QE has nothing to do with VC
Sure it does. Easy money is easy money. That goes for you and your mortgage at historically low rates, or VCs raising capital. When stimulus is occurring, it's interesting to see where it ends up.
I'm not implying anything nefarious. In fact, I'd say it's working as intended (or at least expected).
That pink line represents the number of seed deals completed, not the amount of money in the system.
Unfortunately, I cannot download the original dataset that Mattermark is using, but using a dataset from Pricewaterhouse Coopers[1], and data from FRED[2], I have run some statistical analysis using R.
My results are here: http://imgur.com/a/eFzs1
In short, the only statistical correlation I can find between QE and Seed capital is a negative one, which would contradict your original hypothesis.
[0]https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/why-is-the-number-of-see...
[1]http://www.pwcmoneytree.com/HistoricTrends/CustomQueryHistor...
Why would you compare quarterly values of seed money to a cumulative total (QE) and expect a correlation? They are completely different series. Try doing a running total for the seed money and the graph will look different. The first and third graphs don't make sense for this reason.
The second graph is better, and you can see there is some correlation. Did you test for lags, or do you assume that QE money would flow instantly into the coffers of institutional investors?
I applaud your effort, but there is more to this analysis than overlaying two graphs. You need to understand the data.
Fed demand for Investment Bonds increases the price of Investment Bonds. When the price of Investment Bonds increases, the demand for other investments increases.
Textbook Econ 101, as the parent comment noted.
If you'll check the source article[0] that the Techcrunch graph was pulled from, you'll see that there is a negative correlation between the Treasury bond yield and the amount of money flowing into seed deals.
According to your Textbook Econ 101, there should be a positive correlation between these two. But the data shows there is not.
[0]https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/why-is-the-number-of-see...