I attended the AlwaysOn Venture Summit East last month, and was just sent a survey of venture capitalists in the Northeast that came out of that conference. Happily, our local VC friends are pretty optimistic about the rest of the year. You can get the survey here.
In particular, they think that the number of new financings will increase pretty significantly in the second half of 2010 and into 2011:
The survey also suggests that the dollar amount invested will grow in line with the number of new deals. (I’m not going to bother to paste in that chart since it looks pretty similar to the one above.)
VCs are also excited about early-stage investing in the coming years. I guess that’s not too surprising, since that is where they traditionally invest money. The large percentage interested in seed financing is pretty interesting, but without a feel for what this chart has looked like over the past few years I can’t really draw any conclusions on how the environment is changing. But still, an interesting chart.
More VCs seem weighted toward slightly higher valuations than lower - although most, 43%, claim to think that valuations will be flat in 2010 and 2011. Hmm… I tend to think valuations are going up! Let’s start that rumor.
Finally, the charts on exits. When I first looked at it I felt that it seemed pretty optimistic; over 40% of VCs think that at least 20% of their portfolio is ready for exit. But it’s hard to argue that this really means anything. From my time at VCs, 20% of portfolio companies being at a stage when they could be sold is pretty standard. The real question isn’t
“are companies ready for exit.” The real question is, “are the capital markets open.” Open, as in, are there IPOs/M&A opportunities for tech companies.
