This Dow Jones report from last week confirms what many already knew — venture capital funding fell through the floor in the last quarter of 2008. Venture capital investment in U.S. companies fell by 30 percent when compared to the same period in 2007.
“The data confirm what we’ve been hearing anecdotally for some time that many venture capital firms are circling the wagons to weather the downturn and are focusing more on the health and vitality of current portfolio companies rather than new investments,” said Jessica Canning, director of Global Research for Dow Jones VentureSource, in the report.
This jibes with the sense local venture capitalists have been giving me, which I detailed in this story from a couple weeks ago and talked about in last night’s story about the changing model for funding biotechs.
A hat tip to Xconomy for the Dow Jones report.