Do Raise Extensions Attract More Funding?

Founders often ask me how to maximize the amount of funding they can get in a round. Is it better to extend their current round or should they close it and reopen a new one to create new momentum?

While I cannot advise them, I can give them data. Back in March, KingsCrowd’s data showed that most investments happen in the first 14 days of a company’s funding round. However, there is a large discrepancy in investment timelines between the rounds that raise the most money and those that raise the least. The more dollars startups collected in their rounds, the more investors backed those startups toward the end of their raises. 

In this Chart of the Week, we look at what happens when founders extend their rounds. Are investors actually backing startups after they extend their rounds? And how much more money can founders actually hope to get if they choose to extend their round?

For Regulation Crowdfunding raises, companies that collected less than $130,000 received around 25% more funding during a raise extension. For raises of less than $1.3 million, investors put an additional 47.9% of funds during a raise extension. And it seems like the more investors back a startup before an extension, the more they will invest post-extension. At least half of raises with pre-extension funding of more than $1.3 million got 94.9% or more of extra funding post-extension — close to twice what the company previously raised. 

On the Regulation A side, only the companies that raised at least $1.3 million had a real chance to gather funds post-extension.

While these are median percentages and companies can raise more or less funding when they extend their rounds on a case by case basis, the data shows that pre-extension success tends to continue after an extension. At the same time, the rounds attracting the least amount of investments struggle the most to gather additional funding after extending their raises.

In any case, founders looking to extend their raises should always consider why their raise is successful or not in the first place — and if the momentum has a chance to continue, or finally pick up, after extending the raise.

Note: All data on online startup investing used for the Chart of the Week comes from the KingsCrowd database and represents a snapshot of the U.S. crowdfunding market.