The startup bubble that no one is talking about

Summary

The startup bubble that no one is talking aboutAugust 28, 2025Figure 1Above is a graph that displays the amount of Form Ds filed, where the entity (read: company/firm) name contains the phrases "fund I", "fund II", "fund III", and "fund IV". The x-axis is not the prettiest, but it is broken down by quarter. You can see that the line for "fund I" sees by far the greatest peak around quarter 3 of 2022, with a steep drop off immediately after. The other lines have a similar, but less pronounced trend.So, what is the significance of this? Companies and firms file Form Ds in compliance with Regulation D, which requires disclosure when raising funds under specific circumstances. I won't go into the details here, but the TLDR is that it isn't always required, but it's not uncommon either. Another piece of context is that venture capital firms (among other financial investment groups) label their individual funds, often by appending Fund [<fund roman numeral>] to describe where the fund falls in their sequence of funds. Here is a search query on the SEC filings database. You can see how the naming convention works. Each fund often constitutes its own entity. My hypothesis here is that, by charting the amount of Form Ds filed with "fund [#]" in the name, we can roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising. My Takeaways1. From this graph we can roughly see the ratio of venture firms that make it to a given fund cycle. That's a little hard to claim as the funds get higher in number, because once firms get large enough, they often stop creating sequential funds, instead raising in parallel and creating funds targeting specific industries/products etc. If you are planning to start a venture firm though, you may gain a bit of insight into your odds of longevity.2. Venture funding is about to drop off BIG time. During the early 2020s, everyone and their mom raised a VC fund. This is due to several factors The zero interest rate phenomenon. Because rates were so low, end...