Many people in tech believe that VCs slow the pace of their investing during the summer, especially in August. We wanted to verify this using the CrunchBase dataset by comparing deals over the past few years.
We graphed total deals by month in CrunchBase from January 2010 to July 2013, but there was no apparent slump that occurred during the summer months. We did however, discover an interesting trend in January — a New Year’s resolution-like phenomenon: There is a sudden spike in total deals in January, with a sudden drop in deals in February.
From 2010 to 2012, the average total deals per season was highest in the summer and lowest in the spring. Even with the deal spikes in January, winter was the second-highest season. The VCs that contributed the most to these January spikes were SV Angel, 500 Startups, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. These VCs accounted for more than 100 deals during the month of January between 2010-2012 and 8 percent of the 2010-2012 winter deals.
The same investors continue to invest in the spring, as well, with a couple of additions. Active investors in the spring between 2010-2012 were Intel Capital, First Round Capital, SV Angel, 500 Startups, New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia Capital, combining for 7 percent of all deals. The same group of VCs was also active in the summer with a minor drop in the fall.
Looking at all deals of 2010-present, SV Angel accounted for 0.9 percent of all deals, 500 Startups accounted for 0.8 percent of all deals and New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners both accounted for 0.6 percent of all deals.
From the CrunchBase data, we concluded that the most active VCs tend to be active year-round, with summer averaging the most deals, which is contrary to the common belief that VCs take a summer break.
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