Changes

The goal of Venture Capital is to stimulate growing businesses by providing capital with the expectation of appreciation. Venture capitalists will invest in whichever businesses they see fit. While the precise definition of "fit" companies varies by venture capitalist, there are industry-wide trends. Take, for instance, the dot com boom. In that time period, Venture Capital reached an all time high of $27M in 1999 [https://www.statista.com/chart/2732/venture-capital-investments-in-the-us/]. Like in any other market, there are trends in VC investment. Moreover, these trends tend to reflect greater movements within the economy (as we saw with the boom in '99-'01, the decline in the recession).

Our goal is to isolate trends in Venture Capital since 1980, and compare those trends to changes in the Fortune 500 over time. Ideally, our report will segment the changes in VC and the F500 into different categories (sector, US location, time period). Additionally, we are keenly interested in finding which (and what kind) of venture-backed businesses have entered the F500 since '80. Doing this analysis will shed some additional light on the primary focus of this project: isolating and comparing trends in Venture Capital and the Fortune 500.