Venture capital has now become a global phenomenon. Here is the (1)_____ status of each major region that has venture capital activity. (2)_____, the definition of venture capital, (3)_____ coined 50 years ago at Harvard Business School, meant (4)_____ capital for new or very young ventures. Over time, (5)_____, and especially outside the US and Canada, it has become a coverall name for any type of equity related financing for privately held companies. To make matters even more (6)_____, some US venture capital firms have begun delving into 'transactional' finance more (7)_____ to the investment banking community. This is, however, a limited phenomenon. Indeed, the influx of (8)_____ fund money into the venture capital market has been both a curse and a blessing. Firms found themselves battling to place their newly (9)_____ funds with a (10)_____ number of specialized hi-tech firms. The result was a series of losses in the early 1990s. Venture capitalists then became immersed in transactional financing as a result of their (11)_____ in business acquisitions. Historically, the venture capitalists had sat at the end of the table representing the company being (12)_____. At some point, they began to see opportunities in financing such (13)_____ and in other investment banking type activities. In the long (14)_____, however, venture capitalists will back out of investment banking type activities and focus on what they are best at, risking capital investments in (15)_____ companies. What is required to place their capital and still realize their (16)_____ is a ramp up in staff. In the 1980s, many of the firms were quite small and (17)_____ on specific areas of technology where they had in (18)_____ knowledge. In the 1990s the successful firms have (19)_____ management staff, (20)_____ into more than one area of technology, and outsourced more of their technological analysis to very specialized experts.