Editor’s note: David Jones is a venture capitalist with Raleigh-based Southern Capitol Ventures. WRAL Tech Wire asked him for his assessment of the latest venture capital funding figures – and what he sees coming in 2012.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Overall VC’s put more money into deals in 2011 – $28.4 billion in 3,673 deals – an increase of 22 percent in dollars and 4 percent in numbers of deals over 2010.

If you view the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Moneytree stats from a yearly perspective (2011), then most all metrics increased – dollars and deals, with software and internet sectors leading the way. Q4 showed a decline, but again that can be weighed by 1-2 larger deals (i.e. Motricity or a biotech), so I don’t view this as a negative trend.

General trend is steady.

NC deals slump in 2011 – Read here.

Nationally, VC funding increases – Read here.

I think the numbers of deals in the tech (software/internet/services) sector continues to grow and agree we are seeing a healthy proliferation of new startups on a regular basis – particularly in the downtown Durham area around American Tobacco.

Many of these Triangle startups won’t take VC funding and will choose to bootstrap or take smaller angels rounds, and with software and internet they can get to sustainable business on very small investments.

For those companies that do take outside angel/VC, I do worry about a coming Series-A crunch whereby many of them will be unable to raise a next round and will look to other sources of capital or must become profitable.

2012 appears to be shaping up similarly to 2011, but there remains an underlying economic challenge in the U.S. and even more so in Europe that has potential to pull things down.

The west coast tech sector continues to be very healthy and some would say approaching frothy levels, however, this is not the case here in the Southeast. Valuations remain fair driven primarily by the supply/demand of capital in NC and the Southeast.

The news of Triangle Startup Factory and Groundworks Labs [in Durham] providing more guidance and capital to seed/early stage companies is fantastic news for our region and will hopefully allow our startup eco-system to continue to grow.

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