Markus Schillo
For venture-backed tech M&A, the third quarter started with a bang and ended with a whimper. After a few large deals in July, things petered out in August and September.
Technology acquirers have not been in a buying mood lately. Not a single venture-backed company sold in August for a disclosed value of more than $200 million. And just a handful sold for smaller sums.
Data confirms what people reading the August M&A news (or lack thereof) have suspected: Technology companies have not been buying a lot of venture-backed startups.
Earlier today, I interviewed Douglas Crawford, the co-founder and managing director of San Francisco-based Mission Bay Capital, which just announced an initial close of $7.5 million on a venture fund that will make seed investments in companies with founders or technologies associated with the University of California’s Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). Now, $7.5 million […]
Ben Bernanke may have declared the recession over yesterday, but talking to early-stage investors, the belt-tightening mindset is still in force. Demand for smaller, more closely vetted deals was part of the impetus for a new program launched yesterday by Tech Coast Angels (TCA) Orange County called O.C. SeedTrack (www.seedtrack.org), targeting companies that are too "start up" for VC funding or even angel funding.
The program will provide a mix of funding and mentoring. Qualifying startups get a small amount of financing (less than $100k) as well as the sweat equity of a Tech Coast Angels member. I spoke yesterday to Seedtrack's chairman, John Murphy, and to one of its committee members, Raymond Chan, about their plans for the program. Here’s some of what they said:
There were fewer purchases of venture-backed companies in the first quarter, but industry observers predict that M&A volume will pick up, led by hot sectors such as interactive advertising and consumer Internet. M&A deals declined significantly in the first three months of the year, with only 62 transactions completed, as compared to 104 in the […]
It’s fitting that Steve Jurvetson—venture capital’s best-known booster of nanotechnology—titles his personal technology blog the J Curve. Today, most early stage investors are still waiting for companies pursuing nano-scale innovations to produce macro-scale profits. If one were to plot the universe of nanotechnology startups along the J curve—which demarcates progress from early hype generation to […]