Available data show that venture activity was already in a broad downturn before Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed, and that the months immediately after the collapse did not see private markets “seize up” or funding rounds drop to roughly half their pre‑SVB pace.

1. Deal activity and funding volumes after March 2023

• Global monthly funding:

  • February 2023 global VC funding fell below $20B and was already at a two‑year low. (nasdaq.com)
  • April 2023, the first full month after SVB’s collapse, saw about $21B in global funding, down 56% year‑over‑year but described as the second‑lowest month since July 2022—i.e., continuing an existing slide rather than a new, abrupt freeze. (news.crunchbase.com)
  • May 2023 funding was about $22B, roughly flat with April (and ~44% below May 2022), with commentary that April–May funding was averaging just above $20B, in line with 2018–2020 levels and simply “well below” the boom of 2021/early‑2022. (news.crunchbase.com)
    These levels represent a large decline versus the 2021 peak, but they are similar to, not half of, the pace already seen in late 2022 and early 2023.

• US deal counts:

  • Q1 2023 (which includes the SVB episode) already had only 2,856 observed US deals totaling $37B—the lowest quarterly deal count since 2013—reflecting a downturn driven mainly by rates and macro conditions, not SVB alone. (ssti.org)
  • In Q2 2023, the PitchBook–NVCA Venture Monitor noted that US deal counts “leveled off,” with just over 4,000 deals in the quarter and early stage posting its fourth‑most‑active quarter ever, remaining above pre‑2021 figures. (forteventures.com)
  • For full‑year 2023, estimated US VC deal count was 15,766, only modestly below 2022’s 16,464 and still above 2020 and prior years—far from a 50% collapse in the pace of financings. (ssti.org)

Taken together, this shows no evidence that in the “next few months” after SVB the number of funding rounds fell to about half of the pre‑SVB pace. The downturn was real but more like a 20–40% reduction versus 2022, and it was underway well before March 2023.

2. Term sheets and market “seizure”

There is anecdotal evidence that some deals were delayed, repriced, or renegotiated:

• Articles describing the immediate aftermath speak of a “cooling effect,” more cautious investors, and some pending term sheets being renegotiated as risk was reassessed. (fastercapital.com)

But major contemporaneous reporting also stresses that VC equity funding did not stop:

• A Fortune piece on March 21, 2023 quotes one VC calling SVB’s impact an “incremental pumping of the brakes” and “not a hard reset,” and notes that VCs were still issuing term sheets during and immediately after the crisis. (fortune.com)
• A MedTech‑focused analysis shortly after the collapse predicts a return to “business as usual” for equity financing (while warning that venture debt, not equity, would be notably harder to raise for several months). (medtechdive.com)

So while some term sheets were indeed pulled or revised, the evidence points to a temporary disruption and tighter terms, not a broad, sustained seizure where “many” existing term sheets vanished and new financings largely stopped.

3. What did tighten meaningfully: venture debt, not equity deal count

SVB’s collapse clearly hit venture debt:

• SVB held about 50% market share in US venture debt; its failure contributed to a 38% year‑over‑year decline in venture debt issuance in the following quarter, and lenders became significantly more selective. (transacted.io)

But Friedberg’s prediction was specifically about VC fundings/rounds and term sheets in private equity markets, not just debt. On that core point, the quantitative data show a continued slowdown rather than a new halving of activity immediately post‑SVB.

Conclusion

Friedberg accurately anticipated that the environment would worsen and investors would focus more on triaging existing portfolios. However, the concrete elements of his prediction—markets “seizing,” many term sheets being pulled, and funding rounds dropping to roughly half the pre‑SVB pace in the ensuing months of 2023—are not borne out by the available venture data or by broad industry reporting. The downturn was significant but more gradual and was already in progress.

Therefore this prediction is best classified as: wrong.