2005 Venture Capital Web 2.0 investment statistics: US entrepreneurs raise ten times more than Europe

We have used the traditionally-quiet holiday period to keep ourselves very busy running some research on venture capital investment into Web2.0* companies.

Why did I want to run these numbers?

It is obvious to me that there is a high interest-level amongst European VCs in the sector, yet I was seeing a very low level of Web2.0 “done deals” in VC portfolios and on the deal sheets.

Furthermore, when we ran our Web 2.0 European event, we noted an under-supply of European entrepreneurs with compelling Web2.0 businesses.

So I was expecting the stats to show low levels of investment into Web2.0 companies in European compared to the US. However the discrepancy was even greater than I had expected.

In 2005, US-based Web2.0 companies reported raising £200mn whilst European businesses raised just £24mn.

Both geographies had similar (ish) proportions of investment at the first round: 59% of US deals were first rounds compared to 47% in Europe.  Tellingly however, there was a skew in Europe towards earlier stage deals: seed rounds constituted 13% of all activity in Europe compared to 6% of deals in USA.

Be warned however, because I think it’s too early to start drawing any harsh conclusions on European entrepreneurs or VCs.

Frequently, we see European VC software investment trends trailing the US by anywhere from 3 – 12 months.  I’m pretty excited by the range of European Web2.0 entrepreneurs that I’m meeting today. I also know there are some interesting deals currently “in process” at many VC houses.  I’m looking forward to seeing the European numbers catch-up.

* A quick word on methodology: “Europe” refers to West and East Europe and also Israel. Web2.0 is defined as company fitting the Tim O’Reilly description (see previous posts). Data was sourced by primary research, press releases, techcrunch, company calls and the VentureSource data base. 

Comments

[willmcinnes]

I found this very interesting. It matches exactly some stuff that I am seeing / feeling.

Since we're into similar stuff I will continue to monitor your blog for more nuggety wisdom.

[laurent]

Hi,

Interesting views, I agree that the web 2.0 landscape seems a bit desert in Europe at the moment, but this will change over the next 6 months.

But my take on the new web 2.0 companies is also that, compared to the first first wave of .com (which I truly enjoyed), you can now be in business with very low investment, start making some money with AdSense and rely on buzz and your net promoters community to take off.
So my question: what's left for the VCs here? Connections with Yahoo! and Google are probably more important.
Maybe this is why VCs do not see many startups coming their ways at the moment.

Nice to start a conversation with you on this.

Thanks
Laurent

[Mike Butcher]

I think a few new things will have been kicked off after a conference I covered sparked some interest: http://mbites.com/web_2_wave_or_bubble

[Paul Fisher]

Laurent

I agree with your point on it now being cheaper to build a website. This means that the capital requirements are indeed lower. However, I think that many people are making an error when they conclude that this means either:
1) These businesses won’t be venture backed.
2) Many of these businesses can be supported via adsense.

To answer the second point first. It is true that adsense can support many businesses with advertising revenues. But how many multi million businesses can be made by releying on adsense as the revenue model? Whilst I don’t know the exact answer tothat question, I know it isn’t a big number. Adsense makes masses of sense for one man, or smaller organisations, but I can’t see large numbers of companies acquiring signifcant financial scale relying on this model.

“It’s the old stand-by for new business: don’t have a sales team? Don’t have a revenue plan? Suck in adwords. It’s like a favourite pair of blue jeans you always know is there.”
Michael Brown.Partech International as quoted in Red Herring 03.13.06. http://www.partechvc.com/html/team_member.php?id=16

The first point, I agree with. As I have written before http://paulfisher.typepad.com/growth_technology_venture/2005/11/early_stage_vc_.html , many web 2.0 companies will not be venture backed but that’s precisely because THEY ARE NOT APPROPRIATE FOR VC. Most do not have the potential to be billion dollar businesses. Its clear that the GYM are in a feature war currently which is driving much M&A but there’s big questions over the sustainability fo this activity, and wether VCs are really that worried anyway:

(Allen Morgan has a useful note on this topic also http://allensblog.typepad.com/allens_blog/2006/01/keep_the_faith.html ).

Paul

[Markus Burgdorf]

As long as Investors think of 1999 and Internet-Hype in Europe, there will be no change in their behaviour. We had a discussion the day before yesterday, where a Business-Angel tried to get 30% of our Company for 500T €. He was explaining us the world, but did not read our business-plan. Ridiculous!

[carl rahn griffith]

the disparity is somewhat frustrating but at long last i am beginning to see traction regarding my own venture and real interest in web2.0/rss related solutions seeking funding.

fingers crossed ...