You don’t need $200M+ post money valuation to win big

How Figma, Datadog, and Circle played the long game at Series B

Author

Michael Morgenstern
July 08, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex Community,

The most compelling returns are generated from asymmetric opportunities, often overlooked by a consensus that deems them “too early” or '“too niche”. Datadog’s S&P 500 inclusion is a recent validation of this principle, $DDOG 2014 Series B was priced at just a $59 million post-money. Proof that iconic companies don’t need sky-high valuations to become essential infrastructure. Circle followed a similar arc, raising their Series B at a $149 million valuation while quietly building crypto’s foundational rails, years before institutions caught on. Today, Circle’s public market equivalent value approaches $45 billion.

By the Series B stage, narrative must give way to quantitative evidence. Figma’s S-1 filing is a masterclass in scaling: $821 million in ARR with 46% growth, 132% net dollar retention, and 91% gross margins. A 77% Rule of 40 score is elite execution. Literally a compounding engine, not just a story. Figma raised their Series B at a $115M post, already generating revenue and landing enterprise customers. The real insight? Series B is an inflection point where capital chases conviction and scale, but valuation alone rarely predicts the outcome. The businesses that become outliers are those that prove their models work at scale, regardless of what the consensus price tag said on the way up.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern 

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