Tag: Trends

Evolution of the Venture Capital Sector

Venture capital (VC) industry is highly volatile. It is constantly evolving and has undergone massive changes in the past ten years due to the growth of the software sector. The shift toward the IT industry will continue to persist until one of the two situations occur:

  • Either the software market starts experiencing saturation as a result of huge inflow of money in the industry or
  • There is a manifestation of a new industry that shows higher profits, hence catching the attention of investors.

There are some analysts in the financial sector who are also anticipating another bubble bust that will be similar to the dotcom bubble in the 90s.

 

Rise and Fall in the VC Sector During the Past 5 Years

In 2015, VC investment around the globe experienced a growth of 19 percent. The total funding was between $128.5 billion and $130 billion, which has been the highest in the last 5 years. However, the investment continued to grow in the U.S. from $58.8 billion in 2015 to $69.1 billion in 2016.

As far as the rise of unicorn companies on a global level is concerned, it gradually declined after 2015 when the total number of startups that reached unicorn status were 71. The number reduced to 40 in 2016. On the other hand, a decline was also observed in seed funding as it dropped by 25 percent and touched the lowest point since 2012. The late and early stage investments also went down by 14 percent and 5 percent respectively.

 

Opportunities for VC Investors

Although, a large number of high profile investors pursue seed stage deals, they usually have sufficient funds to invest in the most attractive startup companies, which has subsequently strengthened Series A and Series B rounds.

Moreover, seed stage investments performed really well in 2014 and 2015, indicating the fact that investors who made those investments will be continuing in 2017. It will give rise to a great opportunity for investors who are seeking to make an investment at a later stage.

The momentum in the IPO will also increase, because the public sector tends to grow when valuations in the private sector are higher. It is quite likely that the IPO market backed by VC investors will outperform in 2017 as compared to 2016. For example, it has been reported that Snap Inc. is expected to offer its share at about $20 billion. If the offer materializes, it will be one of the largest VC backed IPO deal. In addition to that, Spotify, Pinterest, Dropbox and Uber are some of the names creating buzz in the IPO sector.

 

Rising Trends and Acquisitions

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have grabbed a lot of attention between 2015 and 2016, and they are likely to secure more investment in 2017 as well. There were more than 300 businesses that managed to raise early and seed stage funding in 2016, yet, approximately dozen secure funds at a later stage.

Moreover, a number of healthy acquisitions have also taken place recently. The examples include the acquisition of Movidius by Intel for $350 million and acquisition of virtual assistant developer Viv by Samsung.

 

Economics and Investors’ Behavior

There is a major role play of economics when it comes to VC investments. Since economics follow a cyclical pattern, it is highly likely that history will not be repeated nor will the unpredictable happen. Also, economics involves study of human behavior that contains an element of irrationality. This element enables us to anticipate the shifts in behavior of VC investors only to an extent of its repetition and history, but it cannot be predicted with full certainty.

VC investments change with the passage of time. As the inflow of funds increases in the software sector, it gives rise to increasing competition in the market, which eventually reduce the overall returns as several firms compete to maintain a customer base. It might also cause a shift in venture capitalist behavior in times to come if other sectors seem more viable.

 

All in all, the justification of a VC investors’ behavior can be summed up by saying that venture capitalists tend to go in a direction where the money flows.

Rising Trends in the Venture Capital Industry

Today, the most successful companies in the world, such as Snapchat, Xiaomi, Uber, or SpaceX have been funded by  venture capital (VC) investors. The venture capital funding pattern has changed and gained popularity in different countries over the years.

In 2015, the VC market around the world consisted of $128.5 billion, wherein, 71 VC backed companies managed to reach a unicorn status along with a total of 7872 deals made.

 

Industries that Receive the Most VC Funding

According to a 2016 report by Martin Prosperity Institute, VC funding is available across different industries. In the U.S., software sector has around 36 percent of the VC investment with a value of about $12 billion, whereas, bio-technology and media and entertainment comprise 17.3% and 9.5% respectively. The top five industries consist of $25 billion investment constituting 76% of all VC investments.

Software sector received the highest funding even in the last quarter of 2015, i.e, $4.5 billion with 369 closed deals. On the other hand, bio-technology collected $1.5 billion via 95 deals and media & entertainment sector managed to secure $881 million by closing 114 deals.

 

VC Funding Trends

Venture capitalists invest in different stages of a business. According to a 2017 report by Crunchbase, the average seed funding in the first quarter of 2017 was approximately 38% higher than 2016’s first quarter funding, which shows that a number of investors are ready and excited to invest in new startups. These investors are basically accelerator programs that offer funding to newbies showing strong potential to grow in the future.

 

Major Cities for Venture Capital Investments

In another report by Martin Prosperity, it is stated that industry wise VC investments are also confined to small geographical locations. For example, half of the VC investments in software sector have taken place in San Francisco, representing 25% of the investments, whereas, San Jose represents 20%.

In the US, the flow of VC investments mainly comes from Boston – New York – Washington corridor and San Francisco Bay Area, representing 40% of all the VC investments around the world.  In 2012, a total of $42 billion worth of VC investment was recorded worldwide. The data included 150 cities and the center point was the U.S. that accounted for 70% of the global investment, whereas, Europe and Asia only represented 14% investment.

 

Popular Sectors for VC Investments

Some of the popular sectors that have received a large percentage of investment are advertising, big data, cloud computing, SaaS, marketplaces, hardware and software.

 

Advertising – Although, it has been a center of attention for many years, but in the past 5 years, it has lost its position and the investment has decreased from 15% to only 5%. Advertising business models are gradually losing their value in the eyes of investors. One of the key reasons behind it is the heavy influence of advertising networks, including Google and Facebook.

Big data – Business models, in which the driving factor is big data, have experienced a growth in VC investment. In 2010, the series A funding comprised of 2.5% investment, but by 2015, the funding rose to 7.5%. On the other hand, seed investment has not shown any improvement or decline over a period of last 4 years.

Cloud computing – It is an infrastructure used by product developers to create services. In the last 4 years, this particular business model has also remained the same, i.e., 4%, in both series A funding and seed investments. However, it slightly went downward back in 2013 to 2014.

E-commerce – Although, e-commerce has been one of the well-known business models in terms of VC investments, yet, the seed stage investment suffered a decline from 15% to well below 10% and series A remained the same.

SaaS – In case of SaaS, series A investors didn’t perform as good as seed investors. Series A increased from 5% to 10%, whereas, seed stage experienced a surge from 5% to 15%. This sector shows attractive prospects for funding as merely less than 2% of the software market shifted to SaaS.

Marketplace – This sector experienced a surge in seed funding from 2.5% to 10% in the last four years. Uber and AirBnB are the reason behind its massive success. The current growth rate has motivated investors to consider it a potential sector for investment. Series A investment, however, remained at 5% of the dollar amount.

 

All in all, it is quite evident that VC investment has become one of the key sources of finance for many successful businesses and is currently dominating the world’s market at a rapid pace.