2011 in VC
The smart folks at CB Insights recently published their review of US VC activity in 2011 (republished below). 2011 was definitely a good year, especially for really early stage funding. Accelerators continue to launch. Seed rounds continue to happen daily. And with Facebook set to IPO in Q2 maybe the good times are here for a while still. Who knows?
In any event, here are some of the nuggets I took out from the report as I looked back on 2011 in VC:
The big headline: 2011’s US VC deal volume: $30.6B invested in 3,051 deals which marked a 10-year high for the VC asset class on both deals and dollars. That’s over 8 VC deals every day.
Still geographically focused: Today’s web startups find and serve customers online, so they could theoretically do that from anywhere. Still, over 60% of VC$ are focused in the Valley, Boston and NYC.
Don’t count on follow-on funding: Over 1,500 seed and series A deals in 2011. Not all of those companies will get follow on $. If you don’t hit your milestones, expect some tough love from your investors. A lot of this early activity is focused on the Internet sector and is focused on the Valley which hit a 5 quarter high in terms of early stage deals.
Deal sizes getting a bit smaller: The median internet seed round was $ 900K (that’s even higher than what I see). Median series A was under $3M.
Big money in solving big pains: Our population is getting older. Healthcare costs are rising. Natural resources and energy remain finite. For these reasons and more, healthcare and green tech remained strong, healthcare especially.
The full report is below. Enjoy…
