Look at this chart. What stands out?

Outside of some recent AI additions, the most exciting private companies — here judged by the amount of secondary activity they’re seeing to start 2026 — are, shall we say… well-seasoned. 

To be clear, this wasn’t always the case: Facebook hit the public markets at 8 years old. Google was 6. And Apple was barely a toddler at 4.5 years.

This extended time in private markets is the skipped stone from which so much behavior around startups has rippled over the past 5 years. No participant, from the founders to GPs to LPs, have escaped these effects.

For founders, starting a company was always a thankless crusade, especially at the beginning. But there’s a massive difference between betting 5 years of your life and betting 15.

Blood, sweat, and tears for 5 long years and you may be at Series B? Or worse, Series A, if things didn’t go to plan (and really, when do things go to plan?).

The Great Elongation has changed the vibe across venture. The rate of co-founder breakups, for instance, has steadily risen over the past few years, so that today we see more than one-quarter of two–founder teams lose one of those founders by Year 4.  

It also puts pressure on early employees. So, while Apple never had to deal with staff becoming increasingly disgruntled as their paper shares failed to convert into liquid cash for a decade or more, the startups of today must wrangle internal liquidity pressure in addition to investor desires.

Side note: Time dilation is one thing for those startups that end up breaking through; the real hidden cost is to the startups that spend nearly as long in the game and nonetheless still fail.

This graduation rate data shows that less than 30% of startups who’ve raised a seed round since Q4 2021 have made it to Series A as of the end of last year. Less than 30%!

For founders, this represents a gigantic hole of time.

If it seems like I’m being doom and gloom in the hopes of scaring you away from the idea that everyone should be a founder… Yeah, maybe I am. 

It would be unfair to not show the other side of the argument, of course. And that boils down to earlier exits, whether in full or partially.

Hallelujah, M&A is back, baby! Well, at least the small-scale stuff.

A record 796 U.S. companies using Carta were acquired last year, of which two-thirds were seed-stage or younger. As the AI frenzy has ramped up, the demand for quality AI teams and tools has expanded just as quickly. These small companies are good targets for bigger startups, Big Tech, or the occasional private equity fund. 

But, of course, most companies won’t get acquired.

So, what can these enterprising founders do to realize some liquidity before IPO?

Take some secondary liquidity out, of course.

And this is not just a story of mature businesses executing tender offers (although that’s certainly happening a bunch). Through the first half of 2025, we saw 81 founders at seed-stage execute personal secondary transactions.

No shade at the founders here, honestly. We can debate the “right” time for a founder to sell stock in their own private company, but if you’re in a position to command multiple term sheets with favorable terms, I get it.

It’s not like the investors aren’t considering the same (well, not often at seed-stage, but still). 

We see the percentage of U.S. funds using Carta Fund Admin with even a little DPI (money back to LPs) increasing over the past few quarters. The 2020 vintage seems especially sensitive to the overall market — being 6 or so years in with LPs hesitant to commit to Fund II or Fund III will do that to a person. 

All of these decisions are impacted by the length of time startups remain private.

Look, maybe things are about to change. If you believe the prognosticator class on X, we’re in for a record IPO year. (Sure, they said the same for 2025, but c’mon! These guys are plugged in.) And even a major skeptic has to imagine the AI labs will tap public money at some point. 

But the core dynamic remains clear: startups are a very long-term bet. 

In a world full of Claude Code and Codex and seemingly seismic technology shift biweekly… long-term bets feel harder to make.

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