This past week’s venture capital drama centered on race & gender in Silicon Valley (last week’s drama was about a fictitious startup cash crunch in case you missed it). As as is customary with the topic of race and gender, there were some reasoned arguments and some name calling. And as is even more often the case with race & gender, there was very little to no data beyond a couple of anecdotes and the gut feelings of a couple of individuals.
Data — that’s what we bring to the conversation.
So attached below is the Human Capital Venture Capital report which is the only real study of VC-backed founders and their race, gender, education, age and founding team composition ever done. There are some interesting insights that can be gathered from it, and the best part is that it’s data-based and not based on a couple of folks anecdotal viewpoints.
Continue reading “Some Data on Race, Gender, Silicon Valley, Venture Capital – Since This is a Hot Topic Again and Nobody Except Us Has Data” »
New York’s venture capital scene, compared to California or Massachusetts, is tremendously lopsided in favor of tech, and this trend continued in Q3 2011′s venture capital numbers. In fact, Q3 2011 saw 78% of financing dollars and 85% of deals in NY go to tech-focused industries. To see how different NY’s orientation towards tech is, you need to just compare it to to Massachusetts where 21% of financing dollars and 47% of deals went to tech in Q3 2011. As will be obvious from the numbers, Massachusetts venture capital scene has greater exposure to other areas like energy and healthcare.
The data comparing Massachusetts to New York on its venture capital totals in Q3 2011 is provided below.
Continue reading “New York Venture Capital – Is the Lack of Industry Diversity a Positive or Its Achilles Heal?” »
Dow Jones VentureSource revealed its Q3 2011 venture capital report this morning, and we wanted to congratulate them on confirming what CB Insights had revealed in our Q3 Venture Capital Activity Report issued more than a week ago.
Specifically, they did do a nice job restating our earlier findings including:
- Early stage activity is up (more details on that here)
- NY overtook Massachusetts on both VC deals & dollars
- VC levels are back to pre-recession levels
- Medical device companies were a hot area in healthcare
Below is a side-by-side comparison of our 2011 year-to-date data vs. Dow Jones VentureSource.
Last week, our brothers from another mother at Dow Jones published an article about a startup cash crunch that got folks in the startup and investment community all riled up. The story was notably light on data (it was non-existent) which is surprising since they (Dow Jones) supposedly track this data, but that’s a story for another day.
Needless to say, the story was dead wrong.
We looked at activity at the angel and seed stages to see if there has been any signs of a slowdown. Nope. Not even close. In fact, Sept 2011 angel & seed VC deal activity was up 172% since January 2010 and at the highest levels in the last seven quarters. You can see the actual early stage deal trend based on some real data below.
Continue reading “Startup Cash Crunch? Hardly.” »
Venture capitalists shrugged off market turmoil, economic uncertainty and their own difficulties raising funds from limited partners and opened their checkbooks (a lot) in Q3 2011 showering 790 firms with $7.9B of funding.
The entire 61 page Q3 2011 quarterly venture capital activity report is available for free at the bottom of this research brief
Of course, the looming question after seeing this type of blowout quarter is whether or rather how long this can continue given VCs are having a tough time raising funds. If the final quarter of the year comes in at similar levels, we are looking at a $30B+ year for VCs which depending on final tallies could represent the highest level seen in the last decade. So at some point, something has to give. But until then, entrepreneurs can enjoy the VCs for however long they choose to “make it rain”.
Continue reading “Quarterly Venture Capital Report for Q3 2011 – $7.9 Billion Invested in 790 Deals” »
While investor enthusiasm and valuations in the daily deal space are falling like a lead balloon, it looks like a new startup meme may be poised to take the crown from the daily deal space as the new hot area for investment – subscription eCommerce (or “SubCom” for those in the know)
Continue reading “The Subscription eCommerce Hype Cycle – Is SubCom Replacing Daily Deals as the New Favorite for VCs and Angels?” »
