Battle of the bridge: Startups struggle to secure runway financing

Despite the venture capital asset class sitting on historic levels of dry powder, many investors aren’t deploying it, leaving their portfolio companies scrambling for financing.

Venture funding has been declining across the board this year, but the tone of how this temporary pullback could impact companies is starting to change. The mood at the beginning of the slowdown was that only subpar startups would struggle, while good companies would raise normally or raise bridge financing — not that they would ever call it that — and raise a proper round next year.

But now it seems that more companies than not are struggling.

Elizabeth Yin, a general partner and co-founder at pre-seed-focused Hustle Fund, tweeted last week that she has started to get emails from founders who had raised a seed round but were struggling to extend their runway, abandoned by their previous investors.