The Venture Capital Benchmark Report: 2026 Edition

Why read this report

Affinity analyzed platform data from almost 3,000 venture firms to benchmark how they source, network, and build the relationships behind their deals. In this report, you'll see:

01. How you compare. Every benchmark is a range, not a single average, so you can place your own firm against the market rather than a blurred midpoint.‍

02. What only relationship data shows. The warm-intro work beneath venture, including how much of your network is live, and who actually carries it.‍

03. Where the gaps are. The metrics that vary most from firm to firm are where the advantage hides, and where the exposure does too.

Introduction—Where venture actually compares

Every venture firm can quote its fund size, its check count, its ownership targets. None of that is what wins the round. What wins is getting to the right founder first, through someone they trust. In 2026, with mega-funds pushing earlier and capital crowding into a few sectors, that warm path matters more than ever. It’s something a firm has never been able to measure against its peers.

So this report starts where venture is actually decided: the introduction. Then it works outward to the activity that feeds it, and inward to the people who hold it together. Drawn from almost 3,000 venture firms on the Affinity platform, every benchmark comes as a range, so you can find where your own firm sits.

Read together, the numbers make one point. Firms look nearly identical in how much they communicate. There’s barely a 2x spread from the quietest to the busiest. However, they look nothing alike in how much they connect. Both introductions and network activation vary three to four times over. While the effort is a commodity, the connection is the edge.

$14.2M
Record median early-stage valuation cap in 2026, driven by mega-funds pre-empting top seed rounds. When rounds close in days without formal pitches, trusted network proximity dictates who gets on the cap table.
—Bain & Company Global Venture Capital Outlook 2026

Chapter 1—The warm-intro engine

Venture runs on the introduction. Founders reached through a trusted connection, co-investors pulled into a round, and operators placed inside a portfolio company. This is the work that separates firms, and it is the first thing worth measuring. In this chapter, two benchmarks capture it: how many introductions a firm actually makes, and how much of the network it has built ever gets used. Both of these spread wider than anything else in this report, which is why they’re the sharpest place to find your line.

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While twenty introductions a month is the venture norm, the gap between firms is what stands out. The top quarter clear 36 while the bottom quarter make fewer than 10 intros, roughly a 4x range and the widest of the three per-user activity metrics. Firms send email at almost the same rate, but they connect people at vastly different ones. Over the past two years the median has held near the top of its band (22.0 down to 20.0).

Where your firm lands: Divide monthly introductions by active seats. Under 10 is bottom-quartile, 20 is typical, and past 36 puts you among venture's most active connectors. A firm sitting below the median doesn’t necessarily lack the network. It’s the view of who could be introduced to whom that’s missing.‍

Method: monthly median over metric-active firms; period-consistent distribution. An introduction is counted per recipient pair (one intro email to three people counts as two). Coverage-robust.

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Here’s the widest spread in the entire report. The typical venture firm turns 38.3% of its tracked relationships into introductions. The top quarter put more than 63% of their network to work, while the bottom quarter is under 21%. Two thirds of all firms fall somewhere between "barely tapping the network" and "working almost all of it," which makes this the single most revealing number a firm can check about itself.

This is also where most firms have the most room to grow. The relationships are already there. The top quarter just surfaces and acts on them as a habit. When you're competing against a mega-fund's balance sheet, the warm path you can pull up in seconds is the counterweight for the firms that reach for it every time.

Where your firm lands: Divide the relationships you've introduced into by the total you track.

Method: per-firm median across firms with ≥1,000 emails in-window; all-firms basis (no efficiency quartiles).

Chapter 2—What feeds the engine

Introductions don't come from nowhere. Behind every warm path is the quieter work of staying in touch and bringing new people in. These two benchmarks (communication volume and network growth) are the raw fuel, and they’re the most uniform numbers in the report. Nearly every firm clears the bar, which makes them the place to confirm you're in a normal range before reading anything into the metrics that actually separate firms.

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At 1,094 emails a month per user, venture communication sits in a tight band. A firm in the top quarter runs only about twice the per-user volume of one in the bottom, which is the narrowest spread of any benchmark here. The two-year line drifts downward (1,166 to 1,094) and otherwise holds flat. Communication volume is a rhythm firms settle into, not a lever they pull, which is why it tells you far less about a firm than what it does with the relationships all that email builds.

