Inspite of worldwide competition from regions like Europe, Japan, Australia, China, India or Russia, Silicon Valley still leads the world of venture capital.
In the US, the region alone is responsible for about 35% of the U.S. total VC investments which reached about $30 billion last year. Now if you count Southern California, which includes, according to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, then the Western state alone attracted nearly half of all VC investments in the U.S. WOW!!!!
At a breakfast presentation on Biotech investments hosted by SD Forum, PwC director Steve Bengston (pictured) gave a bit more "colour" to all these numbers that have been thrown around since his firm reported the results last Friday.

- U.S. VCs invested nearly $30 billion in 2007, up about 11% percent from the previous year;
- The money went primarly to Software (open source and hosted software as a service/SaaS) and then to Biotech, Internet/Web 2.0 companies and rapidly closing the gap, Cleantech (from virtually nothing 5 years ago);
- In Silicon Valley, then the Boston area tied with Southern California, which attracted investments in Digital media/Entertainment, Biotech and Wireless;
- Life science/Biotech investments represent 25-30% of the total VC investments, roughly over 10B$;
- And the average VC investment in a start-up was about $4 million. The money is not a problem he said!

Although impressive, VC investments level in 2007 represents however a drop of 70% from the peak back in 2000. But those were the good old days and might never happen again...

"In the 1980s, VCs were a pretty major driving force in the economy and they were spending $1 billion a year. And that's John Doerr lunch budget right now [WOW!]", said Bengston.

Bengston video interview after the jump.

What's Hot and What's Not
In this interview, Bengston also mentioned the sectors that lost favour with investors such as Entreprise software and Telecom.