Analysis: strategic versus ROI-driven VC

Peter Clarke, EETimes
(12/07/2009 7:25 AM EST)

LONDON — We knew this was going to be a tough year for many startups. Venture capitalists needed to eke their money out. It is natural they would be withholding it from some because of the uncertainty that the global economic crisis had brought and the delay it introduced into the growth of various markets.

It happened before in the post dot.com crash and, as it was then, it is less about the technology, or the market as much as the timing. However, good the technology it you were at the wrong part of the cycle you could get dropped. "It's not you, it's me," we could hear the venture capitalists saying as they declined to invest more money in a pet startup. We even had Moshe Gavrielov, president and CEO of Xilinx Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) predicting that venture capitalist would never return to the semiconductor domain, and particularly the fabless semiconductor market.

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