This chart shows quarterly equity investments into US-backed venture capital since 2001. It comes courtesy of PriceWaterhouseCooper's MoneyTree report.
Only $3 billion was invested in Q1, an all-time low. That number is essentially half of the $5.7 billion from Q4 '08.
No sector was spared. Measured by both dollars spent and deals done, the numbers were down.
The sectors that grossed the highest net financing were (no surprise) software, BioTech, and Medical Devices. As a whole, they made up 53% of the financing. The sectors with the least financing were was electronics and retailing, with $27 million and $28 million, respectively.
Spotlight on Minnesota
The most active investing group -- which has an office here in Minnesota -- was Oak Investment Partners. Oak made 13 different investments in the quarter. It would be interesting to ask Jerry Gallagher why Oak was relatively bullish on the quarter -- ie, whether they have a fundamentally different view of the economy, or whether it was an isolated incident based on good deals in front of them. Per the Star Tribune, 4 Minnesota companies received a total of $56.1 million. The med-device startup Atritech received $30 million -- more than half of MN's total funding.
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