1 2022 have made it to Series A within two years — down from around 27% for the 2020 cohort. The time between rounds is also getting longer. In consumer markets, the median time from seed to A now sits at three years. That’s nearly double the typical 18-month runway founders have historically planned for. Across sectors, even strong companies are finding that the milestones that once unlocked capital now barely get them into the room.

The result is a bifurcated early-stage ecosystem. A small number of companies — the ones that look like breakout winners — are pulling in large A rounds at strong valuations. Meanwhile, a growing number of good-but-not-obviously-great companies are getting stuck. Not dead, not struggling. Just… paused.

Rather than a pullback in funding, what we’re seeing is a concentration of it. Series A capital hasn’t dried up — but it’s being deployed more selectively, into fewer companies showing unmistakable signals of scale. Carta’s data also shows that the total number of Series A rounds has dropped significantly — down nearly 80% from the peak in early 2022. The money’s still flowing. It’s just flowing into a much tighter funnel.

And so, enter the bridge round.

Sometimes these are deliberate. A well-planned $1–2M top-up from insiders to stretch the runway, push harder on GTM, and try again in 12–18 months. Other times they’re a reframe. “We didn’t quite land the $10M A we were aiming for, but we pulled together $2M to get from $500K to $1.5M ARR.” Founders are increasingly stitching together back-to-back seed extensions, adjusting the story to match where the business is — and where it needs to get.

This new reality isn’t necessarily bad. In some ways, it’s more honest. The best companies don’t always hit product-market fit in 18 months. But it does require a different mindset. One that’s less about pitching your way into the next round, and more about earning your way there through consistent, compounding execution.

The Series A hasn’t disappeared. It’s just stopped being a milestone that everyone gets to hit. It’s become a filtering mechanism — one that rewards speed, clarity, and focus.

So what does that mean for founders?

It means not banking on the next round to save you. It means planning for a longer road, with more time between inflection points. It means building a business that can survive longer, and tell a better story, even if capital arrives later than you hoped.

The irony is that the fundamentals haven’t changed — investors still want the same things: growth, efficiency, signs of scale. What’s changed is the level of proof required before they lean in.

This isn’t a pullback. It’s a shift from “maybe” to “show me.”

And unless your company is already breaking out, you’ll likely need more time — and more traction — to make the leap.