How start-ups can navigate through the falling dominoes of the economic crisis
VentureBeat — ... Maybe Calacanis’ prediction is unwarranted. Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, says there is a crisis for the industry in the lack of IPOs. But he doesn’t think that half of all start-ups are going to go under. Granted, he says it’s imperative that a bailout bill passes and he notes that it’s hard to predict the future. But he believes there are plenty of angels who will continue to finance big ideas among the seed-stage companies. And while a VC shake-out will pick up pace, pundits have been predicting it will happen since ...

No Exits. Liquidity Dries Up Even More For VC-Backed Startups In Third Quarter
TechCrunch — ... , that was less than half of what the company had expected to raise when it initially filed. In the third quarter of 2007, by comparison, IPOs brought in $945 million. Mergers and Acquisitions activity was also down in the third quarter, bringing in $3.5 billion compared to $10.8 billion in the third quarter of 2007, according to The National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. ...

Expect to see start-ups and VCs hit standoff over valuations
VentureBeat — ... Let’s take a look at the valuations of start-ups during the last boom, and how they trended in subsequent years. The National Venture Capital Association’s statistics are about as good as we’re going to get. They aren’t perfect, because they rely on valuations as voluntarily provided by the NVCA’s member venture capital firms, so the sample size may be too small to be completely reliable. But with that caveat, they do show that from 2000 through 2003, valuations fell pretty hard. You can see it took a while for the valuations to hit bottom, even ...

Only 55 VC Funds Raised Money In The Third Quarter (Down 29 Percent).
TechCrunch — ... The third quarter saw the number of U.S. venture funds raising new cash decline by 29 percent to 55 funds, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. That compares to 78 new funds a year ago and 76 new funds in the second quarter of 2008. And 45 of that 55 were follow-on funds rather than new funds. ...

Is All This Paranoia About a Startup Depression Justified?
The Next Web — ... , Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, believes there is an economic crisis in the lack of IPOs. but he doesn’t agree that so many start-ups are going to close. He believes there are still many angels who will continue to finance innovation among the seed-stage companies. ...

Surprise! Venture investments falling
VentureBeat — ... and the National Venture Capital Association. That’s down 7 percent from the $7.7 billion invested 1,033 deals during Q2. It’s also down from the $7.8 billion raised during Q3 2007. ...

VC performance dips but stays strong through Q2
VentureBeat — Venture capital returns have yet to feel the full impact of the capital markets crisis. Payoffs, as measured by the private equity performance index (PEPI), dipped over the first two fiscal quarters, but were still higher than those out of the NASDAQ and S&P 500, according to a new report released by the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. ...

Microsoft’s BizSpark initiative: An offer startups can’t refuse?
VentureBeat — ... Dan’l Lewin, vice president of strategic and emerging business development, says that Microsoft has already signed up a number of startups for a stealth trial of the program, with plans to enroll thousands of startups in 83 countries in the next six months or so. The startups are nominated by BizSpark’s hundreds of “network partners” — including the National Venture Capital Association, ...

Report: Web 2.0 investments took a dive in Q3
VentureBeat — ... doesn’t make a trend. And even if it the drop continues, for now it has only fallen to 2006 levels, not dropped off completely. Still, Web 2.0 companies hoping for funding should be particularly worried, since this data doesn’t show the effects of the recent financial turmoil, including the resulting liquidity issues among VCs. The latest MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association shows a similar drop in Internet investments, with ...

The Silicon Lining
Forbes.com: Technology News — Commentary The Silicon Lining Venky Harinarayan 11.11.08, 12:00 AM ET MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - Think long term. Long, long term. In the short term, there will be pain in Silicon Valley. Start-ups will have to survive 2009. Layoffs will be in fashion: "You didn't do a layoff? What's wrong with you?" Venture capitalists will be hit just as hard. Their investors--the endowments, the pension funds and others--are hurting. The entire portfolio of the California Public Employees Retirement Fund, for example, a major investor in venture funds, is down 20% and needs to raise capital. Cash will be scarce in 2009, no ...

VC survey: Market will look up … in 2010
VentureBeat — ... There’s a tough year ahead for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, according to a new survey from the ...

Proof: Group-think a Dominant VC Trait [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... tech insiders know that VCs are risk-averse lemmings who chase hot new trends and when times turn bad, collectively groan: OMG! In short, they don’t quite do what they get paid to do — make money by investing in risky ideas during times of distress. Proof of this lemming-like behavior is quantified by the results of a survey conducted by the industry’s flagship organization, the National Venture Capital Association. They surveyed 400 venture capitalists to find that: ...

