Summer Funding (happened so fast)…

It has long been a repeated truism that one can’t raise venture capital over the summer.  Last year a VC actually looked at the data and finds both that an equal proportion of deals close in the summer months, and that his own firm’s busiest closing month was August (followed, oddly, by December, which is usually seen as another holiday taboo).

Out experience here is mixed.  The fastest deal we ever helped close launched in late July (and I had a few sweaty conference calls from a makeshift attic office in Maine), and while we often avoid summer deals, we put seasonality pretty far down the list of important factors.  However I do find that it gives some VCs a relative advantage to others — the firms whose partners either pair up during the process or cover for each other tend to be much more efficient.  I’ve seen a venture firm who moved quickly over the summer leave several other firms in their dust: the latter had partners who were unavailable during vacations, while the former neatly (and seamlessly) passed the baton around. So don’t fear the summer months for fundraising — I think the summer delay says more about the coherence and teamwork among some venture firms than it does about any individual company’s prospects.