5 ms·

What just happened to VC valuations?

27 points by trendspotter 13y ago

Dan Primack: "(...) What that shows is a whopping 79% decrease in median pre-money valuations between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013."

mrwhy2k 13y ago
Nothing happened. This data is incomplete, "expectation that the dip won't look quite so severe when additional information comes in." And if you look at the other charts, everything is just fine. All this means is that more small deals were done in Q1, rather than big deals. Just stick to comparing A, B, C rounds, not overall value of pre-money rounds.
- ryguytilidie 13y ago
  Yeah I like how the author summed up the analysts statement as "a big fat, dunno" when in reality she said "the data is incomplete".
benologist 13y ago
"So right now I'll chalk the VentureSource valuation data up to some statistical anomaly. Unless MoneyTree looks similar tomorrow, at which point we'd really have something to talk about." And then they pushed publish.
- busterarm 13y ago
  I need to get in the habit of reading HN comments before I click the links to read articles like this. They shouldn't be able to make money off of pushing crap like this, but with every click they do.
  - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
    Sometimes I have a tendency to read the top comment before clicking on links. Most of the time the top comment is a contrarian comment if it's a news article or blog post. So that makes me view the article in a different way, which can be good but might also be a self-fulfilling prophecy that causes me not to form my own opinion. On the other hand, regardless of what I read first I side with the HN commenter's point of view over seemingly uninformed articles.
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      I think we can trust HN commenters to produce a contrarian viewpoint for anything thrown their way, unfortunately. At this point, HN might be better off without karma at all for comments, or just a "flag" like for submissions.
      - bobbo3 13y ago
        Be careful. Many articles submitted to HN are just fucking awful articles, and we actually want contrarian viewpoints to counter the bollocks pumped out. Banning Techcrunch, ExtremeTech (such a terrible website full of dreadful garbage), MotherJones and so many other shitty websites would do more to help HN than any karma modifications.
      - sageikosa 13y ago
        No we can't.
lubujackson 13y ago
Isn't the bulk of this data available already through the Crunchbase API? Seems like this could be calculated in real-time if someone bothered to build it.
mvkel 13y ago
Any headline that ends in a question mark, the answer is either "no" or "nothing." Pathetic link bait.
nateberkopec 13y ago
CB Insights disagrees: http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/venture-capital-2013-q1 http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/venture-capital-2013-q...
crapshoot101 13y ago
Dan Primack is a well respected guy, and everyone reads Term Sheet every AM, so I'm inclined to view it as a conversation, not a hunting for page clicks / Huff Po style excercise. But no one, no one reports valuations to VentureSource, so I would question the data in the first place.

27 points by trendspotter 13y ago

Dan Primack: "(...) What that shows is a whopping 79% decrease in median pre-money valuations between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013."

mrwhy2k 13y ago

Nothing happened. This data is incomplete, "expectation that the dip won't look quite so severe when additional information comes in." And if you look at the other charts, everything is just fine. All this means is that more small deals were done in Q1, rather than big deals. Just stick to comparing A, B, C rounds, not overall value of pre-money rounds.

ryguytilidie 13y ago
Yeah I like how the author summed up the analysts statement as "a big fat, dunno" when in reality she said "the data is incomplete".

benologist 13y ago

"So right now I'll chalk the VentureSource valuation data up to some statistical anomaly. Unless MoneyTree looks similar tomorrow, at which point we'd really have something to talk about." And then they pushed publish.

busterarm 13y ago
I need to get in the habit of reading HN comments before I click the links to read articles like this. They shouldn't be able to make money off of pushing crap like this, but with every click they do.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  Sometimes I have a tendency to read the top comment before clicking on links. Most of the time the top comment is a contrarian comment if it's a news article or blog post. So that makes me view the article in a different way, which can be good but might also be a self-fulfilling prophecy that causes me not to form my own opinion. On the other hand, regardless of what I read first I side with the HN commenter's point of view over seemingly uninformed articles.
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    I think we can trust HN commenters to produce a contrarian viewpoint for anything thrown their way, unfortunately. At this point, HN might be better off without karma at all for comments, or just a "flag" like for submissions.
    - bobbo3 13y ago
      Be careful. Many articles submitted to HN are just fucking awful articles, and we actually want contrarian viewpoints to counter the bollocks pumped out. Banning Techcrunch, ExtremeTech (such a terrible website full of dreadful garbage), MotherJones and so many other shitty websites would do more to help HN than any karma modifications.
    - sageikosa 13y ago
      No we can't.

lubujackson 13y ago

Isn't the bulk of this data available already through the Crunchbase API? Seems like this could be calculated in real-time if someone bothered to build it.

mvkel 13y ago

Any headline that ends in a question mark, the answer is either "no" or "nothing." Pathetic link bait.

nateberkopec 13y ago

CB Insights disagrees: http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/venture-capital-2013-q1 http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/venture-capital-2013-q...

crapshoot101 13y ago

Dan Primack is a well respected guy, and everyone reads Term Sheet every AM, so I'm inclined to view it as a conversation, not a hunting for page clicks / Huff Po style excercise. But no one, no one reports valuations to VentureSource, so I would question the data in the first place.