Three takeaways from the 2019 venture capital market

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Today we're digging into the Q4 venture capital market - specifically unpacking three pieces of data that stood out as we read the Crunchbase News Q4 global report - and Pitchbook and NVCA's comparative, U.S.-focused Q4 data dive. As always, each contains a wealth of charts and numbers, so if you have a specific question, happy hunting.

Our exercise today is to cut through the data deluge to dig up a few key facts that will give us a good grasp of where the market wound up last year. We'll start with early-stage results, talk about the global market in aggregate and close with a unicorn-focused datum to chew on. Ready?

Early-stage plateau