With a hat tip to Mauricio for pointing it out, look at the story of Agami, the start-up with the oh-so-novel idea of providing "enterprise-class unified network storage solutions".
After raising $45million from three rounds of venture funding – including big valley name Kleiner Perkins.
Valleywag has a conspiracy theory saying that;
our guess is [the founder] is keeping quiet trying to be a "team player" for the boys on Sand Hill road in order to stay on their roster of cooperative executives ready to work on — and sometimes unceremoniously shut down — future ventures
Anyone prepared to agree with me now that the VCs went through a year or two of funding anything that moved? And in the process fuelling a growth in valuations, and a growth in hype that can have only one consequence for a number of those caught up in the melee?
Pop!
Hmmm. Easy to take a potshot at KP. They are pretty clever people, so I guess they made their decisions about the funding outlook, and walked the talk. If they’d had a bunch of home-runs, we’d be acknolwedging their foresight.
Raising venture capital is very hard and I think you might be confusing increased online coverage of venture capital activity with a dramatic increase in industry activity. I am sure over the last couple of years VCs have continued to say no more often than yes.
In certain sectors the costs of establishing businesses has decreased dramatically resulting in an increase in new startups.
Based on anecdotal evidence 2/3 of VC investments will return their money or be losers so expect to see coverage of companies entering the dead pool. This doesn’t suggest the existence of a bubble this is just how the industry works.
PWC provide some interesting data on U.S. VC activity and while the level of funding has been increasing over the last few years we are no where near the 2000-01 levels.
https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/moneytree/filesource/exhibits/MoneyTree%20-%20Q2%202008%20final.pdf