Roundtable: venture capital.

• Author: Bicknell, Lindsay
• Position: Discussion

During our monthly roundtable event, Utah Business hosted leaders in venture capital to discuss seed rounds, access to capital, and 2021 market predictions. Moderated by Cydni Tetro, CEO of Brandless and co-founder/president of the Women Tech Council, here are a few highlights from the event.

2020 has an unprecedented year. We had more capital, whether it was through acquisitions or investment, in the state than we've ever had before. Why?

Matt Warnock I Chairman I VentureCapital.org

Historically low Interest rates. When the best you can get is a couple of percent at the local bank, people go looking for other places to put their money. Plus, Utah has always been a huge hotbed for Innovation and that's drawing more capital here than we've seen in the past.

Tim Cooley I General Manager I Park City Angels

One of the big things that we do well in Utah is create playbooks to then pass on to other people. And so what you've seen is a network effect that really started with Josh [James] at Domo and then passed on to Ryan [Smith at Qualtrics] and then he had the ability to pass that on to other people. And so I think that you're seeing that play out as well.

Ben Capell | Partner | Peterson Ventures

2020 was an amazing year in general, for venture capital across the board in the entire US. Q3 was the second-highest quarter ever for venture capital dollars invested and half of those dollars were invested in rounds of $100 million or more. And so one of the takeaways is that there was a lot of capital driven by interest rates and in capital available in alternative assets.

And then it seems like there was kind of a flight to quality. Deals that were doing well and showed good performance In spite of a historic pandemic that we all were tremendously uncertain about in March and April. The companies that did well in spite of this pandemic have attracted a lot of capital.

Derrin Hill | Founder & CEO | RevRoad

There was a lot of question at the beginning of the year as to whether or not the recovery would be V-shaped, U-shaped, or J-shaped. As it turns out, it's K-shaped. So those areas that have those efficiencies, those areas that have that innovation and the kind of qualities that we have built over decades here in Utah were rewarded.

There are indications that seed rounds and Series A rounds have been more difficult over the last year because so much capital has been going to efficiency of capital, people who know how to apply it to scale. What's...