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Posts Tagged ‘BusinessWeek’

Major Shift in Cleantech Investment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here come an article written by Mark Scott at BusinessWeek.

“Last week, I was in Geneva attending a cleantech summit that brought together Europe’s top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs looking for investment. One theme kept emerging: VCs are moving their money away from energy generation projects, such as wind-farm and solar-parks. The reason? Funding those types of businesses is just too expensive for investors already struggling from the global downturn.

That message was reinforced on June 23 when consultants New Energy Finance released preliminary results about cleantech investment. Not surprising, they also found VCs were steering clear of energy generation projects. In the first half of 2009, venture capital and private equity firms forked out $3 billion globally for clean energy companies — a 56% drop compared to the same period last year.”

To read the full story, click here.

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Venture Capital and Startups Feel More Pain, Study Says

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2009| 2 Comments »

“Startup valuations are falling and venture capitalists are driving harder bargains, according to a survey by California law firm Fenwick & West.

Like the rest of the economy, the world of venture capital and startups is starting to feel more pain from the deepening global financial crisis. That’s the main takeaway from a new survey detailing trends in venture capital investments during the fourth quarter of 2008 by the California law firm Fenwick & West.

The survey, which analyzed the terms of venture deals for 128 companies headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, found that valuations are falling for startups and that venture capitalists are driving harder bargains. The silver lining: The fallout so far is not nearly as bad as it was during the dot-com bust, when hundreds of companies went under and stratospheric valuations came crashing down to earth.

Down Rounds on the Rise

Sure, there were some startups last quarter that secured a higher value on their latest investment round, such as online vacation rental site HomeAway. But, of the 128 companies that received financing, 33% of them experienced so-called down rounds, or an investment that placed a lower valuation on the company than it received in the previous round of investment. More ominous, the percentage of down rounds rose every month at year’s end, hitting 45% in December. “Each month things got worse in the fourth quarter,” says Barry Kramer, the Fenwick & West partner who runs the survey. The highest percentage of down rounds occurred in the first quarter of 2003, when 73% of the companies surveyed by Fenwick & West suffered down rounds.”

Read the full article by Spencer E. Ante here
Other comments on this piece can be found here: World Tech News, The Livermore report, Silobreaker,

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