VC Funding

Startups have seen a double digit increase in VC investments in 2010, which marks the first ever such increase since 2007 – according toMoneyTree Report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and National Venture Capital Association. VC’s invested $21.8 billion in 3,227 deals in 2010, which represents an increase of 19% in dollars and 12% in terms of deals done compared to the previous year.

The double digit increases were seen across all investment sectors, including Cleantech, Biotech and Internet specific segments. The investments size increase across all stages with the exception of seed financing, which saw a decline of 2%.

The Software Industry once again gulped the lion’s share of funding for the year, by fetching $4 billion in investments in 835 deals 2010, a 21% increase over 2009. Software investments in Q4 of 2010 fetched $1.1 billion for 218 deals, making it the only sector to receive more than a billion dollars in funding in the fourth quarter of 2010.

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Venture capitalists and CEOs are showing renewed confidence in the state of venture capital, especially in the IT, digital media, mobile and cloud computing sectors, according to a recently released survey.

The National Venture Capital Association polled around 330 U.S. venture capitalists and 180 CEOs of venture-backed companies in order to get their predictions for what will happen in 2011. The survey, released Tuesday, paints an optimistic picture of investment in the new year.

Of VCs surveyed, 51% said they expected venture investments to pick up in 2011, compared to just 24% who think it will remain the same and another 24% who think it will decrease. Their optimism spans across both later stage and earlier stage investments, and in fact, 30% of VCs intend to increase their co-investments with angel investors.

The industry that investors are most bullish about is the IT sector. Eighty-two percent predict a rise in “consumer Internet and digital media” investments, 80% predict increased activity around cloud computing and another 66% expect more investments to be made in mobile and telecom. A full 77% of VCs are bullish on health IT.

Not every industry is getting the thumbs-up from VCs, though. Only 28% of VCs surveyed believe clean technology will see an increase in investment from last year, and only 38% expect increases in the energy sector.

The executives and venture capitalists polled by the NVCA also believe there will be more exit events in 2011. Eighty-one percent of VCs and 82% of CEOs say that there will be more acquisitions in 2011, but while 66% of VCs believe there will be more IPOs, only 44% of CEOs anticipate the same thing.

Overall, the report paints a positive picture for the state of technology. Just a year ago, the recession weighed heavy on the collective consciousness. And while we haven’t come close to a full recovery yet, it looks like the engine of the U.S. economy — entrepreneurship — is rebounding.

[via CNET]

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It was clear from the day Google TV was revealed that the search giant had huge ambitions to bring the web to living room screens across the world. Google stood to make billions of dollars through both its partners and through TV advertising (a fulfillment of the Google Revenue Equation). You can’t say Google doesn’t dream big with its products.

At the time of its launch, we praised Google for its attempt to reshape the future of TV, but warned that it had to get things right the first time to succeed.

Here’s what Mashable said in May:

“As one of the Googlers said in the demo, one of the key aspects of television is that it “just works.” For connected TV to work — whether it be from Google or someone else — it has to be reliable, usable and consistent. I can deal with rebooting my computer if it starts acting weird. I don’t feel the same way about my television set. As it stands, I already curse my cable company provided HD-DVR box for being finicky and having performance issues; if I have to reboot my entire entertainment system because an Internet video gets out of control, I’m not going to be very happy. I also have no desire to have to play tech support for my family when the TV stops working.

Not having had any hands-on time with Google TV, I can’t speak for how well it works compared to the competition — but this is an area that Google needs to absolutely have at 100% at launch. Release early and often may work on the web, but users don’t want to have to troubleshoot their devices in the living room.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. Initial reviews have been lackluster, mostly because the OS feels like an unfinished piece of software. From the few times I’ve used it, it’s navigable but not intuitive. It’s usable but complicated.

In other words, they pushed an unfinished product out of the door, and now Google is scrambling to fix its TV product and save the project from implosion. A recent report claims that Google has asked its partners to hold off on launching Google TV devices at CES so that it can tweak the software. We’ve been hearing the same thing from our sources.