venture capital

PitchBook and NVCA just released the 3^rd quarter Venture Monitor, and the year-to-date figures show another year of robust activity. Total deal value is set to exceed $100 billion again, and exit value is already at $227 billion. Deal and exit count, however, appear on pace to finish below the last several years, with 7,862 investments and 633 exits to date so far.

The number of women-owned business has increased significantly in recent years, but more needs to be done to level the playing field to increase the revenue and employee counts of these businesses, according to two recent studies. More venture capital is needed, as well as mentoring, training and opportunities for women of color.

Several mega-deal IPOs, including Uber, Zoom and Pinterest, and strong merger and acquisition activity, combined to create a record-setting $188.5 billion in venture-backed exit value for the first half of 2019, according to VentureMonitor, the quarterly report on venture capital investment compiled by the National Venture Capital Association and PitchBook. According to the report, the six-month total for 2019 has already topped the full-year total for all prior years.

Founded in 2015, venture-backed aerospace firm, Relativity Space, is poised to disrupt the rocket manufacturing and launch markets as it secures long-term contracts at NASA’s Stennis and Kennedy Space Centers. Relativity is reimagining the process to iterate and scale rockets quickly, relying on its revolutionary “Stargate” metal 3D printer and new autonomous facilities to build and launch rockets in days rather than years.

The trend of fewer, larger deals that emerged over the past few years continued through the first quarter of 2019, according to newly released data from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. U.S. activity in the quarter included $32.6 billion of capital investment on 1,853 deals, making it the second-highest quarterly capital investment total in the last decade.

While the overall Chinese economy may be facing a slowdown, the venture capital (VC) market continues to report strong growth and became the second largest VC market by total capital invested in 2018, according to a new report from PitchBook.

Both female-founded startups and female investors have seen slow progress over the past 10 years, and still face an uphill battle for equality in the venture capital industry. While the deal count for companies founded solely by women has more than quadrupled since 2008, the share of venture dollar invested has remained nearly flat, hovering around 2.0 percent over the same time, according to PitchBook.

Fighting stereotypes, finding capital and scaling up are just some of the techniques outlined in a new playbook designed to bring more women in entrepreneurship roles and revitalize the U.S. economy. Elevating Women in Entrepreneurship, by Erika R.

Over the six-year period from 2013 to 2018, as total venture capital investments nearly tripled, growing from $47.5 billion in 2013 to nearly $131 billion in 2014, the number of deals increased by just 13.5 percent according to new data from the NVCA-PitchBook Venture Capital Monitor. The $131 billion in total VC investments in 2018 is the largest amount since PitchBook began tracking the data in 2006 and the first year since the height of the dot-com boom that annual capital investment eclipsed $100 billion.

NVCA and PitchBook released Venture Monitor 3Q 2018 this week. The highlight data point in the report is that total U.S. venture capital investment in 2018 is on pace to break $100 billion for the year — and, in fact, to break $110 billion. At the same time, deal volume is on pace to be at the lowest level since 2012, with just 6,583 deals reported to date in 2018.