Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Today we’re digging into the Q4 venture capital market — specifically unpacking three pieces of data that stood out as we read the Crunchbase News Q4 global report — and Pitchbook and NVCA’s comparative, U.S.-focused Q4 data dive. As always, each contains a wealth of charts and numbers, so if you have a specific question, happy hunting.

Our exercise today is to cut through the data deluge to dig up a few key facts that will give us a good grasp of where the market wound up last year. We’ll start with early-stage results, talk about the global market in aggregate and close with a unicorn-focused datum to chew on. Ready?

Early-stage plateau