Venture funding plummets
Rafe pointed to a News.com article I'd missed, from July 30, 2002:
A mere $5.7 billion was handed out to start-up companies in the second quarter of this year, the lowest amount since 1998, according to a new survey.
And Red Herring stalwart Julie Landry wrote:
As capital has become more scarce, access to it has increased in value...in 2001, only $37 billion in venture capital was raised, and the IPO market netted just $3.2 billion, according to Thomson Financial, a research firm. By contrast, in 1999 and 2000, startups raised $156 billion in venture capital--more than the total of the prior ten years--and $39 billion through IPOs.