Stages of a startup (infographic)

Infographic by Andre Gunawan.

There’s plenty of uncertainty when talking about funding and startup stages: What defines a growth stage startup as opposed to an early stage one? Do Series A rounds coincide with growth stage startups? How do we know if a company has graduated from one stage of its lifecycle to another?

Here, we take a quick look at three popular models that’s been bandied about: Funding stages (which venture capitalists talk about often), Steve Blank’s Customer Developmental Model, and Startup Genome’s Marmer Stages, a new entrant which adapts Steve Blank’s model and modifies it with self-reported data from thousands of startups.

Notes:
1. As is always the case with the real world, there are exceptions to the norm. Some startups, for example, may choose to eschew venture funding.
2. Investment quantum varies across geographies. Seed funding and venture rounds in Silicon Valley are typically larger than those in Asia. For example, YCombinator company ZenPayroll raised USD6.1M in seed funding in December 2012.