Founder ownership benchmarks

How much of your company will you own after the Series A? Benchmarks give an answer, but two benchmarks do not agree. The median round sells less than 20%, so two rounds keep about two thirds for the founders. But the median founding team owns about a third. This lesson gives you the data and explains the gap.

Where the numbers come from

Most public benchmarks for cap tables come from Carta. Carta sees the cap tables of the companies that use its software, and most of these companies are US startups with venture capital. The data is the best public dataset, but it does not show the full market. For example, it shows few companies that never raised money.

Two kinds of number appear in this lesson:

• Founder ownership is what the full founding team owns together, as a part of the fully diluted shares. It is not the share of one founder.
• Dilution per round is the part of the company that the new investors buy in one round: new money ÷ post-money valuation.

Each benchmark is a median: the middle company when you put all companies in order. Half of the companies are above the median, and half are below it.

What founding teams own

The table shows two patterns. First, the seed and the rounds before it take more than 40% of the company from the median founding team. Second, after the Series A, the median team no longer owns a majority. Control does not come from the percentage alone. Board seats and voting rights also give control, and the lesson on control terms explains them.

Compare your own team with these medians. Enter what your founders own together after your last priced round.

Benchmark

Your founding team against the median

Enter what all the founders own together, fully diluted, after your last priced round.

Your last priced round

SeedSeries ASeries BSeries C

Your founding team owns

Your founding team

45%

Median after the Series A

36%

Difference

+9.00 points

Median founding team after each round, and your team

Seed

56%

Series A

36%

Your team

45%

Series B, AI

27.3%

Series B, not AI

21.8%

Series C

16.1%

Your founding team owns 45% after the Series A. The median founding team owns about 36% at that stage, so your team is 9 points above the median. Half of the teams in the data own more than the median, and half own less.

A share at or above the median is not a guarantee. The median team after the Series B owns about 21.8% to 27.3%, with AI teams at the top of that range, so the next round will still get a large part.

How much each round sells

The second benchmark is the dilution of one round. Later rounds sell smaller parts of much larger companies:

Dilution per round decreased in the last two years. Carta gives a median of about 16% for rounds from the seed to the Series C in 2025, against about 19% two years before. At the Series B, the median was 12.9% in Q4 2025, against 18% two years before.

Numbers vary from source to source. PitchBook counts all US deals, and Carta counts only priced rounds on its platform. From PitchBook’s 2026 medians (to September 30), the implied dilution is 14.1% at the seed and 22.4% at the Series A. These values come from a median round size and a median pre-money valuation, which come from different deals. Thus they are only approximate.

Work it out

In Q2 2026, the median Series A on Carta raised $14.7M at a $76.3M post-money valuation. What part of the company does $14.7M buy at $76.3M?

Your answerCheck

The trap: multiply the medians

The obvious method is to multiply the per-round medians. Try it first.

Predict first

The median seed sells 19.4% and the median Series A sells 18.7%. A founding team starts at 100%, and only those two rounds dilute it. What does it own after the Series A?

Type a guess before you continue. A guess first, even a wrong one, makes the answer easier to remember.

Your guessSave my guess

The two benchmarks are correct. They measure different things. The per-round medians count only the new money of each round. The founder-ownership medians count everything that diluted the founders:

• SAFEs from the pre-seed, which convert at the seed
• The option pool that the seed makes, and the pool top-up at the Series A
• Bridge rounds between the seed and the Series A
• More pre-seed rounds, bigger pools, and other events that some companies have

There is also a sample effect. The companies with a Series A this year are not the same companies as the companies with a seed this year. Each median comes from a different group of companies. Add the hidden items one at a time, and watch the gap close.

Find the gap

Multiply the medians, then add what they do not count

The per-round medians count only the new money. Add the other dilution of a typical path and compare with what founding teams really own.

Pre-seed SAFEs that convert at the seed

0%

Option pool made in the seed

0%

Bridge SAFE before the Series A

0%

Pool top-up at the Series A

0%

Use Northwind's pathBack to new money only

Medians multiplied

65.53%

0.806 × 0.813

Your model

65.53%

With what you added

Measured median

36%

After the Series A

Gap left

+29.53

Percentage points

What the founding team owns after the Series A

Medians

65.53%

Your model

65.53%

Measured

36%

The median seed sells 19.4% and the median Series A sells 18.7%. Multiplied, the founders keep 65.53%. But the median founding team owns only about 36% after the Series A.

The medians do not count the SAFEs that convert, the pools, or the bridges. Move the sliders to add them, one at a time.

Northwind’s path closes most of the gap. Use the medians for the new money, and add Northwind’s other items. Its SAFEs get 20% at the seed, and its seed pool is 12%. Its bridge gets 6.67%, so the founders keep 0.933 of their share. At the Series A, its pool top-up of 2,292,264 shares is 8.3% of the total after the round:

Medians only:  0.806 × 0.813                 = 65.5%
Seed:          0.80 × (1 − 0.194 − 0.12)    = 54.9%
Bridge:        54.9% × 0.933                = 51.2%
Series A:      51.2% × (1 − 0.187 − 0.083)  = 37.4%

The model gives about 37%, near the measured 36%.

Work it out

Your founding team owns 50% after the seed. The Series A sells 18.7% to new money and adds a pool top-up of 5% of the post-money, in the pre-money. What does your team own after the Series A?

Your answerCheck

Use benchmarks well

A benchmark is a tool for questions, not a target. Use it in these ways:

• Compare on the same basis. The Carta medians are fully diluted and count the full founding team. Compare them with your fully diluted total for all founders.
• Compare with the same kind of company. At the Series B, AI founding teams owned 27.3% at the median and other teams 21.8%. A hardware company and a software company have different paths.
• Calculate the pool from your plan. The median pool after the seed is about 12%. If a seed term sheet asks for a pool of 20%, size the pool from your hiring plan. Use the hires of the next 18 to 24 months, and show the plan to the investor.
• Plan two rounds ahead. On Carta in Q1 2026, the median time from the seed to the Series A was about 2.0 years. Your next two rounds set what you own at an exit.

The ranges around each median are wide. A percentile tells you the part of the companies below a value: 90% of the companies are below the 90th percentile. In Q1 2026, the 90th-percentile seed valuation on Carta was nearly 4 times the median. At the Series A, it was nearly 5 times the median. A company far from the median is not unusual.

Quiz · question 1 of 6

Test what you learned

In the Carta Founder Ownership Report 2026, about what does the median founding team own after the Series A?

• AMore than 50%, so the founders keep a majority
• BAbout 16%
• CAbout 36%
• DAbout 60%