San Diego’s Top 10 Deals: Q3 VC Funding Still Strongly Favors Life Sciences

Venture funding for high tech companies made a stronger showing during the third quarter, but life science deals still accounted for more than half the capital invested in the San Diego area, according to the latest MoneyTree Report. Venture investments in local biotech, medical diagnostics, and device companies also made up the most of the deals counted during the second quarter.

Of the $231 million total that was invested in 32 San Diego companies during the quarter, $129.7 million (56 percent) was invested in 17 companies (53 percent) specializing in drug discovery and development, diagnostics, or medical devices.

In the previous quarter, 72 percent of the total VC investment in the region ($148 million of the $204.9 million total) went to life science startups. In the same quarter of 2009, San Diego’s life science companies got 65 percent of the total ($163 million of the $252 million total).

The total amount of all venture capital invested in the San Diego region increased about 13 percent from the previous quarter (when $204.9 million went into 28 companies). But it was down 8 percent from the same quarter of 2009 (when $252 million was invested in 36 companies). The MoneyTree Report is prepared by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm through a partnership with the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters.

Media and Entertainment startups in the San Diego area got the second biggest share of venture capital, with three companies receiving $61.6 million (27 percent) of the total invested.

San Diego’s software sector accounted for the third biggest chunk of venture capital, with $19.3 million (8 percent) invested in five deals.

Here is a list of the top 10 deals in San Diego, based on data from MoneyTree:

1. SkinIt, San Diego. Provides adhesive “skins” to personalize laptops, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics. $60 million. Investors include ABS Capital Partners, Northwest Equity Partners.

2. Otonomy, San Diego. Developing drug treatments for hearing loss and balance disorders. $38.5 million. Investors: Novo Ventures, RiverVest Venture Partners, Avalon Ventures, Domain Associates, TPG Biotech.

3. AutoGenomics, Vista, CA. Provides automated microarray-based diagnostic technology for identifying

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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.