The numbers come from fund-of-funds manager Flag Capital, and recently were cited in a conference presentation by venture capitalist Mark Suster. Here was Suster’s slide:

What’s important about Flag’s data is that it excludes the legions of “zombie” venture capital funds that no longer make new investments. It does so by qualifying “active” firms made a minimum of four new investments over the course of a year (and technically deployed at least $4 million total).

“The original intent of the exercise was to try to get a sense of how many firms are truly active,” explains Kirsten Morin, a vice president with Flag. “Others define ‘active’ as those firms that have raised a fund in the last eight years, but as we look around it doesn’t feel as though there are [hundreds] of active firms today. We specifically excluded follow-on investments to try to gain a better understanding of those firms actually deploying fresh capital versus those just running on fumes — in many cases only deploying capital in follow-ons to avoid dilution (and, of course, with the hope that something would break out and propel them to a successor fund). Interestingly, if you look back to 2000, the shakeout in active firms by that definition actually happened pretty quickly.”

Flag’s data also suggests a modest comeback between 2010 and 2012, perhaps owing to the rise of micro-VC funds by investors who previously were acting as individual angels.

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