Data not encouraging for those looking to exit soon
Data from Crunchbase show M&A activity is on its slowest pace in a decade.
Wanting to exit your start-up sometime in the near future? Well, you might want to think again.
According to this recent article from Chris Metinko in Crunchbase News, the initial public offering pipeline “is still frozen” and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity involving U.S.-based, venture capital (VC)-backed companies “is on pace for its slowest year since 2013. And it only appears to be getting worse.”
That’s according to an analysis of Crunchbase data which notes that only 429 start-ups based in the U.S. and backed by venture capital have been successfully acquired. “That puts the M&A market on its slowest pace since 2013, when only 698 deals involving start-ups occurred — as the world’s economy was coming out of the global financial crisis of 2008-09,” Metinko writes. “Those numbers are a far cry from the more than 1,700 deals we saw just two years ago, and even the robust 1,134 witnessed last year as the venture market slowed.”
