Venture Beat: The incredible shrinking venture capital industry

By Anthony Ha

The venture capital industry is still shrinking, and not just in terms of the amount of money it’s investing or raising — there are fewer firms in the business, according to new data compiled by Dow Jones VentureSource and published in the Wall Street Journal.

In 2008, the number of active firms (those that made at least one investment in the United States) fell 5.6 percent to 868. And that number has been declining steadily since 2000, when there were 1,229 active investors. Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association released numbers looking at the problem from a different angle, but finding the same result: (more)