VC Roundup: 2009 slightly less depressing than 2008, Google invests in DreamIt grad

Welcome to our brand new weekly round-up, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line or corner us at our next meetup.

DEFINITE READS

The National Venture Capital Association has published its yearly “exit poll” tracking VC-funded company exits. IPOs were higher in 2009 in year-over-year numbers, but M&A activity declined slightly. Both metrics are still lower than pre-recession numbers.

Boston-based DreamIt Ventures grad SCVNGR has just received $4 million from Google Ventures. The company, makers of location-based gaming platforms, is profitable with over $1 million in revenue in its first year.

After the jump, the passing of a local VC leader and the firm that is touring New York City incubator spaces as if it were on a pub crawl.

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Shop Talk: Philadelphia’s venture capital community on Twitter

Image courtesy of millionclues.com

If you have ever shown a friend or relative Twitter, you were probably met with a response along the lines of, “Why would I ever want to use this?”

Mostly, it’s hard to quantify the usefulness of a tool such as Twitter, but the startup and venture capital research Web site Chubbybrain has given it their best shot by asking the question: Do VCs who use Twitter invest in more startups?

The report is an interesting look at how venture capital firms use Twitter while judging its effectiveness. But, as expected, the report focuses mostly on VCs in California, Boston and New York. That got us thinking, what local VC’s are on Twitter?
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