Have just been at the European Venture forum for the last 2 days listening to and talking with Vc's from around the world.

Quite a depressing message around the tech start-up space - most gave the impression that they were backing off start-up and early stage investments - partly because many VC funds are going to be taking a pounding on fund performance over the last 12 months - with the real possibility of negative returns.

The general down turn in TMT listed markets and the end of wave 1 of net euphoria don't help. Furthermore the difficulty of floating stocks at present has created further discouragement.

The final problem was that those who had been succesful in the early stage arena were now looking after bigger funds and therefore having to focus on larger average deal sizes.

The general consensus seemed to be pretty anti-incubator but in favour of angel investors as the bets source of financing for deals up to around £500K / £1M. this doesn't mean there won't be be VC money for the smaller deals - probably just less of it.

don't how this stacks up against other people's views - would be interested to hear.

Rohit