VC's new normal

There's lots of concern in Silicon Valley that the recovery will take a long time and that the tech biz may never regain the levels of a few years back. Story in The Deal (via DealBook) is talking about a lot fewer venture capital firms funding a lot fewer companies.

It could upset the technology finance food chain -- the startup, the VC firm, the M&A adviser, the IPO underwriter -- in an unprecedented way, and make the establishment of a home-run, game-changing new company like Google a thing of the past.

Such naysaying has popped up before. Right after the 2000-2001 tech bust, there were those who essentially wrote off the Internet. Still, this time could be different - and it could upend the way tech upstarts have been financed.

During the first half of 2009, only six venture-backed companies went public. M&A stats are equally dismal: The value of tech deals announced during the first half of 2009 was roughly $58 billion, the lowest level for that period in five years. Partly because of this lack of returns from their investment portfolios, prominent venture capitalists have been predicting a shakeout among their ranks. Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley, for instance, last month argued that the VC industry could be decimated as institutional backers, stung by losses, become far more conservative.