Woe is me, said the VC. With the exit markets all but closed, fundraising in a logjam, and portfolio companies struggling to stay afloat, it is a tough time to be a venture capitalist. Yet the good ones will survive, and thrive. As will the companies they are building.
That’s the message I got from chatting with a few prominent Seattle investors yesterday, after the release of the third-quarter venture stats from the entity that I’ll call MoneyTree / PricewaterhouseCoopers / National Venture Capital Association / Thomson Reuters. Indeed, there were enough interesting investments made in Northwest companies to give local VCs some encouragement (see top 10 list of deals below). In fact, some $242 million was invested in 30 Northwest companies during the third quarter, according to the report. That’s the most dollars invested in a quarter since the third quarter of last year ($280 million in 44 companies).
“For four quarters we’ve had growth. Things are up off the bottom,” said Andy Dale of Buerk Dale Victor. “We’re still a top-five market.” Dale also maintained, as he pointed out last quarter, that 10 or more of the 15 members of the Evergreen Venture Capital Association are actively making investments.
Thomas Hodge of Frazier Technology and Healthcare Ventures is similarly hopeful. Frazier co-led the region’s biggest financing deal of the year, Seattle-based Calypso Medical’s $50 million round announced last month. “As the economy improves, and we’re seeing it already, VCs will put more money to work. We feel that in our gut,” Hodge said. “First-time financings for us aren’t as busy as a year ago, but they’re consistent with national figures.” He added that in the healthcare space, later financing rounds are getting bigger, because it takes even more money to get to profitability now, and there’s “a longer holding period because of volatility in the markets.”
Scott Jacobson of Madrona Venture Group pointed out that in the IT sector, consumer software could be making a comeback—he points to recent investments in companies like
