Sourced notes on deals, diligence and private markets.
Summaries of the research worth reading, and Rubicon's own view on diligence. Every figure links back to where it came from.
Megadeals are back and venture deal value tripled, while private equity deal value slipped. Bain calls the new challenge the AI "winner's paradox."
3 min readA data room is the seller's version of the company. The external record is everyone else's.
5 min readUS deal value nearly doubled while the number of deals fell. Fewer, bigger transactions change what diligence has to carry.
4 min readA list of findings is not a plan. Sorting each one into three buckets turns it into one.
4 min readStartups on Carta raised nearly $120 billion in 2025 across the fewest rounds in six years, and nearly three in ten seed and Series A rounds were bridges.
4 min readRecord totals at the very top, contraction almost everywhere underneath. What the numbers say about who gets funded.
4 min readCompany names are not unique. Before any finding matters, you have to know it belongs to the entity you are actually evaluating.
4 min readAlmost every deal used a 1x, non-participating preference, and up rounds climbed to 86%. A few investor protections are creeping back.
3 min readMore than 60% of venture dollars on Carta went to AI. Later-stage valuations climbed, and the down-round rate fell to 11.4%.
3 min readMost diligence is a snapshot taken before signing. The company keeps changing after that.
4 min readIn 2025 one of the best-known virtual data room providers bought two private-company data platforms. The deal says a lot about where diligence is heading.
3 min readHarvey raised $200 million at an $11 billion valuation, and Rogo raised a $160 million Series D. Both automate the work behind deals.
3 min readAI makes it easy to produce a summary. It does not make the summary true. Citations are how you tell the difference.
4 min readPitchBook data shows commitments down across most strategies, fund closings down 45%, and nearly 40% of NAV sitting in funds seven years or older.
3 min readFewer pre-seed instruments, but bigger ones. The average check rose 27% year over year.
3 min readEvery pitch has a big number. Here is a practical way to check whether it holds up.
4 min readCarta's cohort data: no seed cohort since Q3 2021 has reached a 30% two-year graduation rate.
2 min readThe median seed round is about $4 million, and the road to Series A has grown longer since 2019.
3 min readInvestors look at many companies for each one they fund. Most of that first-pass work is still manual.
4 min readIntegration gets the headlines. Bain's research points to diligence that missed critical issues.
3 min read