New York-based AppNexus has a lot to crow about, given how quickly it has grown over the last five years. The question is: What happens now?

Hard hit by Wall Street’s collapse, devauled public companies are proving too irresistible for VCs to ignore.

“We’ve seen a dramatic uptick in interest by venture capitalists in small cap issuers,” says Steve Fletcher, a managing director at GCA Savvian in San Francisco, who says his investment bank began receiving “many more calls” from VCs beginning in November and December.

“Especially in life sciences, biotechnology, and the IT space, we’ve seen a proliferation of venture firms, coming to us and saying, ‘We’d love to see the PIPES you’re doing,” says Mark Weissman, vice president of equity capital markets at the investment bank Jeffries & Co. “We’ve done at least a dozen PIPE deals involving VCs in recent months.”