Silicon Valley is experiencing another boom. All shows exactly that: again, a host of jobs for programmers, the most talented of them get very good money; party organized enterprises computer industry regained its former scope, and real estate prices in Palo Alto and San Francisco beat all records. At the same time traffic jams have become commonplace there, and conflicts between the elite of high-tech industry and citizens with “normal” wages grow.
Cause another boom has been the influx of venture capital, intended primarily to software manufacturers, enterprises Internet industry, as well as firms involved in biotechnology. This is evidenced by the results of a joint study PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Union of American venture capitalists. The total amount of venture capital invested is still far below that of 2000, when inflated “dot-com” bubble – in those days, investors have invested a total of about $ 100 billion in all, what could be called a startup. But in 2013 the U.S. volume of risky investments reached no less than $ 30 billion, which is 7% higher than the previous year. Half of these funds ended up in California, and 12 billion – directly in Silicon Valley.
And that’s what is particularly interesting: companies engaged exclusively online business, received about 25% of the $ 30 billion, which was an absolute maximum since 2001. Dearly loved by investors as developers who perepalo 37% of the money – about $ 11 billion, which is also a record since 2000. Far behind them with biotechnology researchers $ 4.5 billion. Significantly less attractive steel environmental technology developers: their investment income declined by half since last year and amounted to “only” $ 1.5 billion.
Most money in Silicon Valley still get startups. 2013 record belongs to a social network Pinterest, a Palo Alto. This online bulletin board received 425 million dollars. One of the reasons is the calculation of the generosity of investors that either Pinterest dare enter the stock market, or buy it some type giant Google, Yahoo or Facebook.
In second place with borrowed funds in the amount of 374 million dollars is software maker Palantir, which is a co-founder of well-known businessman and hedge fund manager Peter Thiel. His new creation is engaged in review and analysis of databases on the Internet for the benefit of the Government, the Ministry of Defense and major corporations.
Recently it has become increasingly obvious willingness of investors to larger risks. So, in 2013, initial funding startups totaled about $ 5 billion, which exceeded the previous year by 14%. First of all, the money went to software developers and media companies with which it becomes clear pretty quickly, they managed to gain a foothold in the market or not. However, a considerable part of the funds received and riskier industries, particularly biotechnology researchers. Investors expect turnover growth of these businesses through health care reform initiated by U.S. President Barack Obama.
New boom reminiscent of the end of the 1990s. He contributes to the success of many enterprises of high-tech industry, spread over an exchange and thereby obtaining additional capital for development. And it concerns not only the most famous such as Facebook and Twitter. The same can be said, for example, and on a highly specialized company FireEye Californian city of Milpitas, working in the field of security technologies. This company literally just bought from competitors Mandiant a billion dollars.
So far so good and it is very important for hedge fund managers. Because after an unsuccessful placement Facebook in May 2012, they had greater difficulty in attracting new capital. Now that social networking has once again managed to win the favor of Wall Street, they have to make up for lost time. Will they continue to accompany success depends not only on the quarterly report of Facebook, which will be published this Wednesday. In a much greater extent it depends on the first digit, which will announce the head of Twitter Dick Costolo after going public, scheduled for February 5.
Silicon Valley: as in the days of the "new economy"
No comments:
Post a Comment