U.S.-based early-stage investor:<\/strong> My goal is to deploy the same amount every year, but the climate has led to far less interesting companies\/founders raising rounds, so I will probably deploy 20%-30% of what I want to.<\/p>\n

Bruce Hamilton, founder, Mech Ventures:<\/strong> We are contemplating decreasing our check size so we can double our number of investments from 75 to 140.<\/p>\n

Damien Steel, managing partner, OMERS Ventures: <\/strong>We believe there will be incredible investment opportunities available over the coming years and are excited to continue the same pace of deployment we have had in the past. I would expect international funding into Europe to slow over the coming year as GPs are put under pressure. We view this as a great opportunity to lean in.<\/p>\n

California-based VC:<\/strong> New deployments have halted for us, and remaining funds are being directed to follow-on rounds for our existing portfolio.<\/p>\n

Ba Minuzzi, founder and general partner, UMANA House of Funds:<\/strong> The current economic climate has had a massive positive impact on our deployment strategy. I\u2019m excited for Q1 2023 and the entire year of 2023 for the opportunities coming to us. The end of 2022 has been a great awakening for founders. It\u2019s time to be disciplined with burn and very creative with growth. Times of scarcity create the best founders.<\/p>\n

Dave DeWalt, founder, MD and CEO, NightDragon: <\/strong>We won\u2019t be changing our deployment strategy much despite macro conditions. This is for a few reasons, most of which are rooted in the continued importance and investment in our core market category of cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy.<\/p>\n

We see a massive market opportunity in this space, which has an estimated TAM of $400 billion. This opportunity has remained strong and expanded, even as the larger economy struggles, because cyber budgets have remained highly resilient despite company cutbacks in other budget areas. For instance, in a recent survey of CISOs in our Advisor community, 66% said they expect their cyber budgets to increase in 2023.<\/p>\n

Innovation is also still in demand above and beyond what is available today as the threat environment worsens globally. Each of these factors gives us confidence in continued investment and delivering outcomes for our LPs.<\/p>\n

Ben Miller, co-founder, Fundrise: <\/strong>The economic climate will get worse before it gets better. Although the financial economy has already been repriced, with multiples moving back to historical norms, the real economy will be the next to turn downward. That will cut back growth rates or even reduce revenue, magnifying valuation compression even more than what we\u2019ve already seen so far.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re responding to these circumstances with a new solution: offering uncapped SAFEs to the most promising mid- and late-stage companies. While SAFEs are traditionally used for early-stage companies, we think founders will be very receptive to extending their runways with the fastest, lowest friction investment solution available in the market.<\/p>\n

Dave Zilberman, general partner, Norwest Venture Partners: <\/strong>Ignoring the macro economic climate would be reckless. As such, given that we\u2019re multistage investors, we see the current market as an opportunity to overweight early-stage investments at the seed and Series A stages.<\/p>\n

Economic headwinds won\u2019t impede the need for more developer solutions; developers support the basis of competition in a digital world. As developer productivity and efficiency will be of even greater importance, solutions with a clear ROI will excel.<\/p>\n