The latest venture capital stats for the first quarter of 2011 are a mixed bag. Maybe it’ll take a little longer for the Boston area to witness what a lot of people are calling the new tech bubble.
Venture firms poured $639 million into 90 New England companies in the first three months of this year. That’s down 19 percent from the $790 million that was invested (in 102 deals) in the same period a year ago. But it’s a 13 percent increase over the $566 million (in 93 deals) in the fourth quarter of 2010.
That’s all according to the MoneyTree Report, prepared by the National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Thomson Reuters. (The trend is in rough agreement with the Massachusetts numbers from CB Insights, which my colleague Bruce summarized yesterday.)
Looking at the 10 biggest New England investments from the quarter (see below), about half of them were biotech-related, but the top deal went to Harvest Power, a waste-to-energy startup. And tech/software companies accounted for three deals.
Here’s the top 10 VC deals list for the first quarter, according to MoneyTree, with links to our coverage:
1. Harvest Power, Waltham, MA, $51.7 million
2. RainDance Technologies, Lexington, MA, $37.5 million
3. Genocea Biosciences, Cambridge, MA, $35.1 million
4. HubSpot, Cambridge, MA, $32 million
5. CardioFocus, Marlborough, MA, $30.6 million
6. Movik Networks, Littleton, MA, $25 million
7. Constitution Medical Investors, Boston, MA, $20 million (a little bit about this investment firm here)
8. Euthymics Bioscience, Cambridge, MA, $17.2 million
9. Living Proof, Cambridge, MA, $16 million
10. Gemvara, Lexington, MA, $15 million
And here are some other notable financings we’ve seen in the past three months that didn’t make MoneyTree’s top 10 list from Q1:
—Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, MA, $40 million (might count for Q2 2011)
—Qteros, Marlborough, MA, $22 million (might be from Q4 2010)
—Jumptap, Cambridge, MA, $20 million (company hasn’t confirmed any details)
—iWalk, Cambridge, MA, $15 million (might be from Q4 2010)
—SCVNGR, Cambridge, MA, $15 million (might be from Q4 2010)
—SustainX, West Lebanon, NH, $14.4 million
—ExaGrid Systems, Westborough, MA, $10.6 million (the only Boston-area firm in the Wall Street Journal’s recent list of top 50 venture-backed companies)
—DataXu, Boston, MA, $10 million (from the MoneyTree list, but not reported in the media)
