Venture Surveys Show Nationwide Increase, More or Less, in Second-Quarter Investments

venture deal—and there may be room for varying interpretations, for example, in how tranched venture investments get counted. Differences also arise in the way industry sectors are categorized. For example, renewable energy is included as part of the cleantech sector in the MoneyTree Report, but Dow Jones VentureSource categorizes renewable energy as part of its energy and utilities sector.

Some other observations from the data:

—CB Insights notes that three states, California, Massachusetts, and New York accounted for 65 percent of the deals and 70 percent of the venture capital that was invested during the three months that ended June 30. The Golden State alone accounted for 43 percent of the deals and 53 percent of the funding, with most of those deals and investments happening in and around San Francisco. Of the $5.9 billion and 612 deals that CB Insights counted during the quarter, California accounted for $3.06 billion and 264 deals.

—The biggest discrepancy among the reports involves investments and deals in the cleantech sector. The MoneyTree Report found that venture firms invested $1.47 billion in 71 cleantech deals nationwide during the second quarter. That’s double the $708.8 million that was invested in 70 cleantech deals during the first quarter of 2010—and breaks the quarterly record for cleantech funding, according to MoneyTree. But CB Insight reports that cleantech funding dropped 20 percent from the first quarter and the deal count sank by 35 percent. CB Insight found $1.05 billion was invested in 55 cleantech deals during the quarter, which isn’t that far off from MoneyTree’s numbers. But in the previous quarter CB Insight said more than $1.3 billion was invested in 85 cleantech deals.

—The MoneyTree Report and Dow Jones VentureSource agreed on one thing—the single biggest venture deal of the quarter was the $350 million that venture firms invested in Better Place, a Palo Alto, CA-based startup developing batteries and charging stations for electric vehicles. Dow Jones said the investors include HSBC Bank, Maniv BioVentures, Morgan Stanley, and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.