Where your firm lands: Divide total monthly email by the size of your deal team. Above 1,094 is the busier half of the market, and below 750 is the quiet quarter. A lighter inbox isn't a red flag on its own, but email that never gets captured can't be surfaced, routed, or acted on later.‍

Method: monthly median over metric-active firms; period-consistent distribution.

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New contacts come in bursts, not a steady drip, so the band here is wide, and any single month swings. The two-year shape tells a maturing story, as the pace ran hot early (a median of 48.7) and settled to 37 as networks filled in.

Where your firm lands: Divide new contacts by the size of your deal team, and read it over several months rather than one. A steady rate near 37 is a firm maintaining its network, and a consistently higher one is still building. Either way, growth only counts if the names get used. High add-rate, low activation (Chapter 1) means the network is expanding faster than it works.‍

Method: monthly median over metric-active firms; period-consistent distribution. Bursty by nature. Read the band as a range instead of a target.

Chapter 3—Whose network is it?

A firm's network feels collective, but it rarely is. If you trace where the strong relationships actually sit, they cluster around a handful of people. For a business built on who its partners know, that concentration is a subtle risk, and the one almost no firm has ever put a number to.

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Picture your most-connected partner walking out the door. For the typical venture firm, close to a third of the firm's strong relationships would go with them. A single person sits at the center of 29%, and the top three hold 65% between them. Even the least concentrated quarter of firms leans on one person for roughly a sixth of all strong ties. For the most concentrated, it’s more than 40%. 

This is how relationship-driven firms grow. Whoever has been building longest holds the most, and it compounds. The finding also holds no matter where you draw the line. If you move the "strong" threshold up or down, the concentration barely moves. It runs through the same few people either way.

Where your firm lands: Look at what share of your strongest relationships sits with your single most-connected person, and with your top three. Above 42% in one person is among the most concentrated firms, and below 18% among the most distributed. The value is in knowing the number before a departure, a fund wind-down, or a competing offer forces the question.

‍Method: derived from Affinity's relationship-strength model (a governed staging layer). A "strong relationship" is a modeled strength of 0.70 or higher—Affinity's own definition of a strong tie. Solo and two-person shops excluded.

What it adds up to

Three things the numbers show:

1. Venture competes on connection. Email and contact growth cluster tightly (most firms within about 2x of each other), while introductions and network activation spread three to four times over. Effort is table stakes, as nearly everyone clears it. The distance between firms opens up entirely in what they do with the relationships that effort builds.
2. The network you've built is bigger than the one you use. The typical firm activates about 38% of what it tracks. The immediate value for most firms sits right inside their existing network.
3. And it rests on a few shoulders. One person holds ~29% of the typical firm's strong relationships, and three hold ~65%. Venture spreads wider than PE, but the exposure is the same in kind. It’s a continuity risk most firms have never named, let alone measured.

Firms have spent years building networks and keeping their inboxes full, but who holds those relationships—and how active they actually are—has stayed invisible. Turning that data into a shared view is what makes the network usable.

"The typical venture firm works about 38% of its tracked relationships. The rest is room to grow."

Elevate your dealmaking with Affinity

Affinity brings relationship intelligence, deal data, and AI together so the invisible parts of your network become visible, turning every benchmark in this report into something you can act on.

• Find the warm path first. Surface the strongest route to any founder, co-investor, or LP, and beat a cold outreach every time.
• Work the network you already have. See which of your tracked relationships are ready to reactivate, so more of what you've built converts into introductions.
• Protect what the firm is built on. Map who holds the strong relationships and get ahead of key-person risk before a departure turns it into a gap.

About our data

This report draws on aggregated, anonymized Affinity platform data from almost 3,000 venture capital firms, covering January 2024 through Q2 2026. Every figure is a median and a monthly rate, measured over the firms active on that metric, and each benchmark is shown as a distribution (bottom quartile, median, top quartile) computed on a period-consistent basis so the median reflects the typical firm rather than an average pulled by outliers. Firms that have opted out of research use of their data are excluded throughout.

Key-person concentration comes from Affinity's relationship-strength model in a governed staging layer, where a "strong" relationship is a modeled strength of 0.70 or higher. These are modeled measures, reported as such, without overstating their precision. Introductions are counted per recipient pair (one intro email to three people counts as two).

The analysis here is aggregate and anonymized. Affinity does not use customer data to train large language models or other AI.‍

Standard disclaimer (carry forward 2025 language): informational purposes only; no warranties; not professional advice; consult a qualified expert.