VC is changing dramatically — what’s a founder to do?

seed-round valuations reached $200.4 million in Q2 2026, up 177% from a year earlier, even as fewer companies were funded. (Chart: Peter Walker / Carta) Guest Opinion: When I moved to Seattle in 2000 and started in venture capital, I read the book “The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams,” which told the story of how venture capital drove the innovation ecosystem. Entrepreneurs toiled day and night in their garages.

Venture capitalists discovered these entrepreneurs, writing “small” checks for ownership and partnering side by side to build blue-chip companies. John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins alone backed Intuit, Netscape, Amazon, and Google. More than 25 years later, venture capital is going through a dramatic evolution, chasing once-in-a-lifetime IPOs like SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.

There is more venture capital available than ever before, and it is harder than ever for most founders to get funded, especially if you are not working on foundational AI. Today’s founders need to think hard about alternative financing and growth strategies, rather than relying on venture capital. But before we get to those solutions and ideas, here are just a few examples of what’s happening in the market.

Anthropic envy: The Wall Street Journal covers the story of Spark Capital’s Yasmin Razavi, a former McKinsey consultant who invested $75 million in Anthropic when much of Silicon Valley passed at a $4 billion valuation in 2023. That stake is now worth about $7 billion — nearly 100x in three years! Silicon Valley is now chasing this pattern.

More money, fewer winners: In 2025, US venture firms deployed roughly $319 billion, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. In the first half of 2026 alone, they put in $412.7 billion, more than all of 2025. Capital has never been more abundant.

But according to Silicon Valley Bank, 33% of all US venture dollars went to the top 1% of companies by valuation, up from 12% in 2022. Seed valuations for the “right company” are at an all-time high. The bar for the next round is not a little higher.