Only ~1 in 4 European startups reach Series A within 36 months. The median journey takes ~24 months. And who you raise from is still the single biggest swing factor — top‑5% seed VCs convert 4.5× better than the bottom quartile.
The need-to-know, in four numbers — then let the charts do the talking.
Founders label their own rounds — and the label is a communications choice, not an objective fact. A funding announcement doubles as a recruiting and PR event ("biggest Seed round ever", "Series A oversubscribed"), so the same $5m round gets called Pre-Seed, Seed, Seed+ or Series A depending on what story is being told. There's no shared framework. Side-by-side: how rounds present themselves vs how we re-class them by capital raised. Every downstream conversion number on this page sits on top of this re-labelling.
Bar widths are scaled per column — each column's largest count fills the bar, making the distribution shape inside that label legible regardless of the absolute volume. Counts on the right are the actual round counts. Source: Dealroom rounds database, ~17k qualified European rounds, 2018–25. Self-labelled = noisy; standardised = comparable.
2016–2018 cohort, 3,075 Seed-funded European companies, tracked at company level.
Cumulative share of the cohort that raised a qualified Series A by month n. 2016–2018 was chosen so the 48-month window is fully observed; add ~6 months of reporting lag at the long end. Track your own cohort live in Dealroom →
The gap, the metrics behind the gap, and the European seed VCs who consistently sit on the right side of it.
The leading 5% convert 63% of their seed investments to Series A. The bottom quartile converts 14%.
A 4.5× gap — structural, not random.
Median shown for each cohort across ~800 EMEA seed investors with standardised seed rounds 2015–2021. "Top Series A+ investor" means the round was led or co-led by a Series A+ investor in the top 5% of the Global Power Law ranking.
The same top-quality seed investors are more likely to lead the round, convert into larger Series A rounds, convert sooner, and accumulate far more follow-on capital — both per company and across the portfolio.
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SYes — but less than which seed investor you take money from. The full heatmap below covers every region, country, metro and supercluster in the dataset. Filter by type or size quartile to compare like-for-like ecosystems, then click a row to pin it and surface the closest comparators.
Click a row to pin it · the next four most-comparable locations (same type, same continent) will surface below it for side-by-side reading.
Conversion rates are 36-month medians by qualified standardised stage, on Dealroom's full-history universe. Funded = companies that raised at least one round of $100K+. Only locations with ≥500 funded companies shown. Pull live ecosystem data in Dealroom →
Some segments graduate ~50% better than the median. AI, Deep Tech, Enterprise Software, Generative AI and Cybersecurity sit at the top; Advertising, Media, Gaming, Virtual Reality at the bottom. Same standardised lens, all global cohorts. Click a row to pin it and see how similar sectors compare.
Click a row to pin it · the closest four sectors (same parent type) will surface below it for side-by-side reading.
Same conversion methodology. Sectors are global rollups across Dealroom's tagging taxonomy — industry is the top-line label, sub-industry is the dive, and the four other types are cross-cuts (technology, business model, income stream, SDG, tag). Drill down by sector in Dealroom →
The durable lessons — for founders raising at Seed and for the allocators backing them.
The journey is structurally selective — even when capital is plentiful, conversion stays at roughly a quarter of Seed-funded companies. The other ~75% stall, pivot, get acquired, or run out of runway. Building for that distribution matters more than betting on the funding cycle.
Median time from Seed to Series A is ~24 months — likely 6 months longer once reporting lag is accounted for. >80% of conversions happen within 36 months. Raise ~$2.5–3m of pre-Series A capital and plan for that window.
Companies with a Seed-focused VC in their round convert at ~1 in 3 vs ~1 in 4 baseline. Companies backed by the top 5% of seed investors convert at 63% — a 4.5× edge over the bottom quartile.
More funding alone doesn't drive stronger outcomes. The job is identifying and backing the investors who actually add value — measurably, on the four-metric framework below. Don't grow the pool blindly.
Dealroom for Founders — search 800+ EMEA seed VCs by stage, sector, conversion rate and follow-on quality. Free for founders.
The Power Law Investor Ranking and the Journey value-add framework give you a quantitative read on every EMEA seed VC — number, conversion, follow-on quality, follow-on quantity.
Count of standardised seed rounds an investor participated in (lead or co-lead) between 2015 and 2021. Standardisation harmonises round labels across geographies so a "Pre-Seed" in Berlin is comparable to one in London.
Share of an investor's seed portfolio that raised a standardised Series A within 36 months of the seed round. Conversion is measured at the company level, then median-aggregated per investor cohort.
Share of follow-on capital led or co-led by Series A+ investors in the top 5% of the Global Power Law ranking. The Power Law ranking itself is computed independently — see the methodology for how it's built.
Total follow-on VC capital raised per portfolio company since the seed round. Unlike conversion, there is no time cutoff — long-run compounding by the top cohort is part of the picture.
Built from the Dealroom company & round database, the Power Law Investor Ranking and the underlying Journey-to-Series-A standardisation. Refreshes annually with new vintages; the cohorts cited on this page use the 2026 dataset.
Dealroom's platform shows you every co-investor in every round, with their full conversion, follow-on quality and follow-on quantity history — so you can know who you're really in a round with, before you commit.