Our H1 VC Review: More Companies Funded With Less Money

The number of UK and European digital media VC investments more than doubled in the first half of 2009 from the year before, but the total amount invested was lower, according to our own analysis.

We looked back at fundings we covered in our Venture Capital section between January 2008 and June 2009. We found that, in H108, VCs paid out £230.5 million in 22 deals while, in the first six months of ’09, £189 million was paid out to 50 companies

H108: Fewer companies were funded, but some of the deals were huge: UK voice-to-text firm Spinvox bagged $100 million (£61.7 million), UK ad network Adconion won $80 million in funding (£49.3 million) — both way ahead of anything we’ve seen in 2009 so far — while three more were worth over £10 million.

H109: The trend this year has been: smaller deals and more of them. Online money lender Wonga.com received $22.2 million (£13.7 million) in June, the half’s biggest deal, and 14 more deals raised more than £5 million. Two kinds of companies to benefit that didn’t feature at all in H108 were online shopping clubs — three companies including Spain’s Privalia were funded — and online games, specifically MMO virtual worlds: three companies received funding including eRepublik.

— We didn’t include very small seed funding deals — or deals where no amount was declared — so the true figure may be slightly higher. Plus, some amounts are converted from dollars and euros into pounds using today’s exchange rates.

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