Hi Duke & John, RE: "35 purchases, with more than $11bn"
That's $314M per company.
During the boom, angel seed-stage startup valuations were easily premoney $10M (idea phase, no product, pre-revenue phase). I would guess angel seeds (pre-revenue & pre-launch) now go for premoney 1M to 3M, while VC Series A stage firms might go for premoney 3M to 8M and Series B 8M to 20M? The average pre-IPO startup (Series C) valuation is now around $25M in Q4 per Venture One. I seem to recall friends saying the average freshly minted IPO'd startup was around $200M to $300M+ during the boom. Times have certainly changed.
The valuations are very attractive and the quality of the firms one sees now is much better than during the boom. During the boom, I didn't have a desire to invest into any seed stage firms (aside from ours), but now I can think of a couple of them I would absolutely love to invest into over the next few months while valuations continue to suffer through the downturn, but of course, after losing so much in nasdaq, I doubt it. And Bush's tax package would have no positive impact on my desire to do so. But some kind of capital gains incentive for early stage investors might help encourage those sitting it out on the fense. The risk is so much higher for early stage investors, that I'm surprised the capital gains tax rate is the same for a privately held firm as a public company.
Regards,
Amy J |
