The trick is finding that 4%, who responded to the National Venture Capital Association’s annual survey of more than 400 VCs.
Most VCs have a grim outlook, figuring a recovery won’t happen until 2010. Clean tech, life sciences and medical devices are the most promising areas, whereas semiconductors are expected to get the worst of it, in terms of investment. Wireless, which has been such a hot area of investment, is expected to fall, according to 60%.
Venture-backed companies might well get acquired in 2009, VCs said, but most expect transaction values to fall.
Catching up on other industry analysis, 451 Group does a nice job of examining the past year in M&A activity and looking ahead to 2009 sector by sector in technology. A couple of interesting tidbits:
* Cisco only announced 4 deals in’08
* Google, which has been making a deal a month in recent years, also only nabbed 4 companies in ’08
* Look for more in the way of “bolt’-on” acquisitions (those where a company can basically just sell the acquired company’s goods into their own customer base) rather than those that require a lot of integration.
* Oracle’s penchant for making unsolicited deal caught on with others in the industry, including Microsoft, RIM and EMC.
* Look for more privately-held venture-backed companies to snap up companies on the public market, in a twist on the usual fare
MORE ON M&As:
Tech industry’s biggest M&A deals of 2008
