Tim Rowe says he has happy news to share at the Cambridge Innovation Center’s 10th anniversary party tomorrow night (see main story). The founder and CEO of the rental office facility has long had a spreadsheet showing how much money venture capital firms have invested in CIC companies, and last month, he says, the total cleared the $1 billion mark.
Altogether, 29 companies that are either current or former residents of the CIC have won venture funding. And the exact total of the funds they’ve raised is $1,028,000,000, Rowe says. (The full list of venture-funded CIC companies is below.)
“That is a real milestone for us, because it validates what we are doing in a way that almost nothing else can,” Rowe says. A billion dollars, he notes, is the equivalent of an entire venture fund in the bloated dot-com era, or three or four funds these days.
“To pull in that kind of investment, over a period which is essentially the life of a venture fund—most of the money has come in over the last three to four years—is a simple and strong validation of this homegrown idea that you can bring startups together and have a powerful community that leads entrepreneurs to finding the resources they need to become big and successful,” Rowe says.
Of course, taking office space at the CIC—as some 543 startups have done over the years—is no guarantee that a company will go on to win venture funding. (It doesn’t even improve the chances that New Atlantic Ventures, where Rowe is a venture partner, will take a look, he says.) And most of the companies on Rowe’s $1 billion list would probably have won funding no matter where they were headquartered.
But it is probably fair to say that the kinds of startups that are attracted to the CIC’s fraternal, overcaffeinated, high-achieving atmosphere are also the kinds of companies that tend to fare well in the scramble for attention from venture firms. The list of distinguished venture-funded CIC alumni includes companies familiar to all New England entrepreneurs, such as Carbonite, Ember, Enterprise Mobile, Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, GreatPoint Energy, Hubspot, Luminus Devices, Maven Networks, Thing Magic, Visible Measures, and Zafgen.
Here’s the whole list:
| Companies Currently or Fomerly Housed in the Cambridge Innovation Center That Have Obtained Venture Funding Aileron |
