VCs get bullish on IT in 2011 Feelings of doom and gloom are a little more scarce among venture capital investors looking toward the New Year, the National Venture Capital Association reports in results of its annual survey of U.S. VCs, released Tuesday.
This year, 24 percent of VCs are predicting a down year for investment in U.S. companies in 2011. Last year at this time, more than 40 percent of VCs predicted the industry would invest less domestically in 2010. So far, they were wrong: VCs put $18 billion into U.S. companies in the first three quarters of 2010, according to Dow Jones VentureSource — up from $16.3 billion in the same period of 2009.
However, the number of VCs predicting growth in 2011 remains flat at just over half — 51 percent predicted growth, the same number as took an optimistic view at the turn of the year in 2009.
In contrast to recent years, when VCs were bullish on life sciences and clean technology, more VCs now expect the information technology category to show the biggest increases in 2011. Eighty-two percent predicted increased investing in consumer Internet and digital media. Eighty percent of the investors surveyed predicted growth in cloud computing investment, and 66 percent were bullish on mobile telecom.
venture capital,IT
