January 4, 2008
Cashing out: the VC cycle turns up
Things may never return to bubble-era levels. But as this chart (from data released by Dow Jones VentureSource) shows, there is something of a boom underway in cashing out VC investments.
Last year, the amount raised from IPOs jumped by 80 per cent to $6.7bn. The number of deals grew by a third and the average amount raised ballooned as Wall Street threw money at young tech companies.
Meanwhile, thanks to some big-ticket deals like Yahoo’s $812m purchase of Right Media and Google’s $625m splurge on Postini, $46bn worth of venture-backed companies changed hands in the M&A market, 45 per cent more than the year before.
As always, the question is: How much of this cash will be recycled straight back into VC investments?
