Cooley Law: "Venture Financing Report – Q2 2018 – Invested Capital Spikes as Valuations Hold Steady "

Our Cooley boilerplate:

Cooley is one of the big dogs of the VC legal eagle biz. Something like a third of the unicorns on the WSJ's Billion Dollar Startup Club list have used Cooley for one purpose or another.
Additionally, 20 or 21 of the companies on the "Technology Review's 50 Smartest Companies 2017" list have been represented or counseled by the firm. As I said, one of the biggies.

From Cooley, August 2, 2018:

In the second quarter of 2018, both deal volumes and aggregate dollars raised remained at historically high levels. In Q2 2018, Cooley handled 224 disclosable deals, representing more than $7.5 billion of invested capital. This is the highest level of invested capital we have seen in a calendar quarter since the inception of this report. In Q2 2018, 86% of all transactions were up rounds, the highest percentage since Q4 2015. Median pre-money valuations remained strong in Series B and C financings, but cooled a bit in Series A and D+ deals.

Deal terms during the quarter continued to be company-friendly. Consistent with recent quarters, we saw just 9% of deals with full participating liquidation preferences. We also noticed decreases in the percentage of deals structured in tranches and in recapitalization transactions. However, the data did show an increase in the use of pay-to-play provisions in later stage deals. Visit Cooley GO to view the interactive visualization.