When it came to startup investing in the Northwest last month, it was a bit of a give and take. Washington-based companies raised about $21 million across three deals, each worth more than $1 million, plummeting from the $53.5 million that companies pulled in across 10 such transactions in February.
But the number of “under-the-radar” deals—what we call startup financings worth less than $1 million—more than doubled from February to March. We tracked 11 transactions under $1 million for the region last month, a jump from the five under-the-radar deals that area startups inked in February. The stats are courtesy of our partner CB Insights, a New York-based private company intelligence platform.
The trend was not unique to the Northwest. Across the country, the list of smaller deals trumped their larger counterparts. The New England under-the-radar funding list for March was the longest we had seen all year, while Massachusetts companies pulled in the smallest amount of funding this year in the monthly list of bigger venture deals we reported on.
In March, 10 Northwest under-the-radar financings went to companies in Washington, while one Portland, OR-based company nabbed some funding ($500,000 in equity for wind turbine maker Skyron Systems). Of the 11-transaction list, six deals were in equity and five were based in debt. The top deal was a $853,288 offering of equity, options, and warrants that went to Moseo, a Kirkland, WA-based company behind the website SeniorHomes.com, an online directory of elderly care information (which just changed its name last week).
There are a few companies that, while not at the top of the list, are worth noting. We might not have included Mad Fiber, a Seattle-based maker of carbon bicycle wheels—except for the fact that it is working out of a former bakery, and using the ovens and freezers that previously played a role in constructing dough and pastries as part of its manufacturing process. (Now that’s innovation you can’t ignore.) HomePipe Networks, a Seattle company that pulled in $215,000 in debt-based funding, also struck my interest. It is making networking software that enables you to access content on your home computer anywhere, using your mobile phone. And there’s Fridge Door, a Seattle Web startup that’s too stealthy for a website at this point, but has what I think is a cool name.
We saw a few names on the March under-the-radar list that are familiar to us. We wrote about online travel site Yapta when it raised a $2 million Series B round last June. In February, the Seattle-based company announced Kayak.com would be powering the flight search engine component of its website. Yapta showed up on our under-the-radar list with a $300,000 mixed offering of debt, options, and warrants. Also, Iverson Genetic Diagnostics reprised its spot on the under-the-radar list, with a $110,000 transaction of debt, options, and warrants in March. (The Bothell, WA-based company also made it on the February list with $341,000 in equity-based funding.)
Check out the full list of under-the-radar transactions below:
| Moseo | Kirkland, WA | Providers of SeniorHomes.com, an online elderly care directory | Equity* | $853,288 |
| Playteau | Seattle, WA | A stealthy video game company | Debt | $620,000 |
| Skyron Systems | Portland, OR | A maker of vertical-axis wind turbines | Equity | $500,000 |
| Lightfleet | Camas, WA | A developer of multiprocessing computing systems that use light to speed up data flow | Equity | $375,000 |
| Fridge Door | Seattle, WA | A stealthy Web startup | Equity | $350,000 |
| Yapta | Seattle, WA | An online travel site that tracks airfare and hotel prices | Debt* | $300,000 |
| Headsprout | Seattle, WA | A maker of interactive learning programs | Debt* | $256,751 |
| Buuteeq | Seattle, WA | A provider of hosted digital marketing services for small and medium hotels | Equity | $249,999 |
| HomePipe Networks | Seattle, WA | A provider of mobile networking software allowing users to access information on their home computers | Debt* | $215,000 |
| Mad Fiber | Seattle, WA | A bicycle wheel maker operating out of a former bakery | Equity | $200,000 |
| Iverson Genetic Diagnostics | Bothell, WA | A developer of advanced genetic testing | Debt* | $110,000 |
*includes options or warrants
