In our meetings and informal discussions, there were three items we heard again and again:
1. Last year was a terrible fund raising year from a VC-backed company perspective.
2. This year will be much better. Indeed, there is a palpable sense of optimism that more companies will receive more funding in 2011, but…
3. …investments will be more creative, more geographically diverse, and with more risk sharing. On this point, prognosticators told us that, for example, the number of asset development partnerships with CROs may increase in 2011 compared to 2010. Further, ex-US partners will be increasingly aggressive this year. We heard that deals in 2011 will be more “complex” vis-a-vis how they are structured, with lower Upfront payments (which suggests that we remain in a buyer’s market).
We’ll revisit this post in December to see how these predictions pan out in 2011.