Rising Trends in the Venture Capital Industry

Today, the most successful companies in the world, such as Snapchat, Xiaomi, Uber, or SpaceX have been funded by various venture capital (VC) investors. The venture capital funding pattern has changed and gained popularity in different countries over the years.

In 2015, the VC market around the world consisted of $128.5 billion, wherein, 71 VC backed companies managed to reach a unicorn status along with a total of 7872 deals made.

Industries that Receive the Most VC Funding

According to a 2016 report by Martin Prosperity Institute, VC funding is available across different industries. In the U.S., software sector has around 36 percent of the VC investment with a value of about $12 billion, whereas, bio-technology and media and entertainment comprise 17.3% and 9.5% respectively. The top five industries consist of $25 billion investment constituting 76% of all VC investments.

Software sector received the highest funding even in the last quarter of 2015, i.e, $4.5 billion with 369 closed deals. On the other hand, bio-technology collected $1.5 billion via 95 deals and media & entertainment sector managed to secure $881 million by closing 114 deals.

VC Funding Trends

Venture capitalists invest in different stages of a business. According to a 2017 report by Crunchbase, the average seed funding in the first quarter of 2017 was approximately 38% higher than 2016’s first quarter funding, which shows that a number of investors are ready and excited to invest in new startups. These investors are basically accelerator programs that offer funding to newbies showing strong potential to grow in the future.

Major Cities for Venture Capital Investments

In another report by Martin Prosperity, it is stated that industry wise VC investments are also confined to small geographical locations. For example, half of the VC investments in software sector have taken place in San Francisco, representing 25% of the investments, whereas, San Jose represents 20%.

In the US, the flow of VC investments mainly comes from Boston — New York — Washington corridor and San Francisco Bay Area, representing 40% of all the VC investments around the world. In 2012, a total of $42 billion worth of VC investment was recorded worldwide. The data included 150 cities and the center point was the U.S. that accounted for 70% of the global investment, whereas, Europe and Asia only represented 14% investment.

Popular Sectors for VC Investments

Some of the popular sectors that have received a large percentage of investment are advertising, big data, cloud computing, SaaS, marketplaces, hardware and software.

Advertising — Although, it has been a center of attention for many years, but in the past 5 years, it has lost its position and the investment has decreased from 15% to only 5%. Advertising business models are gradually losing their value in the eyes of investors. One of the key reasons behind it is the heavy influence of advertising networks, including Google and Facebook.

Big data — Business models, in which the driving factor is big data, have experienced a growth in VC investment. In 2010, the series A funding comprised of 2.5% investment, but by 2015, the funding rose to 7.5%. On the other hand, seed investment has not shown any improvement or decline over a period of last 4 years.

Cloud computing — It is an infrastructure used by product developers to create services. In the last 4 years, this particular business model has also remained the same, i.e., 4%, in both series A funding and seed investments. However, it slightly went downward back in 2013 to 2014.

E-commerce — Although, e-commerce has been one of the well-known business models in terms of VC investments, yet, the seed stage investment suffered a decline from 15% to well below 10% and series A remained the same.

SaaS — In case of SaaS, series A investors didn’t perform as good as seed investors. Series A increased from 5% to 10%, whereas, seed stage experienced a surge from 5% to 15%. This sector shows attractive prospects for funding as merely less than 2% of the software market shifted to SaaS.

Marketplace — This sector experienced a surge in seed funding from 2.5% to 10% in the last four years. Uber and AirBnB are the reason behind its massive success. The current growth rate has motivated investors to consider it a potential sector for investment. Series A investment, however, remained at 5% of the dollar amount.

All in all, it is quite evident that VC investment has become one of the key sources of finance for many successful businesses and is currently dominating the world’s market at a rapid pace.

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