Alex Wilhelm

speaker

67,402 appearances 274 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2024 last heard 19 Aug

Alex Wilhelm’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 108 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 15.

Appearances

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This Week in Startups · Why the most expensive Seed deals are the cheapest | E2299 · 10 Jun 2026 podcast

Now, I've been a journalist covering venture capital since I was in college, which is getting to be pretty long ago. voice-verified

And if there's one thing that everyone agrees on, is that for my entire career, seed prices have been unsustainable, too high, they're breaking seed economics, and no one can make money anymore in seed investing. voice-verified

And then people still do it. voice-verified

So if you take a look at this chart that I now have on your screen, this is some data from. voice-verified

Our friends over at Carta. voice-verified

And as you can tell, we have reached a new era of seed pricing. voice-verified

If you're on the audio version, imagine a chart that's kind of flat but trending up that then goes parabolic in the last couple of quarters. voice-verified

And what it shows is that the 95th percentile for seed rounds in the US that Carta can see, and I'll have a valuation of $174 million, 90th percentile, 94 million. voice-verified

And those are up from about 66 and 50 back in 2022. voice-verified

So is this what finally breaks the seed market? voice-verified

And Paige, how are you managing to find entry prices in the companies that actually are attractive enough to work for your fund economics? voice-verified

Michael, uh your your fund uh backs other managers to some degree. voice-verified

So I'm curious, how are your you know, horses in this race dealing with seed prices that to me look voice-verified

And not just unsustainable, but just uneconomical for early stage investors. voice-verified

Well, I didn't think that's most scorching take of the show will come from the other guy in a suit, but here we are, Michael. voice-verified

Doing us all a solid. voice-verified

Uh okay, so putting that in perspective, Paige says that we're seeing outcomes get larger. voice-verified

You're saying that the leading companies might be underpriced, the implication being that the exit they're heading towards is going to be truly staggering. voice-verified

And if I could take that one step further, that the fact that we're looking at three roughly trillion dollar plus IPOs this year, therefore won't be an anomaly. voice-verified

It'll actually become more the norm down the road. voice-verified

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