Although most industry watchers expected the COVID-19 pandemic to take a toll on the venture capital industry, 2020 turned out to be a boom year for the sector.

“Everybody thought this would be the great reset,” said analyst Jeff Grabow, U.S. venture capital leader at Ernst & Young, who noted a “severe tightening” at the end of the first quarter in 2020. But by the end of the summer, “people said, ‘You know what? It’s really not as bad as we thought it was going to be.’ ” READ MORE