This week PricewaterhouseCoopers and Cooley Godward Kronish hosted the “Shaking the MoneyTree Report” event in Palo Alto. The annual event featured top names in the venture capital industry and was hosted by Steve Bengston of PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose humor brought a welcome and lighthearted air of optimism that fit well with the news that, although Silicon Valley endured tough times along with the rest of the country these past years, the VC market is seeing some moderate signs life after some rough quarters. The MoneyTree Report is a collaboration between PWC and the national Venture Capital Association using data from Thomson Reuters.
Mr.Bengston hosted a panel with top VC names that included Dan Avida of Opus Capital, Juan-Antonio Carballo of IBM, Craig Jacoby of Cooley Godward Kronish, Dan Lankford of Wavepoint Ventures, and Tom Vertin of Silicon Valley Bank. As our economy is pulling itself out of the doldrums that were the past couple of years, the panelists expressed a general—and cautious—optimism about the VC industry in the year to come. When queried by Bengston as to how much investment money was likely to pour into Silicon Valley this year, a general and probably safe consensus was an average of around $20 billion. This number is up from $17.8 billion last year but doesn’t even come close to the peak of $100.4 billion in 2000.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The MoneyTree Report: Venture Capital and Silicon Valley Coming Back Full Force
Author: Tim Ruiz
