A good or bad time for IPO?

Lost amid the wild volatility of the market was the fact that a very brave company was supposed to go public today. Fluidigm, a biotech company based in San Francisco, was the second IPO this quarter. It's not clear to me that it actually went out or if it was delayed, but given the huge gains in the markets across the board, this would have been a good day to issue.

UPDATE 9/22: It turns out that the IPO was indeed postponed to today due to "market volatility."

That said, when I read about the IPO on Monday, I couldn't believe they were still going through with it.  Given the latest crescendo in the credit crisis, I've been looking for data points about how it is impacting the venture capital market. The WSJ article on the Fluidigm IPO paints a very interesting picture. It cites information from the National Venture Capital Association that states that "5% of venture-fund exits to be through IPO this year," compared to 20% in recent years. As the vast majority come through mergers and acquisition, in some cases this requires capital to pull off, so even this form of exit strategy is at more risk now.

Will this trickle down into VC funds themselves and slow down deals, or stall entrepreneurial activity?  I'm still looking for more evidence of this, but I guess only time will tell.