Less than 10% of deals captured 69% of all venture capital in Q4—483 mega-deals ate 1.5 trillion dollars while the middle market got absolutely crushed. The average deal size dropped 36 million dollars even as deal count went up, which means investors are doing more deals but writing way smaller checks everywhere except the top. If your portfolio company needs a Series B or C in that 100 to 250 million range, that capital just got brutally harder to access because the market is splitting into a barbell: mega-rounds at the top, seed rounds at the bottom, and a shrinking squeeze zone in the middle where companies are starting to suffocate.