There are hundreds of ways to read the tea leaves to get a sense of the venture capital markets. One can analyze deal volume and the fact that valuations were up massively over the past seven years, at least till December 2015. In addition, non-VC money was flooding the startup ecosystem. But, in 2016, the public markets changed suddenly and dramatically. The tech IPO market seems to have come to a grinding halt in Q1/2016. The non-VC money, instead of investing in crossover investments seems to have shifted back to public markets.
How has the turmoil affected VC perceptions? As sentiment swings wildly with events in the public and international capital markets, how are VCs reacting, or not? Is this a classic boom-bust cycle, or "this time is different?" How does an entrepreneur keep a pulse of the capital market as we enter 2016. How does this affect the innovation dynamic that Silicon Valley has become used to.
We have assembled a great panel of IIT VCs and Investors to give us an insightful view of the state of investment capital from seed to scale stage and exits.
Panelists:
Kittu Kolluri: General Partner NEA
Dinesh Katiyar: General Partner Accel
Nakul Mandan: Partner Lightspeed Venture Partners
Cherian Mathew: Founder Firebolt Ventures
Raghu Mittal: Samsung Electronics M&A
Moderators:
Pavan Nigam: Inspovation Ventures, Co-founder WebMD
Ramneek Bhasin: Co-founder Next Force