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.
Last week’s quarterly VC report came out which also showed that the sky clearly is not falling.
- $7.9B invested in 790 deals in Q3 2011
- NY overtook Massachusetts on both deals and dollars for first time – it’s just one quarter so we’ll see how Q4 turns out
- Healthcare VC keeps dropping – somebody call 911
- Green Tech shows some life
- Seed VC still growing – Optionality that seed investments provide continue to be liked by VCs as our post above shows
Here’s what others are saying about the report as well the Dow Jones article:
- Bloomberg – NY Tops Mass in Venture Deals for First Time
- BetaBeat – New Data Shows Why the Wall Street Journal is Confused About the Startup Cash Crunch
- CNET – VC Funding: Don’t Believe the WSJ’s Naysayers
- Geekwire – Let’s stop the Silicon Valley comparisons, and take a look at why NYC is kicking butt
- Portfolio – Mixed Signals in the VC Industry
Again, you can get the report here. And of course, if you have any questions on the report, feel free to email us at info@cbinsights.com or login to your CB Insights account and use deal search to see the companies and investors involved in Q3’s financing transactions.