[portman]

Quick note about secondary financings. Not targeted at you per-se as much as the large quantity of HN comments that seem to not understand the nuance.

You can't include primary and secondary financings in the same total, because you would be double-counting. That would be like measuring a public stock on its total volume traded, not its market cap.

For example:

- Investor A invests £100M into Uber for 1M shares

- Investor B buys those 1M shares from Investor A for $400M

- Investor C buys those 1M shares from Investor B for $500M

There has been "$1B in fundraising" but: (a) only $100M went to Uber and; (b) the market cap of those shares is $500M

[dfee]

I don’t think anyone would say that there was 1B in fundraising. They’d say there was 100MM in fundraising. The market cap of those shares is indeed price * shares outstanding. But that’s not enterprise value either.

[DontGiveTwoFlux]

But aren’t most subsequent rounds, Series A, B etc putting money into the company, and not transacting with existing shareholders for an exit?