The least-measured layer of capital: the 2026 angel report and Vietnam's data gap

Private capital is measured on three very different clocks. Venture capital has quarterly data: CB Insights shipped its State of Venture for Q1 2026 in April, while Crunchbase tracks large rounds weekly and closes global totals each half-year. Corporate venture capital runs on an annual clock: Global Corporate Venturing published its World of Corporate Venturing 2026 survey and the 2026 GCV Powerlist in the first half of this year. Angel investing gets one annual document — the Angel Capital Association's 2026 Angel Funders Report, released in July 2026.

Why data lag is a cheque writer's problem

Angels price risk at the moment when no comparables exist. A seed round has no listed benchmark and no weekly sector multiples; the price is formed from the handful of deals a signer happens to see in their own network. When industry data appear once a year and describe deals closed the year before, cheque writers are effectively driving by the rear-view mirror.

The cost is not a few percentage points of price. It is the difficulty of noticing when the pricing level has shifted, of knowing whether the gap between seed and Series A is widening or narrowing, and of estimating the share of companies that raise a follow-on round — the three variables that decide an angel portfolio's outcome.

How far North American data travels

The ACA report describes organised angel groups in North America — a market with familiar legal instruments, standardised due diligence and deep later-stage capital. What transfers is the method: how round-level data are recorded, how follow-on participation is measured, how diligence files are standardised. What does not transfer is the price level or the holding-period expectation, because both depend on how deep the next layer of investors is in a given market.

What Vietnam is missing

• A consistently recorded dataset of early-stage rounds: pre-money valuation, round size, instrument used (common equity, SAFE, convertible note), number of participating investors.
• A follow-on rate measured over 18–24 months, tracked by signing vintage.
• Statistics on early-stage liquidity events: acqui-hires, secondary sales of founder stock, transfers between angels.
• Shared documentation standards across angel groups, so a file diligenced by one group can be reused by another.

No outside institution will create this dataset for Vietnam. It appears only if domestic networks agree to record the same fields for every signed round and to share them in anonymised aggregate form.