5 Questions For NEA's Peter Barris
Even though Barris stressed that only three of the 12 investments NEA did in October were new, as opposed to follow-on rounds, he's not arguing with Larry's ranking of NEA as the most active venture capitalist in the U.S. -- at least for October. Mergers, acquisitions and IPOs are all picking up, he said, and he's predicting good times for venture capital next year. Just yesterday, NEA led a $43 million Series A round into Playdom, a social gaming company . We asked Barris to tell us more. 1. You cite new investments, more of an equilibrium in pricing, and less hesitation to make commitments in the last few weeks. Why are these changes happening? It depends on the nature of the investment. If it’s an early stage startup, I think there were a lot of entrepreneurs sitting on the sidelines waiting to get financed at a valuation they wanted. For more mature companies in need of working capital -- to the extent they could manage a delay in that -- they followed the same path as the entrepreneurs, waiting until things were better and we reached equilibrium in pricing. And I think some were out there squeezing expenses and finally got to the point where they have to have the capital.
