My friends at Xconomy (www.xconomy.com) are concerned about the recent dip in venture capital investment in Boston, according to the most recent data released from Ernst & Young/Dow Jones Venture One. (“Boston Blows Northeast Lead in VC Investment, New York Takes Over”)
There are many factors to consider, and I wouldn’t make too much of any one quarter’s numbers. Also, the deal counts are so small that it is hard to make generalizations (eg. for Boston there were only 29 investments total during Q2, one third were biotech).
That said, rather than look at totals, I find it more useful to look at trends and averages. Also, since the quarter is somewhat of an arbitrary break, I look at least half years or trailing 12 months. (Click here for the E&Y publicly available spreadsheet filtered for Boston-area and with averages added.)
Looking at the first half of the year, dollars and deals are down about 10% over last year. However, that could be because more Boston VCs are investing abroad, making private equity investments or not reporting deals until later (we’ve made several investments that won’t be announced until later in Q3 if not Q4 or next year, for example).
More catching is for the sector I care about, information technology, average deal size is UP 27% over last year ($11.9M/deal for 1H07 vs $9.3M for 2006). Bigger is not always better in venture capital. It means higher post-money valuations, higher expectations, more dilution for all parties, and the company assuming more risk trying to hit the higher exit. The net can easily be diminished returns.
Over half the IT deals were software, which is typical. But, only 1 was networking.
Take a look at the NVCA/PwC/Venture Economics numbers as well. They use a different methodology and report stage of deal. More telling information may well be there.
