Stepping Down in San Diego: Venture Funding and Our Top 10 List of Fourth Quarter VC Deals

terms of the level of activity,” Kleeburg told me by phone this morning. “What we’re seeing, though, is that it still takes a lot of time to get these deals done.”

One explanation worth pondering comes in an Xconomist post today from Michael Greeley of Boston’s Flybridge Capital Partners. Greeley, who also is chairman of the New England Venture Capital Association, suggests that the political uncertainty surrounding the repeal of healthcare reform has made VCs reluctant to invest in new life sciences ventures.

However you slice it, the downturn is concerning—which means the 2011 venture outlook slated for tomorrow at the San Diego Venture Group’s monthly breakfast meeting should be an interesting discussion.

MoneyTree also provided a list of San Diego’s top 10 venture deals of the fourth quarter, with investors noted below as they are listed in the report.

—Fallbrook Technologies, $39.2 million, Emerald Technology Ventures AG, NGEN Partners, Robeco Private Equity, and undisclosed investors.

—aTyr Pharma, $23 million, Alta Partners, Cardinal Partners, Domain Associates, Polaris Venture Partners.

—Genomatica, $21.3 million, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and undisclosed investor.

—Aires Pharmaceuticals, $20 million, MPM Capital, ProQuest Investments.

— EMN8, $12.2 million, Allegis Capital (aka: Media Technology Ventures), Sid R. Bass Associates.

— Ceregene, $11.5 million, Hamilton BioVentures, Investor Growth Capital, MPM Capital.

—Kyriba, $10.6 million, Iris Capital Management, SAS Investors, Seventure Partners.

—Nirvanix, $10.4 million, Intel Capital, Mission Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Windward Ventures.

—Ortiva Wireless, $8 million, Artiman Ventures, Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital, Mission Ventures.

—Verdezyne, $6.3 million, Monitor Venture Management, OVP Venture Partners, and undisclosed investor.

The surveys done by VentureSource and the MoneyTree Report (which is prepared by the National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Thomson Reuters) don’t line up because each uses different sources and methods to collect and count venture deals. VentureSource ranks the $23 million invested in aTyr Pharma as the biggest San Diego deal in the fourth quarter. MoneyTree counts Fallbrook Technologies’ $39.2 million as its No. 1, but does not include a $10 million investment in Histogen listed by VentureSource.

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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.