Since the very beginning of coronavirus pandemic and global lockdown, we all had similar concerns and questions: what will change in the VC market and what opportunities will still be available for startups in 2020? Following this call, we asked investors, managing partners of top VC funds and leading venture capitalists to share their opinion on the ongoing crisis and how the lockdown changes their investment strategy.
To give startup founders a picture of the VC market state in 2020, we have started the new topic at InnMind, Venture Investors’ Economic Forecast 2020-2021. We have recorded 22 video interviews with leading investors and experts like Tim Draper (Draper University), Igor Shoifot (TMT Investments), Bill Reichert (Garage Technology Ventures), Igor Ryabenkiy (Altair VC), Steve Blank (creator of Lean Startup methodology), Alex Osterwalder (Business Model Canvas creator) and others.
Some economic forecasts from the experts promised the deepest recession during the last 20 years. Considering that, not surprising that some investors among conservative VC prefer to slow down their investment activity or pause it until the market situation will be more predictable (21,6% of respondents slow down the investment). Many of them focused on supporting portfolio companies instead of making new deals. But what was surprising in our research outcomes is that despite the negative experts’ forecasts, just a small amount of VCs in the survey switched to a kind of “stealth mode”.
The majority (As you can see, 41%) of investors still focused on exploring new opportunities and even expanding their investment strategy. For example, Alexander Chachava, managing partner at Leta Capital, said:
"We feel a good momentum for investments because as I already mentioned, the world needs changes, starting from life science and to tech. And so we are here just to give resources, support and ideas to the entrepreneurs, who will change this world using tech and making our world a better place."
We were also interested in the changes in investors’ focus. Anton Antich, serial VC investor, says about which industries can bring more opportunities for startups:
“Everything AI and robotics. As the current crisis has shown, human are fragile, governments are quick to lock us up in our homes, so for the civilization to survive if, God forbid, something more serious than coronavirus hits us, we need to start relying on robots more and more. Especially in essential industries, such as farming and agriculture, but everywhere else, too.”
The opinions of all respondents we gathered in the chart below:
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Irina Ionova
Irina Ionova
