2015 has been an interesting year for venture companies from United States. Last year, venture capital ecosystem has poured around $58.8 billion into deals and startups, according with MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.
Here’s an overview registered in the last 5 years, presenting amounts invested in comparison with number of deals. In the last 2 years the amounts invested has increased considerably and turned 2015 into the second highest full year in the last 20 years of venture capital investment. What’s interesting to observe is that despite of the capital invested, the number of deals remained low with almost no major fluctuations in the last 5 years.
Total equity investments into venture-backed companies (2011-2015)
Regarding the Investment by industry, Software is by far the most powerful industry, which received the highest level of funding.
“Software is eating the world.” Marc Andreessen successfully predicted. Today’s the biggest and the most successful companies are software companies, like Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Pandora, Apple’s iTunes, Zynga, Skype, Google, LinkedIn, just to name a few.
Investments by industry (Q4 2014, Q3 2015, and Q4 2015)
Is interesting to observe, how Investment by stage of development decreased massively in the last 2 years. Seed Stage companies raised the lowest amount of dollars, compared with Early and Expansion Stage companies. The biggest number of deals has been made with the Early Stage companies, reaching the peak of 600 deals in the third quarter of 2015.
Investments by stage of development (Q4 2014, Q3 2015, and Q4 2015)
Investment by sequence of financing is another aspect that should be taken in consideration when talking about investment.
The ranking industries that captured the highest total of first-time investment and deals in 2015 were Software companies that captured the largest share, Biotechnology, and IT Services. About to 60 percent of first-time deals in 2015 were in the Early Stage of development, followed by the Expansion Stage of development at 19 percent, Seed Stage at 12 percent and Later Stage at 9 percent.
Investments by sequence of financing (Q4 2014, Q3 2015, and Q4 2015)
Silicon Valley has remained the region capable of attracting the highest level of funding, with 47percent of total US venture capital dollars and 30 percent of total US deals. Taken together, the top three regions—Silicon Valley, New York Metro, and New England—accounted for 69 percent of venture capital funding and 53 percent of deals reported in 2015.
Investments by region (Q4 2014, Q3 2015, and Q4 2015)
You can’t make a study about investment without listing the Most active venture investors and firms. These most active investors accounted for 32 percent of the total number of venture-backed deals in 2015.
Most active venture investors in 2015
This article is a summary based on MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.