So, how are your startup investments performing?

Here's the thing about venture data out there today: most of it is not very good. You're either getting quarterly reports that are already three months out-of-date, or you're reading someone's best guess about what might be happening. As a GP, you're often making meaningful investment decisions based on outdated information. You wouldn’t buy groceries according to a list you wrote three months ago. Venture data shouldn’t be any different.

At AngelList, we’re building the infrastructure that powers the startup economy. Every day we watch real money flow from GPs into startups, where markups and markdowns are happening across thousands of companies, in real time. We have over a decade of this data, which allows us to see what’s happening in early-stage venture right now.

GPs should have access to this data today, not data from a quarter ago. Why should they have to rely on stale reports to make informed investment decisions?

So today, we’re launching our Startup Index—a monthly snapshot of early-stage venture health providing GPs a fresh lens on the market. Instead of waiting for some outdated quarterly report, you'll get fresh data every month that will provide a fresh view of how early-stage venture is performing relative to historical norms.

Why We Built the Index

No GP should have to make critical decisions based on outdated information. Our Startup Index uses aggregated and anonymized data, and offers things that other venture data can't:

• Timeliness — We update this every month based on actual price movements and fundraising data. No delays, no estimates.
• Scale — We're tracking about 20,000 venture-backed startups across a wide variety of sectors and industries, all tied to real capital events over more than a decade.
• Accuracy — This reflects actual share price changes, not some analyst's guess about what a company might be worth.
• Context — We anchor everything to pre-pandemic levels so you can actually understand what "good" and "bad" look like historically.

Think of this as an early notification for what's actually happening in venture. When markets start recovering, you'll see it here—probably months before it shows up in exit data or fundraising reports.

How We Calculate This

Here's the methodology without the jargon: we're measuring the difference between good news and bad news across our startup universe.

We start with up-to-date valuation data from roughly 20,000 startups on our platform. To make it into our monthly calculation, a company needs to have raised money at least three months ago, still be operating, and have a clear pricing history in dollars (crypto, we’ll get to you another day).

Then we look at what happened to each company's share price over the past six months. If it went up by 10% or more, that's a markup (good news). If it dropped by 10% or more, that's a markdown (bad news).

We group companies by the year they first raised money on our platform. We’ve grouped companies into these year-based cohorts intentionally, because a startup that raised its first venture capital round in 2019 is dealing with completely different issues and market conditions than one that raised in 2023.

We then calculate a weighted average across all these cohorts to get one number that represents the net health of the entire early-stage ecosystem.

What The Numbers Actually Mean

The Index answers a simple question: If you’re a GP who has deployed capital into 100 startups, spread evenly across the past decade, how many more good updates than bad updates would you have gotten from your portfolio in the last six months?

As of June 2025, that number is 1.8.

To put that in perspective: in September 2021, at the peak of the boom, it was 10. Before the pandemic, it was consistently around 6.1. In March 2025, we hit the lowest point ever in our dataset at 1.3.

So this means things are still pretty rough, but they're slowly getting better. A GP's hypothetical 100-startup portfolio would have received about two more pieces of good news than bad news over the past six months. Not great, but better than where we were.

The Story Behind The Numbers

This is where things get interesting, and why I'm actually optimistic despite the overall low score.

When you break down the data by year, you see that startups that raised from 2018-2022—and by extension, their investors—are seeing more markdowns than any other cohort. These companies raised money during or right after the pandemic when valuations were inflated, and now experiencing (expected) markdowns.

But look at the 2023 and 2024 cohorts—they're actually performing better than any other cohort right now. These founders raised venture capital dollars after the correction began, rooted in more realistic valuations and stronger fundamentals.

Here's what I’m observing in each group:

• Exit Watchlist | 2015-2017 founders are awaiting exits. Their companies are mature enough to need liquidity, but there's still caution.
• Pre-COVID | 2018-2020 founders got caught in the perfect storm. Many raised follow-on rounds during the pandemic boom and are now dealing with the reality that those valuations may be unsustainable.
• COVID ZIRP | 2021-2022 founders are facing the toughest situation. They raised at peak valuations and now have to prove they can grow into them.
• New Normal | 2023-2024 founders are actually the bright spot. They're building companies with disciplined capital structures and realistic expectations.

Looking Ahead

Our data tells a story that's more nuanced than what the doom-and-gloom headlines suggest.

Stay updated with our Index throughout the year. We'll have fresh data to either prove or disprove this thesis. That's the beauty of having real-time signals—we don't have to wait six months to know if we're heading in the right direction.