Carta's benchmarks describe a Carta sample, not the market

The record

Carta, a cap-table administration platform, publishes a recurring series of data reports on round sizes, valuations and dilution through its Data Desk. As retrieved on 16 September 2026, the page states its insights are drawn from across "Carta's 50,000+ startups and VC funds," offers a round-benchmarking tool built on what it calls its own proprietary dataset on deal sizes and valuations, and lists recurring outputs including a State of Pre-Seed report and a quarterly VC Fund Performance update.

What the sources establish

Carta's "About our data" page states its sourcing directly: customer data it publishes is "aggregated and anonymized," and companies that have contractually opted out of such studies "are not included in our analysis." That statement establishes two boundaries at once. First, the sample is companies and funds that use Carta's own platform -- not a survey of the venture market and not a database assembled from public filings. Second, even within that customer base, any company that has opted out contractually is excluded, so the published figures are a subset of a subset.

Scope and revision

Carta's own pages do not claim market-wide coverage anywhere in their visible text, and the figures should not be read that way: a single platform's customer base skews toward companies of a certain size, stage, jurisdiction and law-firm relationship that chose Carta for cap-table administration, and the contractual opt-out means even that skewed base is incomplete. The Data Desk also does not disclose one fixed update cadence for the whole dataset beyond a weekly newsletter chart; its live report titles, such as a named Q2 2026 pre-seed report and a named Q1 2026 fund-performance update, each carry their own dateline that a reader has to check individually.

The decision in front of you

Editorially: describe a Carta figure as coming from companies on Carta's platform, never as a venture-market total, and check the specific report's own dateline rather than assuming a fixed refresh schedule for the underlying dataset.

• Does this figure come from Carta's customer base specifically, and does the framing around it say so?
• Could a stage, sector or geography be under- or over-represented on Carta relative to the broader market, in a way that would shift this particular figure?
• What is the as-of date on this specific Carta report, rather than on the Data Desk generally?

A cap-table platform's own customer data can be a large, real-time, document-level dataset -- and still not be the market it operates in, a distinction Carta's own about-our-data page draws more carefully than most figures quoting it do.