Startup Fundraising Glossary
90 terms. Last reviewed November 2026 by Daniel Faloppa, Managing Director, Equidam. Most…
How Employee Stock Options Are Valued (ESOP Valuation Explained)
Why your option strike price sits below your last round, the methods behind it, and a worked…
Convertible Note Terms: Discount, Valuation Cap, Interest Rate and Maturity (2026)
The median convertible note discount is 20%, the median interest rate was 7% in 2025 and the median…
SAFE vs Convertible Note vs Priced Round: Which Should You Use?
A SAFE and a convertible note both postpone the price of your shares until the next round, while a…
Startup Valuation by Stage (2026): Pre-Seed to Series B
Median valuations and round sizes at seed, Series A and Series B in the US and the UK, with…
Liquidation Preferences Explained (With Exit Waterfall Tables)
One cap table, four sets of terms and five exit values, so you can see who gets paid what. A…
How Much Equity to Give Investors in Each Round (2026 Data)
Per-round medians from Carta, PitchBook-NVCA and Equidam's own pre-seed data, what founders…
Down Rounds in 2026: Data, Anti-Dilution Examples and Alternatives
A down round is a financing priced below the previous round. In Q2 2026, 12.1% of the venture deals…
How Much Should You Raise at Pre-Seed? 2026 Round Sizes, Valuations and Dilution by Region
What founders on Equidam planned to raise in H1 2026, how that compares with data on closed rounds,…
Startup Failure Rates by Year and Country (2026): What the Official Data Says
Official survival rates for the US, the EU and the UK, and how failure risk enters a valuation.…