Last week PWC released its quarterly moneytree report on the state of the venture capital industry in Israel. The top line figures indicate a 33% decline in VC investments in Q3, reaching $171 million compared to $255 million in the previous year. The main reason stated is the decline in availability of local VC funding. Overall in the first 3 quarters of 2012, Israeli companies raised $591 million, compared to $904 million in the equivalent period in 2011.
The major concern is the ability of the Israeli startup industry to continue producing roughly 600 new startups created a year, since Seed rounds are almost disappearing. Only 3 (!) companies in seed stage raised VC money in Q3 2013. To quote Rubi Suliman, Partner at PWC:
“The most disturbing piece of information is
the miniscule investment in seed companies (less than 2%) and the
decline in early stage investments. While Israeli hi-tech is proud of
its numerous mature companies, the next generation of companies is
finding it increasingly harder to raise the money it needs.”
The Moneytree report covers in detail the VC investments by sector, stage and investment round, raising the question that Sarah Lacy asked back in July “Can we admit there is a problem?“. The full PDF report can be downloaded on the PWC Moneytree page.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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