Venture Capital "Walking Dead" Lists

Alert to entrepreneurs: Do your own due diligence! Here is a good question to ask the VC you are pitching. Ask them whether they are actually capable of funding your venture?

In March Dan Primack of PE Hub blogged a list of venture capital firms he termed the “VC Walking Dead” — firms that by all indication appear to be still in business but lack the cash to bring new investments on board. Camille Ricketts of VentureBeat just published The VC walking dead: Extended edition a fresh look at the Venture Capital industry that tries to sort those that merely appear dead from those that are in fact "among the walking dead".

And this just in from the National Venture Capital Association as reported by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch - Venture Capital Fundraising Is Down Nearly 40 Percent In First Quarter of 2009. Schonfeld had recently reported on poor Venture Capital results across the board in Q1.