Graduation Rate of Seed to Series A in Major US Cities

I randomly became curious about the graduation rate of startups from seed round to Series A round, specifically around the context of cities. I thought this might actually be more interesting to look at than total $ invested, or total number of rounds.

For the analysis, I looked at 6 major cities: SF, LA, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, NY.

I used Crunchbase data to pull all startups who raised a seed round in 2014, 2015, or 2016. I picked these years pretty randomly, but mostly because it felt recent enough, but not too recent.

I defined graduation rate as raising a Series A, anytime between their seed round and today.

Total companies in this list were 5114, with an average graduation rate of %20.3.

Here’s the chart:

Interestingly, Seattle and SF are leading the pack. LA was significantly lower.

Not sure why, but it’s interesting to see this.