Crunchbase Global Venture Market Report for Q2 2018: deal volume grew 18.8% QoQ, faster than any other period since Q1 2015, and dollar volume up 26% QoQ
Jason D. Rowley / Crunchbase News :
Context & Ripple Effects
Crunchbase's quarterly series had already flagged an unusual year: the Q1 2018 Global Investment Report showed a jump in late-stage deals pushing total dollar volume to nearly $77B, up 106.8% YoY. The Q2 report extends that arc — deal volume grew 18.8% QoQ, the fastest pace since Q1 2015, and dollar volume rose another 26% QoQ.
The significance is that this was not a one-quarter blip. By the end of Q3 2018, Crunchbase reported 2018's venture funding totals had already surpassed all of 2017, and full-year research put global VC investment above $300B across 34K+ deals.
First-order effects
- Founders raising large rounds face a fast-opening window: with both deal count and dollars accelerating at once, capital is being deployed quicker than at any point since early 2015.
Second-order effects
- The dollar surge concentrates power in mega-rounds — later research showed $100M+ rounds absorbing over 56% of 2018's capital — so investors and founders outside the late-stage track compete for a shrinking share of each new dollar.
Third-order effects
- The pattern did not hold as a permanent acceleration: Crunchbase's Q2 2019 report found deal volume recovering but dollar volume growth stagnant, unlikely to exceed 2018's highs — pointing to 2018 as the cyclical peak of a market structurally tilting toward fewer, larger checks rather than broad-based expansion.
The trend: Global venture funding is cycling through concentration phases where headline deal counts keep rising while dollars pile into ever-larger late-stage rounds, making 2018-style surges the exception rather than the baseline.