Trends in Terms of VC in the Silicon Valley – Organized by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at UC Berkeley

The first Entrepreneurs Forum has been held on the 28th August at the Haas School of Business-UC Berkeley. This opening session started with a couple of pitches. Some of the speakers were entrepreneurs seeking capital; others were researchers seeking advice for business development; or even some entrepreneurs looking for team members to start a new company.

Subsequently Steve Bengston, analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers, presented an overview of the current trends in VC funding in Silicon Valley. The data presented had been published in the MoneyTree Report developed by PricewaterhourseCoopers jointly with the National Venture Capital Association.

Here are the main conclusions of the presentation:

- In general, since 1995 and dismissing the dot-com bubble the amount of VC invested in the SV has continuously grown.

- During the 2nd Quarter (Q2) 2008 40% of the US investments where made in the Silicon Valley: $2.9 B and 306 deals.

- Currently (data from Q2 2008) the highest VC amounts are being invested in software ($1,252M), energy ($1,152M) and biotechnology ($1,079M), followed by medical devises and equipment ($833M) and media and entertainment ($586M).

- Regarding the number of deals, in Q2 2008 219 deals were closed in the software sector, 111 in biotechnologies and 110 in media and entertainment.

- In Q2 2008 most of the investments were made in later stages ($3.1B) and in follow on rounds ($2,6B).

- First rounds ($1.6B and 301 deals) accounted the highest amounts of investments.

- The deal size has steadily decreased from $8,0M per deal in Q2 2007 to $7,5M per deal in Q2 2008.

- In 2007 Australia (234) and UK (143) led the ranking of number of IPOs.