Cleantech VCs New Year’s Resolution: Be Conservative
Earth2Tech — ... . In other words, it will serve as Exhibit A for the National Venture Capital Association’s forecast that VCs will steer clear of seed and early-stage companies in 2009. Translation, courtesy of Om Malik: In a stormy year, venture capitalists will be ...

Venture fundraising: Going, going, gone?
VentureBeat — ... and the National Venture Capital Association. Unsurprisingly, this is a big drop  (about 70.9 percent) from the same period in 2007, when venture firms raised $11.7 billion, and also a substantial decline from the $8.4 billion raised in Q3 of 2008. ...

Report: Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia cutting back
VentureBeat — The National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers won’t be releasing their report on fourth quarter venture investments until later tonight, but Private Equity Hub has already published a list of the 10 biggest investors using the same data from Thomson Reuters. Pretty much all of the firms shrank their investments compared to the previous quarter; Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the two biggest names in venture capital, both ...

Q4 venture investing plummets; silver lining in cleantech?
VentureBeat — ... and the National Venture Capital Association. Overall, the report shows $28.3 billion invested in 3,808 deals during the past year, making 2008 the first time venture investments have fallen year-to-year since 2003. ...

VC Group Plots Familiar Strategy For Industry Recovery
Xconomy — ... The venture capital model might not be completely broken, but the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association says it needs to be fixed. ...

VC performance dipped … back in Q3 2008
VentureBeat — ... and the National Venture Capital Association. Short- and long-term returns fell, of course — with 2008 seeing ...

VCs challenge Obama plan to up carried interest tax
VentureBeat — ... Obama’s proposal would hike the tax on carried interest (the percentage earned on investment profits used to pay general partners at firms) — from the current 15 percent capital gains rate to 39 percent, more than the regular income tax rate, starting in 2011. Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, estimates that about 500 venture capitalists received carried interest checks in the last year. This might not seem like a lot, but further substracting from this number could dissuade ...

Obama administration to tighten regulation on VCs?
VentureBeat — ... Emily Mendell, Vice President of Strategic Affairs at the National Venture Capital Association, says she’s still waiting for more details, such as the size of the funds that would be affected by these regulations. Similar proposals have been floated in Congress before, she adds, and venture capital is usually lumped in because it’s easier “to just put everyone together” than to draw a clear boundary between venture capital and other types of funds. ...

VCs react to Geithner's financial regs overhaul
VC Ratings — When U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined his plan for financial reform to the House Financial Services Committee last week, he mentioned venture capital only once, and it was in a parenthetical statement grouping it with other investment vehicles. "We recommend that all advisers to hedge funds (and other private pools of capital, including private equity funds and venture capital funds) with assets under management over a certain threshold be required to register with the SEC," he said. Should venture capital firms be concerned they will be lumped together with investment vehicles they ...

With zero IPOs, venture liquidity drought continues
VentureBeat — ... are doing so in less time and after raising less money. These companies raise a median of $15.5 million in venture backing, and take only 4.7 years to reach liquidity, down from the $23 million and 6.8-year medians during the same period last year. Combined with the lower median acquisition price, it sounds like startups and venture firms are more willing to accept lower offers if it gets them to liquidity faster. The National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters also released their “Exit ...

Cleantech to top venture capital industry within five years
VentureBeat — ... Without a doubt, cleantech will be the dominant area for venture capital investment within five years if not sooner, Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, told VentureBeat in an interview. The NVCA has been bullish on cleantech for several years now, but the stars do seem to be aligning in new, momentous ways. ...

Venture Capital Fundraising Is Down Nearly 40 Percent In First Quarter of 2009
TechCrunch — ... , very little money went into the coffers of VC funds as well. According to data released today by the National Venture Capital Association, only 40 funds raised new money during the quarter, down from 71 the year before (1Q08) and 47 the previous quarter (4Q08). Out of the 40 funds, only three were brand new ...

Venture capital shrivels 40 percent — It really is the end of the tech boom
VentureBeat — ... ), now that investors realize the goldrush era of technology prospecting is over. The latest evidence was in this morning’s data from the National Venture Capital Association and ...

Fewer VC fundraisings in first quarter
VC Ratings — ... venture capital funds raised money in the first quarter than in any other quarter in the last five-plus years, the actual amount of money rose slightly from the previous quarter, according to data released Monday by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, or NVCA. ...

TechCrunch Poll: How Much Did VC Investing Drop In The First Quarter?
TechCrunch — ... there were zero venture-backed IPOs and only 56 M&A transactions, according to the National Venture Capital Association, down from five IPOs and 106 M&A exits in the first quarter of 2008. The disclosed value of those M&A deals in the first quarter of 2009 was $645 million, down from $4.5 billion a year ago. ...

