If the bar gets raised and startups have to do more to get investment is that a bad thing?
Or is that returning to where investment should be? Where the good stuff (and we know its good because the team rocks and/or because they're accelerating) and everything else has to work even harder to get there.
The thing I found really interesting was the disparity in size of investment between Europe and the US (with the UK in the middle).
Anything like this is going to miss a lot of small angel activity, but the mean European investment is barely half the size of the typical American one. There'll be some significant skew from the outsize Facebook/Twitter $100m+ rounds – it'd be interesting to work out what the median round size is too.
I think size of invsestment reflects the amount of capital available in each geography which drives competition for deals and ultimately the bargaining power of companies ('good' companies can secure more cash in US), and different attitudes to risk and return.
Or is that returning to where investment should be? Where the good stuff (and we know its good because the team rocks and/or because they're accelerating) and everything else has to work even harder to get there.