Yesterday, we talked about ChubbyBrain’s better processes & technology leading to a more accurate read on quarterly venture capital activity.  In that post, we attributed the disparity between our numbers and those of Dow Jones VentureSource to a combination of (1) methodological and (2) definitional differences, with the former more dramatically driving the delta than the latter.  Our analysis, however, zeroed in on the methodological differences, as ChubbyBrain’s definitions for what to include/exclude in the venture funding report fairly closely matched those of VentureSource…

…or so we thought before before hearing from the folks at PwC MoneyTree.  In a VentureBeat article from yesterday, Anthony Ha writes about the Dow Jones VentureSource methodology as follows:

Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of venture capital at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the difference boils down to varying methodologies. VentureSource includes debt financing while the MoneyTree report doesn’t, he said, so MoneyTree is a better indicator of “permanent investment.”

This appears to be in direct contradiction to Dow Jones VentureSource’ claims they include only equity investments bringing the company’s definitional rigor into question.

To be clear, ChubbyBrain does not include debt financing of any kind in its venture statistics or in our quarterly venture capital activity reports.  So let us revise what we said yesterday: given that Dow Jones VentureSource apparently includes debt financing in their venture capital report, our numbers are more accurate than Dow Jones VentureSource for both definitional and methodological reasons.

Update:  In an email received from Dow Jones, VentureSource’s Kim Gagliardi says the above statement by PwC’s Tracy Lefteroff is not true — According to Dow Jones, it doesn’t include debt financing in its numbers.