Comments on: Good news – venture investment is back!

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:12:45 +0000

I’ve been fundraising for many years and 2009 can only go down as a record – for inaction. Far too many on the supply side are unwilling or unable to act, plenty of talk but very little action. Their focus is on supporting where they’re already invested. Those on the demand side remain in need, are keen to build strong businesses off the back of great ideas, yet the industry that’s suppose to support them simply can’t. The structure of trade is such that the supply side should have the critical mass to enable greater leverage from their backers but liquidity still isn’t there. Quantitative easing appears to have resulted in the Banks sitting on Gilts and cash to restore their own tier one Capital, rather than turning that into liquidity for industry. This industry suffers disproportionally as a result. It seems to me that until the Government acts on the lack of flow from their quantitative easing, gearing capital will remain stagnant and good businesses will languish.

By: Memi

Memi — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:20:18 +0000

More important rs the allocation of investment between seed invetment and other rounds and also between technology companies and projects. I do not hold the statistics but i suspect that seed investments are minor (if any) and in evolving industry as cleantech seed investment are a must.

By: Stephen Richard

Stephen Richard — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:17:06 +0000

This does not resemble the situation I have found. I have been fundraising for over a year and have a hugely disruptive idea but without any success. There is lots of talk about funds that are investing and everyone I speka to says they have funds avaialble but noone has given me a term sheet. I think this is because people are too afraid of what will ahppen going forwrad and they cannot price deals properly. The goverment have promised to fund the ventue industry but they should be fnidng entrepreneurs directly. None of the money that has been promised has been spent.

By: Andrew Walkingshaw

Andrew Walkingshaw — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:21:01 +0000

Cheers! The underlying data’s at http://timetric.com/tags/thebln/ if you’d like to play with it yourself.

By: Mark Littlewood

Mark Littlewood — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Loving that interactive charting.

By: Mark Littlewood

Mark Littlewood — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:28:49 +0000

Errm, generally you have to get to their table in the first place but I think this is good news!

By: Saleem Qureshi

Saleem Qureshi — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:34:19 +0000

Finally!
We at HireLabs were wondering when VCs will start coming to the table