<p><pre><code> "So right now I'll chalk the VentureSource valuation data
up to some statistical anomaly. Unless MoneyTree looks
similar tomorrow, at which point we'd really have something
to talk about."
</code></pre>
And then they pushed publish.
Nothing happened. This data is incomplete, "expectation that the dip won't look quite so severe when additional information comes in." And if you look at the other charts, everything is just fine. All this means is that more small deals were done in Q1, rather than big deals. Just stick to comparing A, B, C rounds, not overall value of pre-money rounds.
Dan Primack is a well respected guy, and everyone reads Term Sheet every AM, so I'm inclined to view it as a conversation, not a hunting for page clicks / Huff Po style excercise. But no one, no one reports valuations to VentureSource, so I would question the data in the first place.
Isn't the bulk of this data available already through the Crunchbase API? Seems like this could be calculated in real-time if someone bothered to build it.