A sharp fall in venture capital funding for Irish SMEs is a “warning sign” for the country, according to the Irish Venture Capital Association.<\/p>\n
The Association’s latest VenturePulse survey, published in assocation with William Fry, shows a 77% fall in SME funding in the second quarter, with funding tumbling from \u20ac494m last year to \u20ac112.6m this year.<\/p>\n
This marks the lowest figure recorded by the IVCA since the second quarter of 2015 and as a result, funding in the first half of the year fell by 14% to \u20ac645.5m from \u20ac752.7m the previous year.<\/p>\n
Caroline Gaynor, chairperson of Irish Venture Capital Association, noted that the fall off would have been worse if not for a record first quarter which saw an increase of over 100% to \u20ac532.8m compared to the same time last year.<\/p>\n
She added that the quarterly drop was mainly explained by an 81% pull back by international investors, which invested just \u20ac69.5m in the quarter, compared to \u20ac375.3m the previous year, a shortfall of over \u20ac305m.<\/p>\n
“This is a timely warning sign for Ireland and highlights the need for us to stand on our own feet in terms of funding and backing for our brightest and best indigenous start-ups, instead of depending on volatile international support,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sarah-Jane Larkin, director general of the IVCA, said that bearish international sentiment was reflected in quarter two deal sizes.<\/p>\n
“There was only one deal (Nomupay) in the \u20ac30m+ category, compared to five last year. Funding fell by 88% to \u20ac37m from \u20ac300.3m,” she said.<\/p>\n
She also said there was also only one deal in the \u20ac10m+ category (Kota), down from six rounds last year. Funding fell by 87% to \u20ac12.4m from over \u20ac100m.<\/p>\n
“There was a falloff in all deal sizes, with the exception of those under \u20ac1m,” added Sarah-Jane Larkin. “Seed funding, or first rounds by SMEs, fell by over a half to \u20ac25.5m.”<\/p>\n
Today’s figures show that the life sciences sector with \u20ac255.3m (40%) led the way in funding for the half year, followed by cybersecurity (18%), fintech (14%), software (9%) and AI & machine learning (8%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sharp fall in venture capital funding for Irish SMEs is a “warning sign” for the country, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-141525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}