Good luck with that funding: Q1 sees lowest VC investment in more than a decade
VentureBeat — ... VC side, things are actually worse than they were post-bubble — Q1 2009 saw the lowest amount of investing since either 1997 or 1998 (depending on whose numbers you’re using). Perhaps even more surprising, cleantech took the biggest hit by far. So here are the numbers: Venture firms invested a total of $3.0 billion in 549 deals, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, which uses data from Thomson Reuters. In terms of ...

A Deeper Dive Into The First Quarter VC Investment Numbers
A VC — Claire Cain Miller wrote a story in Friday's New York Times about the "Money Tree Report" that is published every quarter by the National Venture Capital Association and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. The picture in the first quarter is not pretty. As Claire explains: Venture capital firms invested only $3 billion in 549 young companies in the first quarter, the lowest investment level since 1997, according to the analysis, done by the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers. ...

Q1 venture investing numbers not as dire as they look
VentureBeat — ... The National Venture Capital Association released abysmal venture investing numbers for Q1 2009 on Friday and Saturday evening, after most media outlets had closed. The rushed articles that appeared over the weekend were either data driven, sensational, or wrong, and the story may not gather any more news cycles, which is a shame. As Founding Member of ...

Don’t stop believing: Venture performance didn’t dip that badly
VentureBeat — ... I suppose that wasn’t as terrible as it could have been. The National Venture Capital Association and ...

The Venture Capital Math Problem
A VC — ... The venture industry has been raising between $20bn and $30bn per year for the past few years. Here's recent data from the NVCA's web site. ...

Venture capitalists say: “Roll over Goldman, and tell Morgan Stanley the news”
VentureBeat — ... The National Venture Capital Association, the lobby group for venture capitalists, declared a state of emergency for venture-backed start-ups today, and ...

The $100 Million Mobile App?
dailywireless.org — ... ? That what Chip Hazard, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, asked a panel of mobile industry veterans during this week’s National Venture Capitalist Association annual meeting in Boston. ...

StartUpHire: Venture-backed startups really do create jobs
VentureBeat — ... from the Kauffman Foundation earlier this year says they do. And now the National Venture Capital Association is ...

Venture capital industry continues to shrink
VentureBeat — ... In 2008, the number of active firms (those that made at least one investment in the United States) fell 5.6 percent, to 868. And that number has been declining steadily since 2000, when there were 1,229 active investors. Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association released numbers looking at the problem from a different angle, but finding the same result: In 2008, only 882 firms had raised a fund in the last eight years, down from 1,019 the year before. During that period, the headcount of individual ...

Shocker: Study shows VCs plan to invest in fewer companies
VentureBeat — ... by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and the National Venture Capital Association. Like I said, the results are less-than-revelatory, but still worth noting for what they tell us about the mindset of hundreds in the venture capital industry. To start with, 51 percent of respondents said they planned to decrease the amount of companies they invest in, while only 13 percent said they plan to invest in more. It’s worse if you’re a young company looking for funding, with 36 percent of VCs saying they intend to move towards ...

Survey Shows VCs Expect Huge Shifts in Fundraising, Global Investing
Xconomy — ... of VCs around the world being released today show that just over half (51 percent) of 725 VCs who responded say it is currently “a terrific time” to invest in entrepreneurial companies. But the survey also reveals that 51 percent of the VCs also say they are decreasing their investment activity. Only 13 percent are increasing the number of companies in which they plan to invest, according to the 2009 Global Venture Capital Survey by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and the National Venture Capital Association. That might seem ...

VC Series A Investments in Web Tech Grew Strongly In May
ReadWriteWeb — ... Okay, hold on. As always, the details matter. In this case, we have one outlier deal: the $75 million invested in Fotolia by TA Associates. This is hardly a startup. But it is the first external institutional investor round, what is called "first-sequence financing" by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). So, technically it fits here, and that is how other researchers who track VC financing would categorize the deal. We call this growth equity, and we recently interviewed an investor who specializes in it. It is a very valuable part of the financing eco-system. But ...

Obama administration still looking to tighten rules on venture capital
VentureBeat — ... As you might expect, the National Venture Capital Association, which lobbies for legislation that’s favorable to VCs, has been criticizing the idea. NVCA Vice President of Strategic Affiars Emily Mendell said this kind of legislation has been proposed and dropped before. The NVCA’s main argument is that venture capital — which just doesn’t manage enough money to warrant this kind of scrutiny — is being unnecessarily lumped in with other types of funds. (That lumping in is reflected in the ...

