Venture Investing Remains Soft In First Quarter | peHUBpeHUB

The first quarter won?t close till Sunday, but an early look finds the soft venture-investment environment continued.

Venture capitalists in the United States put $6.2 billion to work in the quarter fueling 707 deals, according to a tally by PitchBook. This is largely unchanged from the fourth quarter in dollars terms, when PitchBook says $6.3 billion was invested. It is down 11% in number of deals.

PitchBook?s numbers for past quarters diverge quite noticeably from those in the MoneyTree Report, issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. So a final pronouncement on the quarter will likely have to wait for several weeks until all the various investment studies come out.

Still, the early peek suggests an industry still consolidating as a weak fundraising environment makes investment capital more precious.

In its early look at the quarter, PitchBook says median early stage and late stage pre-money valuations slipped compared to the fourth quarter?a result that appears consistent with chatter about a Series A crunch facing entrepreneurs. But they rose for seed and angel deals.

The median pre-money valuation for early stage transactions was $14.33 million?while for late stage deals it was $66.69 million, according to PitchBook. The number for seed and angel deals was $5.38 million.

The top five deals in the quarter were:

• Pinterest?s $200 million funding;
• AirWatch?s $200 million funding;
• SevOne?s $150 million funding;
• LivingSocial?s $110 million funding; and
• Lynda.com?s $103 million funding.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Source: http://www.pehub.com/193837/venture-investing-remains-soft-in-first-quarter/

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