When it came to raking in venture dollars, things slowed down in Massachusetts in the month of February. Maybe it was the shorter calendar month, the typically frigid and dreary weather, or the fact New Englanders are just antsy for spring. In February Bay State startups pulled in $203 million across 26 financings in the $1 million-plus range, down from the sizeable $355.2 million raised in 28 deals in the first month of 2010.
New England’s under-$1 million deals—which like the larger deals we track with the help of data from our partner, CB Insights, a New York-based private company intelligence platform—chugged along at about the same pace in February as in January. In February, the region saw nine of these “under-the-radar” financings, each worth from $125,0000 to $850,000, with funding based in equity, debt, and other types of securities. January saw 10 sub-$1 million deals (though to confuse matters we included a couple of additional, $1 million financings on the month’s list).
February’s list shows that equity-based funding is still outweighing debt deals in the under-the-radar transactions. Five of the financings were based in equity, three were debt-related, and one involved a security to be acquired through the exercise of options and warrants. Investors went after a diverse array of companies, too. The February under-the-radar pack included startups working on hybrid technology, medical devices, health IT, industrial products, the semantic Web, audio transcription software, and e-commerce.
Companies based in Massachusetts took in all but one of the deals on the list; the exception being the $150,000 in equity-based funding that went to Norwalk, CT’s HealthPrize Technologies, another company crafting technology for reminding patients to take their meds. (Ryan wrote about this trend
