Data from 12,000+ funding rounds, 180+ angel networks<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHere\u2019s the pattern we recognised. Of the funded companies we can see, only just over one in ten ever reaches an exit. Most of the money that went in is still tied up. And when an exit does come, it often arrives years after the last funding round, well after everyone had stopped paying attention.<\/p>\n
The easy conclusion is that most startups just aren\u2019t good enough to buy. We don\u2019t think that\u2019s right. We think they\u2019ve simply not found the right buyer. The companies are there, and the buyers who\u2019d value them are there too. They just have no reliable way of finding each other. That\u2019s a distribution problem, not a quality one \u2014 and it\u2019s the gap we\u2019ve decided to close.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a bigger gap than the companies we\u2019ve been writing about.<\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A quick note on the numbers. The 7,000 or so companies we\u2019ve covered in this series are the funded ones: the businesses that raised a proper, priced round. We kept the analysis to that group on purpose, so every figure came from real data rather than a guess. But funded companies are the minority. Across the whole platform there are well over 150,000 companies: raised and unraised, early and long quiet, plenty that never fitted a venture funnel in the first place. And the number keeps growing every month.<\/p>\n
This bigger group is what this post is about. Most of them will never raise a priced round or IPO, and the ones that did raise mostly won\u2019t sell on the timeline a fund needs. But they\u2019re real businesses, with real customers, real intellectual property and real teams.<\/p>\n
Those companies are mostly mid-market operators. Post two made the case: businesses big enough to act and small enough to move quickly, sitting right next to a generation of startups they could be working with. Not only buying them. Working with them, in whatever way fits. That connection is what we think comes next.<\/p>\n
For years, the exit conversation has been about IPOs and a handful of big acquirers, with everyone else queuing up behind them. That\u2019s the world that produced the number we started this series with: of the funded startups in our data, only 11.4% ever reach an exit. We don’t think the next wave looks like that. The next wave is companies dealing directly with the startups sitting quietly on platforms like ours \u2014 sometimes to partner, sometimes to buy, and a lot of things in between. Company to company, rather than fund to fund.<\/p>\n1 in 10 of funded startups ever get to an IPO or aquired<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nDealum is already sitting on most of the pieces. The companies are here, well over 150,000 of them and climbing. The angel networks and their members are here. The tools to manage these conversations and move them forward are already built into the platform. What’s been missing is the buyer side. Mid-market companies aren’t on the platform yet, and there’s nothing to connect them to the startups that are. That’s what we’re building: the door for those companies, and the matching behind it. As far as we can see, nobody else has all of these pieces in one place.<\/p>\nThere are over 100,000 startups on Dealum ready to match with mid-market companies<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHere\u2019s what it will look like from each side.<\/h2>\n For a mid-market company, it\u2019s access you haven\u2019t really had before: a way into a pool of thousands of startups, filtered down to what you\u2019re actually looking for. And that covers a lot of ground. Maybe you want a partner for an innovation challenge you can\u2019t crack in-house. Maybe there\u2019s a product or a piece of technology you\u2019d license or bring in. Maybe it\u2019s a team you\u2019d hire, a company you\u2019d buy outright, or a stake in something you value \u2014 which, from the other side of the table, is how an early investor finally gets their money back. Acquisition is one option among several, not the whole point.<\/p>\n
The mechanics, as we\u2019ve designed them, are simple. You tell us what you\u2019re after and the companies that fit come to you, into your own pipeline, where you can look at them and make contact. No trawling, no scraping, no wading through a thousand profiles to find them.<\/p>\n
For our investors \u2014 the angel networks and their members, who are the reason Dealum exists \u2014 this is the part that matters most. A lot of your money is sitting in companies that are doing fine but have nowhere obvious to go. No IPO coming, no big acquirer calling. Matching them with mid-market companies opens up other routes: someone who wants to partner, license or buy, or someone willing to buy out early investors who want out, without the company having to sell at all. Any of those gets you to liquidity sooner than waiting for an exit that, based on the numbers, probably isn\u2019t coming.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not going to pretend it\u2019s all figured out. As we said in post three, no dataset can tell you which company is the right one to work with; that information just isn\u2019t in there. What software can do is put the right companies in front of the right people, again and again, and let the people who know their own market decide. That\u2019s the bit that\u2019s been missing, and it\u2019s the bit we can actually build.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re building it now, which means the first companies get a say in how it works.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
Register interest<\/span><\/p>\nWe’re building this now. The first companies in get a say in how it works.<\/p>\n
If you run a company and any of this rings true, a partnership, a technology or a team that’s been hard to find, tell us what you’re looking for. No product to sign up to yet, just a conversation.<\/p>\n
Register your interest<\/a><\/p>\nOr just email us. We’d like to hear from you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lot of angel money is sitting in companies that are doing fine but have nowhere obvious to go. Part four: what Dealum is building so mid-market companies and those startups can find each other. Sep 22, 2026 by Lewis Sopp \u2014 5 min read The first three posts were about the data. This one\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7064730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12034],"tags":[11269,33241,27589,14901],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7064729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angel-investor","tag-companies","tag-connecting","tag-midmarket","tag-startups"],"yoast_head":"\n
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