Another interesting new trend I’ve seen a few times recently: second-time founders who are not raising at all! Instead they are choosing to bootstrap to Series A or, use their profitability to defer raising inevitably.
There's a long tradition of that and honestly not really a 2018 thing imo. What it does say is that in the preceding years many people had exits and thus the raw visible numbers have gone up compared to decades past.
Ex: CEO of previous company (founded in 2007) as 3rd time founder didn't take money until the A round and was funded by his previous exits even though we were a semiconductor startup.
Ex: CEO of previous company (founded in 2007) as 3rd time founder didn't take money until the A round and was funded by his previous exits even though we were a semiconductor startup.