Medtech startups were among the sectors most affected by the 30 percent fourth-quarter drop in New York City-based startup seed funding rounds, The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 1.
In the same period, the total amount of seed capital raised fell from $860 million to $447 million. Medtech companies were hit particularly hard because of the explosion in funding for digital health startups over the past couple of years.
"If you think of startup financing as a supply chain of capital — where each stage depends on the next to be successful — what starts in the public market trickles down bit by bit," Matt Turck, a partner at FirstMark Capital, told the Journal. "With the slowdown at the seed stage, that trickle-down process has reached its completion."