Yes, there is good news in the Venture Capital world. Vinod Khosla recently raised over $1B for Khosla Ventures. Other firms have raised significant funds as well. VCs have raised over $60B in the last 2 years. Here is a list of recent fund raises. Numbers in $ Millions.
| Khosla Ventures | 1050 |
| Domain Associates | 500 |
| Mohr Davidow | 100 |
| Matrix Partners | 600 |
| Catamount Ventures | 80 |
| 5AM Ventures | 159 |
| UV Partners | 120 |
| MK Capital | 75 |
| August Capital | 650 |
| Signal Lake | 150 |
There is plenty of VC money available but firms are being very cautious about where they invest. There are lots of deals getting done. Jeff Clavier at SoftTechVC has made 41 investments in the past two years. First Round Capital has made 56 investments. Legendary Angel investor Ron Conway has made a similar number recently, and over his career has made about 500 investments. Here is a list of firms making the largest number of deals.
| Draper Fisher Jurvetson | 88 |
| First Round Capital | 56 |
| New Enterprise Associates | 55 |
| Kleiner Perkins | 55 |
| Polaris Ventures | 44 |
| Domain Associates | 41 |
| Atlas Venture | 38 |
| Interwest Partners | 33 |
| Intel Capital | 32 |
| Venrock | 31 |
Why VCs say NO 99% of the time - There is lots of investment capital available, but remember, VCs say NO 99% of the time. Each firm has an investment thesis and they try to stick to it. You may need to talk to lots of firms before you find a match. Remember that you probably say NO about 99.9% of the time in your investment decisions too. Consider that there are about 5,000 publicly traded stocks and another 5,000 mutual funds. The average investors holds about 5 stocks and 5 mutual funds. Why did you pick these 10 and say no to the other 9,990 investment alternatives? Were they bad companies or investments? Lots of other people have invested in them…they just weren’t right for you. VCs are the same way.
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