Life Sciences Firms Grab VC Dollars, ViaSat-1 Ready for Launch, EarthRisk Offers 40-Day Forecasts, & More San Diego BizTech News

While venture capital activity remained relatively constant in year-over-year funding for San Diego companies, most of the capital went to local life sciences companies. It was a big week for VC news, and our briefing begins now.

—A regional breakout of venture activity from the MoneyTree Report shows that 29 startups in San Diego received a total of $198.2 million during the second quarter that ended June 30. That’s an 8 percent decline from the $215.7 million that VCs sunk into 30 deals during the same quarter last year, according to MoneyTree data. Life sciences deals accounted for 97 percent of the total in the recent quarter. The biggest information technology deal was nearly $1.6 million for Verve Wireless.

—A rival survey of venture activity from Dow Jones VentureSource found that VCs invested $152.2 million in 17 deals in San Diego during the second quarter. That’s a 4.4 percent increase in capital and slight decline in deals since the same quarter last year, when Dow Jones counted $145.8 million in 18 deals. The two surveys are not comparable because they use different sources and different methods of counting deals.

—The Backplane, a Web-based startup backed by the mistress of pop Lady Gaga, was listed among the San Diego companies that got $1 million in venture funding during the three months that ended June 30, according to a breakout of venture activity from the MoneyTree Report. The Backplane has operations in San Diego and Palo Alto, CA, according to Davis Corley, director of operations at Tomorrow Ventures, which also invested in the startup.

—Lisa Bicker resigned as CEO of CleanTech San Diego, the non-profit industry group that has worked for two years to stimulate innovation in renewable energy and clean and green technologies, as well as sustainable business practices. Jim Waring, a co-founder and chairman of CleanTech San Diego, is her successor as CEO, effective Aug. 1.

—A comprehensive report on San Diego’s innovation economy during the first three months of this year counted 70 new startups—double the 35 new companies formed during the same quarter in 2010. The Connect Innovation Report also showed that

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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.