San Diego Report on Innovation Economy Still Shows Mixed Picture of Economic Recovery

Private Investment in Public Equities (PIPE) deals for more than $100 million. Two San Diego companies also went public through initial public offerings (IPOs) valued at $237.6 million.

—Researchers found that 1,094 federal patents were granted to San Diego researchers and inventors during the second quarter—a 22 percent gain over the 898 patents that were issued during the preceding quarter and the most patents granted in the past two years. Data for the same quarter last year was not included, but the Innovation Report says San Diego accounted for 17 percent of the patent applications published in California during the quarter and 12 percent of the patents granted.

—Venture capital funding of San Diego continues to drop, with the total VC investment of $171 million representing a 33 percent drop from the $257 million that flowed into San Diego during the second quarter of 2009. Venture capital funding went to 24 companies during Q2 of this year and 26 companies in Q2 of 2009. The report also notes that VC funding in San Diego was down nearly 70 percent from 2007 pre-recession levels, and had dropped 24 percent compared to the first quarter of 2010, when $226 million went to 31 companies.

—The Innovation Report also lists the top 10 local startups that received venture capital funding during the quarter, courtesy of the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. We saw most of the deals on this list previously, with the exception of Tandem Diabetes, which the MoneyTree report had included in its list for the first quarter of 2010: 1) Sonexa Therapeutics, $37.2 million; 2) Astute Medical, $26.6 million; 3) Nereus Pharmaceuticals, $20 million; 4) Zeebo, $13.5 million; 5) Aragon Pharmaceuticals, $12. Million; 6) Otonomy, $10.6 million; 7) Imagine Communications, $10 million; 8) Pervasive, $6 million; 9) Evoke Pharma, $6 million; 10) AltheaDx, $6 million.

—Overall technology employment in San Diego County has decreased about 3 percent over the past two years, while San Diego’s overall employment has fallen by 7.6 percent over the same period. New data from the National University System Institute for Policy Research shows

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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.