VCs anticipate more exits in 2024 but have no consensus on when or how

It’s been a rough few years for startups looking to exit, but companies, especially late-stage startups, can’t stay private forever. When the exit market didn’t open back up in 2023, as many hoped after a very quiet 2022, investors and founders alike decided that 2024 was the year that the exit market would defrost. Now that 2024 is here, do they still think that?

TechCrunch+ recently surveyed more than 40 investors to get their predictions on a variety of topics heading into 2024, including what they thought the state of the exit market will look like. The vast majority of investors responded that they think exit volume will be higher in 2024 than in 2023 and 2022, but there wasn’t consensus on what those exits would look like.

Some investors are more optimistic about M&A in 2024, while others think we will see a rebound in the IPO market. While most respondents answered this survey before the Adobe-Figma deal dissolved, many VCs acknowledged that startups looking to pursue that route this year will have to be conscious of the current regulatory environment anyway.

M&A

Don Butler, managing director of Thomvest Ventures, said that he thinks the pace of M&A will increase this year. The emphasis on better business fundamentals and economics in the startup realm over the past few years has resulted in a number of startups that have found the sweet spot of reporting solid growth trajectories on top of solid business economics.