Venture Capital Thawing Out? Since mid-to-late March I've been hearing a lot more stories of venture capitalists doing deals that sound a lot more like deals done in the mid-nineties, than the ones done over the past three years. There's at least been some evidence that VCs are (1) realizing that they're sitting on a ton of money (2) valuations are cheap and (3) there's a light at the end of the tunnel for the economic downturn. Plenty of startups are now saying that
VCs are actually chasing them, rather than the other way around. Of course, VCs loosening their purse strings doesn't mean they won't be funding overhyped companies - and many companies with seasoned execs are trying to
avoid VCs altogether. However, for folks in Silicon Valley who seem to think our entire economy is based on how much VCs are putting into companies, this is probably good news. [via
Techdirt]