The total volume of deals in 2022 rose near the level of the previous year’s volume – €101.7M compared with €116.9M in 2021*. It’s worth mentioning that 2021’s transaction volume accounts for FintechOS €51M series B.

*For the purpose of this year’s comparative analyses against the previous year, we’ve averaged the number of transactions as well as the transaction volumes for both scenarios of 2021 – accounting and discounting for the FintechOS €51M series B outlier we can average the overall 2021 annual volume to €91.4M and 71 transactions respectively. And when discounting such outliers, this actually means that 2022 outperformed 2021 by 54.3%, with €101.7M compared to €65.9M in 2021.

This supports Romania’s 5th position in the top CEE countries by VC funding raised in 2022, mentioned in the CEE Startups 2022 report by Dealroom, coming right after Estonia, Czechia, Croatia, and Poland, which hold 70% of the total volume.

In terms of the total number of transactions, we could also see a slight increase on average by 3.5% from the 71 transactions recorded in 2021 to the 73 transactions in 2022. Moreover, as you’ll find out going through the report, the market dynamic of 2022 was more homogenous, and had a better representation of all transaction types, from pre-seed to series A, while it did not showcase major outliers.

2022 also marked an impressive 12.3x increase in the transactions volume compared to the industry’s early beginnings of Romanian VC deals, back in 2017. Thus the yearly volume of venture deals involving Romanian startups went from a modest €8.2M in 2017 to a promising €101.7M in 2022.

In terms of the investment type breakdown and comparison with the previous year, we’ve got both good and bad news.

The good news is that 2022 was the most promising year so far in terms of series A transactions for the period going back to 2017 – both in terms of volume and in the number of transactions.

The volume of series A transactions almost tripled compared with the previous year, going from €15.3M in 2021 to €42.6M in 2022. The number of series A transactions doubled, going from 3 in 2021 to 6 in 2022. The first 3 transactions of 2022, Druid, Digitail, and Bware Labs, account for 30% of the total transaction volume of 2022.

In effect, the average deal size of Romanian-based startups for series A deals increased by 39%, from €5,103.3K in 2021 to €7,095K in 2022.

This is again aligned with the CEE regional trends that showed resilience throughout 2022, especially in the early-stage investment landscape. The Dealroom CEE report indicates that seed and Series A average round sizes continue to increase, with an average of €1.1M in 2022 from €0.8M in 2021 for seed rounds and of €12.5M in 2022 from €9M in 2021 for the Series A rounds.

The total volume of seed transactions increased by 29%, reaching €56.4M compared to €43.4M in 2021*.

*Another mention worth making is that for the purpose of this year’s comparative analyses against the previous year, we’ve averaged the number of transactions as well as the transaction volumes for both scenarios of 2021 – accounting and discounting for the FlowX €7M seed outlier (among the largest seed rounds in Europe at that time) – resulting thus in €43.4M transaction volume and 47 transactions respectively.

If we remove such outliers, this actually means that 2022 outperformed 2021 by 40.7% in terms of the seed transaction volume, with €56.4M compared to €40.1M in 2021.

In conclusion, when we analyze how the average deal size for seed transactions performed in 2022 compared to 2021 for both scenarios we have either:

• a 16.6% increase when we take into account the 2021 FlowX seed round, from €1,007.9K in 2021 to €1,175.5K in 2022

or

• an increase of 34.9%, when not taking into account the 2021 FlowX seed round, from €871.6K in 2021 to €1,175.5K in 2022

Pre-seed volume went down by 15.9%, reaching €2.7M compared to the previous year’s €3.3M. The number of pre-seed deals remained similar, from 20 transactions in 2021 to 19 transactions in 2022.

However, the average deal size for pre-seed transactions decreased by 11.5%, from €163K in 2021 to €144.3K in 2022.

For 2022 we did not record outliers as in 2021’s FintechOS €51m series B round or FlowX €7M seed round, but rather bigger rounds and more diverse in terms of the investment type.