Venture Activity Rises Nationwide, Daylight Solutions’ Infrared Technology Heating Up, Smaller Startups Are Hiring Fewer, & More San Diego BizTech News

The venture news was flying last week like beach chairs in a hurricane, and the Xconomy forecast calls for more venture activity data this week. Get your biztech briefing quick, before I think up any more metaphors.

—We got the early returns on quarterly venture capital activity, and more surveys are expected to follow in the next week or so. The New York financial information firm CB Insights says U.S. VC firms invested $7.6 billion in 768 startups nationwide during the second quarter. That was a 54 percent increase in capital and a 25 percent gain in deals, compared to CB Insights’ data for the same quarter in 2010.

—A pair of reports (one from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association and the other from Dow Jones LP Source) show that pension funds, college endowments, and other institutional investors are putting more money into VC funds. But a smaller number of name-brand funds are grabbing most of the capital. In fact, Dow Jones says seven firms got 80 percent of the $8.1 billion it counted in capital raised during the first half of 2011.

—The Kauffman Foundation released a study that shows startups these days are making do with fewer workers. The study, which highlights the “slow leak” in job creation, said fewer new companies are being formed and those that get started are hiring fewer workers.

—San Diego’s Daylight Solutions raised $15 million in a Series C round of equity financing led by defense giant Northrop Grumman (NYSE: [[ticker:NOC]]). The startup, which specializes in mid-infrared laser technology, recently demonstrated how

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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.