Why the AV Industry has Venture Capitalists Seeing Dollar Signs

Investors are beginning to realize that serious money can be made in the AV industry.

Tim Albright

Recently, it was announced that Verrex was being purchased by an investment group. This marks the fifth or sixth acquisition by venture capitalists in just over the last two months.

From the back and forth over Polycom to AVI-SPL getting traded to new ownership, the AV industry has suddenly become a place for money managers to put their money. But why?

The AV industry has been transitioning into the IT space for well over a decade now. A number of pundits, myself included, have stated the transition is over. You can stop saying convergence now. However, with that transition on the hardware and software side another convergence happened; the business side.

Silicon Valley enjoys great amounts of speculation, venture capital, and angel investors. These are individuals as well as investment groups searching for unicorns and solid investments.

A unicorn is that rare technology company that starts with two programmers in a garage and sells for over a billion dollars. Very rare, very hard to spot. Yes, everyone wants to be a part of that.

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These investors are also looking at solid investments to hedge their bets against the losses they will suffer in the unicorn search. While searching the landscape of the IT industry they too have noticed there is this segment called AV. Upon further research these investment teams realize some money can be made and a deal is struck.

This may very well be the last stage of our convergence with IT. It is certainly an aspect that was a bit unexpected but nothing to be feared. The inclusion into the VC part of IT is actually a good thing.

It means, as an industry, we are being seen as a viable and valuable part of the process and not just something you throw in at the last minute because the client wants to show something on the screen. It introduces AV far in advance of where we have typically be brought in. And, that, is never a bad thing.

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