The final days of the third quarter may have marked the start of the freefalling economy, but the third quarter as a whole was a healthy one for venture capital investments. For the July-to-September period, just over 900 deals added up to $7.1 billion of activity by venture capitalists, totals that are within historic norms for venture capital investing. That’s the good word from the MoneyTree Report issued Saturday morning by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. But there were cautionary words as well. ‘While overall venture investing hasn’t yet been impacted by the turmoil in the financial markets, as evidenced by the $7 billion plus invested in Q3, we do expect to see a dip in investing over the next several quarters,’ Tracy T. Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in a statement. The dollar figures for the third quarter were down about 7 percent sequentially from the second quarter ($7.7 billion in 1,033 deals). That works out, though, to a rise of about 5 percent in the average value of a deal, to $7.8 million. First-time deals tallied $1.5 billion in the third quarter, a 12 […]