Earlier this month, we wrote about some of the mammoth venture deals that helped add up to $355 million worth of investments in Massachusetts startups in January. But don’t think we’ve forgotten about the little guys.
These are what we call our under-the-radar deals, typically worth between $100,000 and $1 million (though the January list contains a deal smaller than that). Those numbers, tracked by New York-based private company intelligence platform CB Insights, are in now, and we think they have a lot to tell us about what’s going on in the innovation scene.
We look at both equity and debt forms of financing on this list, and see their smaller dollar values as valuable indicators of the New England startup landscape. The reports often tell us which new companies are about to emerge out of stealth mode or spin out a new product, and frequently these end up being companies we highlight in bigger stories later on down the line.
There were 13 of these financings in the month of January, with eight in equity, four in debt-based funding, and one that represents a security to be acquired through the exercise of option or warrants, according to the SEC filing. Software and cleantech companies showed up prominently on the list.
December saw a higher number of under-the-radar financings (21), but January had some bigger-sized deals than the month before it. There were three million-dollar financings on January’s list, with $1 million in debt to security software company eIQnetworks, $1 million in equity to DNA mapping company U.S. Genomics, and another $1 million in equity to Green Earth Technologies, developers of biodegradable patent-pending motor oil, as well as other home and lawn products.
As usual, Massachusetts took the biggest share of these deals, at 10. Connecticut pulled in two such deals, and New Hampshire had
