Road to FX: What the Data Actually Says About Today’s Early-Stage Market with Peter Walker (Carta) and Monique Woodard (Cake Ventures)

​Raising your first round can feel like walking into the unknown. Rumors and headlines about sky-high valuations or dried-up funding can be misleading, so how do you know what’s real? In this session, Peter Walker, who leads the Insights team at Carta, will share real data to give you a clear, grounded view of today’s early-stage funding landscape. Peter has crunched the numbers on thousands of startup rounds, and he’ll break down how valuations, deal terms, and investor expectations actually differ across pre-seed, seed, and Series A.

​Then Monique Woodard (Cake Ventures) will help translate the benchmarks into the investor lens. The goal is not just to know the ranges, but to understand what they imply about underwriting, readiness, and how founders should run a process in 2026.

​We’ll cover questions like:

• ​How have early-stage valuations and round sizes shifted in the current market?

• ​What milestones are investors really underwriting at each stage (pre-seed, seed, Series A)?

• ​Which terms matter most right now, and what do founders most often misunderstand?

• ​How should founders interpret comps and benchmarks without overfitting to them?

​By the end, you’ll have a clearer view of the market as it is, and a more practical sense of how to navigate investor conversations with realistic expectations and a stronger strategy.