Venture investing in the life sciences has been declining over the past year or so, along with a contraction in the number of VC firms that are actively investing. Yet San Diego’s Avalon Ventures, which also has a strong presence in Boston, seems to be running contrary to the industry’s overall trend.
The venture firm—which closed its ninth and largest fund only about 18 months ago—is now embarking on fundraising for its 10th investment fund, according to a Dow Jones report yesterday by Hilary Canada. The firm plans to raise at least $200 million, according to the report.
Avalon founder Kevin Kinsella was mum on the topic when I talked with him by phone, saying he’s precluded by legal concerns from talking at this time.
Still, it’s worth noting that it typically takes a venture firm close to three years to invest a new fund, yet Kinsella and partners Jay Lichter, Rich Levandov, Steve Tomlin, and Brady Bohrmann (with help from venture partner Court Turner) committed the resources of Avalon IX in about half that time. The firm also focuses its resources on seed and early stage companies, often creating its own opportunities by founding its own life sciences and information technology startups.
The most prominent name in Avalon’s portfolio is probably Zynga, a prescient investment that was led by Levandov, who is based in Boston. More recently, the firm has backed a couple of Cambridge, MA-based startups, Backupify and Kinvey, as well as Seattle’s Cardeas Pharma, and
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.
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