COVID-19 fails to stop the march of the unicorns

We're digging into Q2 2020 venture capital results this week.

Today we are exploring U.S.-specific results after taking a broader perspective yesterday. As with every quarter, our goal is to understand how strong, or not, the domestic and global VC markets are so that we can better follow the pace of startup dealmaking.

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TechCrunch will explore specific metros in the coming days, but today we're sticking to numbers that detail the whole United States's second-quarter venture outcome.

The results may surprise you. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and huge disruptions to how companies large and small work, VCs put lots of capital to work in American startups during Q2. While total dollars put to work were down compared to Q1 2020 and the year-ago period, the declines were modest. And unicorns appeared to have a moderately good quarter to boot.

This morning we're leaning on fresh data from the MoneyTree Report, compiled by business data company CB Insights and its partner, PwC.

Our goal is not to perish under a crushing tower of numbers, but to snag only the most important trends and squeeze them for all they can tell us. Let's go!