Interesting post by Sarah Lacy on TechcCrunch – Venture Capital Down 50%. It’s Not Just the Recession, Folks. Highlights:
- Venture funding fell by 50% nationally from the first quarter in 2008 to the first quarter of 2009.
- Information technology investments fell 53% year-over-year.
- Clean tech investment fell by 74% to a paltry $117 million.
- Boston regains the No. 2 Venture spot after Silicon Valley from NY and Southern California:
Sarah writes:
“most Boston VCs never really got the consumer Web. Much of their expertise has remained in areas like telecom and healthcare, and many of their investors have morphed into more financial engineers than company builders. This meant that New England fell from the no. 2 region for venture investment for the first time in 2008, as Southern California and New York ascended. It’s now solidly back at no. 2 and investments fell a comparatively tiny 16% in the first quarter, according to Dow Jones.”
These are very interesting stats, the only issue I have is that the post attempts to extrapolate the future based on the recent history and statistics an we if really learned anything in the past 20 years is that future is a complete black box and unpredictable. One unforeseen discovery or an event can dramatically change everything.
Further reading: