Venture capital data woes

Here’s our story in yesterday’s Merc about the steady rate of venture investing last quarter. The reports these days issued by the major venture capital statistics vendors should be taken lightly. The data has become a casualty of the competition between Venture Economics and VentureOne, which are locked in a quarterly competition to release their numbers first. As soon as a quarter closes, they run their tallies and rush out the numbers even though they know they’ll get much better data by waiting a few more weeks. Did the amount of venture capital invested really fall during the 4th quarter, as VentureOne reported initially? No, it turns out, that quarter was up after numbers were revised recently. As for Venture Economics, they reported Silicon Valley companies had $1.7 billion in venture capital last quarter. But now, after revised numbers, it is $1.8 billion.

UPDATE: Dan Primack has some good analysis of quarterly VC investing trends here.