This data seems to affirm some factors I identified in another thread about what research to do on a company before joining and what questions to ask them. My

This data seems to affirm some factors I identified in another thread about what research to do on a company before joining and what questions to ask them. My view is that incentives drive strategy, which then drives culture. Again, all IMO, but the later stage a company is, as an employee the greater portion of your energy will be devoted to sustaining cognitive dissonance to survive, as a priority over applying creativity and technical skill. According to the data as presented, by the time the company has hit the C and D rounds, the founders have lost control of the company. Culturally, it means the visionary stage could be over, and founders may have a company wide technical veto, but with no way to drive their own initiatives. The culture could be defined by a power struggle between the new(ish) CEO's team and the founders' tribe. Find out which tribe you are supposed to be joining before signing on and act accordingly. As a developer, after C and D, you will more likely be solving optimization problems and all the tech debt they accrued to raise the previous rounds. The exception will be if they raised the last round to finance a big pivot, where you can build something new again. Joining a pivot team is great, but there will be an attrition period as the old guard is cleared out. It's tea leaves, but potentially useful questions to ask if you are about to invest 3-5 years of your life and your reputation into a company.