Q4 Venture Deals, Dollars Stayed Strong, Making 2011 Best in a Decade

Venture capital deals backed off just a tad during the last three months of 2011, but remained strong enough to carry VC activity during the year to a new high-water mark, according to data being released today by CB Insights, a financial data firm that maintains a venture capital database.

VCs invested $7.6 billion in 755 companies nationwide during the fourth quarter, bringing the total for 2011 back to pre-recession levels, with $30.6 billion invested in 3,051 deals. The New York firm says that marks a 10-year high for both dollars and number of deals.

In the regional breakdown, Massachusetts regained its No. 2 ranking, eclipsing venture activity in New York during the fourth quarter. CB Insights reports that a total of $959 million was invested in 93 Bay State deals. In New York, $568 million went into 73 deals, which ranked third in terms of both deals and dollars.

California maintained its usual poll position during the quarter, with the $3.8 billion invested statewide accounting for just over half of the nationwide total and the 300 deals representing 40 percent of the total U.S. number. There wasn’t a lot of variation in California’s deal count over the previous four quarters, but the capital invested during the quarter was 45 percent higher than the $2.6 billion that went into the Golden State during the same quarter of 2010.

In Washington State, venture activity remained well behind the big three, with $146 million invested in 24 deals during the quarter, prompting the wags at CB Insights to write, “We’ll bring back our ‘Sleeping in Seattle’ metaphor as Washington continued its

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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.