Gov’t still looking to tighten rules on venture capital
VentureBeat — ... As you might expect, the National Venture Capital Association, which lobbies for legislation that’s favorable to VCs, has been criticizing the idea. NVCA Vice President of Strategic Affiars Emily Mendell said this kind of legislation has been proposed and dropped before. The NVCA’s main argument is that venture capital — which just doesn’t manage enough money to warrant this kind of scrutiny — is being unnecessarily lumped in with other types of funds. (That lumping in is reflected in the ...

The Venture-Backed IPO Pokes Its Head Out Of The Water In 2nd Quarter, M&A Still Meh
TechCrunch — ... After four quarters in which venture-backed IPOs have been dead in the water, a handful finally poked their heads up in the second quarter. The National Venture Capital Association counted five IPOs during the quarter, including DigitalGlobe ($279 million raised), SolarWinds ($152 million), and OpenTable ($60 million). A total of $721 million was raised. Just for a little context, two years ago during the same period, there were 25 IPOs which raised $4.15 billion. ...

The iPhone: A 2nd Economy?
dailywireless.org — ... ? That what Chip Hazard, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, asked a panel of mobile industry veterans during this week’s National Venture Capitalist Association annual meeting in Boston. ...

The iPhone: A 2nd Economy?
dailywireless.org — ... ? That what Chip Hazard, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, asked a panel of mobile industry veterans during the National Venture Capitalist Association annual meeting in Boston earlier this year. ...

The Squeeze Continues: Venture Fundraising Shrinks 82 Percent in Second Quarter
TechCrunch — ... Venture capital keeps getting squeezed as an asset class. The second quarter of 2009 saw the lowest level of capital going into VC funds since the first quarter of 2003, according to the National Venture Capital Association. During the second quarter, VC funds in the U.S. raised only $1.7 billion, an 82 percent drop from the second quarter of 2008, when $9.3 billion was raised. The amount raised is 63 percent less than than the $4.6 billion raised during the first quarter of 2009 (see ...

VCs raised fewest funds in Q2 since 1996
VentureBeat — We’ve already published (unsurprising) data showing a big drop in the funding raised by venture capital firms during the last six months. Now the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters have released a new set of numbers focusing on the second quarter of the year (April through June), which apparently saw even less venture fundraising than the first. Here are the basics: VCs raised 25 funds for a total of $1.7 billion. That’s the smallest amount of money raised in any ...

Venture Capital Slows to a Trickle
Fast Company - Technology — ... It's well know that VC funds take their economic hits with a delay because they work in liquid money, but it seems like their time of reckoning for the great bust of '08 has finally come. VentureBeat reports that new data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters show a drop in second-quarter VC fundraising that's pretty discouraging: between April and June, they raised a collective $1.7 billion, the smallest amount raised in any quarter since 2003, and split between the smallest number of funds since 1996. ...

Venture Capital Flattened By Slow Economy
TechWeb — ... and equipment dollar investments jumped 112%. And, investment in IT services increased 28%. Although the report was disheartening overall, its authors depicted a flicker of hope. "Halfway through 2009 we are seeing more positive signs than at the beginning of the year, including an overall increase in investment levels and an ongoing interest in seed and early stage funding." said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), in a statement. "However, until we see notable upticks in venture fundraising and exit activity -- which drive ...

Who Has the Right VC Numbers and Who Cares?
ReadWriteWeb — ... Why does this matter? The startup community matters to the health of the overall economy. As the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA, the trade association of VCs) likes to point out: ...

Venture capital still a big deal for the US economy, study says
VentureBeat — ... Venture capital remained crucial to national economic growth over the last two years, according to a new study conducted by IHS Global Insight and commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association. ...

Why VC Dixon Doll Wants More Start-ups Shut Down
SiliconBeat » O’Brien — ... . Though it was my first time meeting them in person, I had spoken with Doll previously in his role as chairman of the National Venture Capital Association. ...

Venture Exits Still Anemic In Third Quarter, Down Nearly 50 Percent (Charts)
TechCrunch — ... and the National Venture Capital Association/Thomson Reuters show declines in both M&A and IPO dollars. VentureSource counts $2.9 billion in combined M&A exits in the third quarter, 49 percent lower than a year ago. The NCVA tallies up a $1.8 billion total, which is down 46 percent. ...

Venture Funds Raise Only $1.6 Billion In Third Quarter. Most Of That Went To Vinod Khosla.
TechCrunch — ... in the third quarter of 2009, and now the National Venture Capital Association has released data on how much money venture funds themselves were able to raise. It was not a lot in historical terms. ...

MoneyTree Survey of VC Activity Sees Pace of Investments Strengthening
Xconomy — ... —MoneyTree says venture firms invested $4.8 billion in 637 deals—a 17 percent increase in capital invested but a 3 percent decline in deals compared to the second quarter of 2009, when MoneyTree counted $4.1 billion invested in 657 deals. In its ...