Companies in Colorado raised nearly $330.3 million from venture capital investors in the second quarter, a 185 percent jump from what they raised in the prior quarter, and while that increase might have locals smiling, a New York City-based private equity and VC firm might have the most to gain.
Insight Venture Partners made the two biggest deals during the quarter, investing $84 million in Checkmarx and $70 million in Appextremes (doing business as Conga). Both are software companies.
All told, Colorado firms and VCs made 23 deals during the quarter, and the amount raised was a 102 percent year-to-year increase from the $163.3 million raised during the second quarter last year.
The data comes from the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, which uses data compiled by Thomson Reuters.
Here’s a roundup of the top five deals:
—Checkmarx raised $84 million from Insight Venture Partners in a later-stage round. Checkmarx is a software company founded in 2006 in Israel, and one of its headquarters is in Greenwood Village. The firm makes software that developers can use to scan the source code of programs they are writing to find and fix errors that could lead to security vulnerabilities.
—AppExtremes, doing business as Conga, raised $70 million from Insight Venture Partners. Conga was founded in 2006, and its headquarters are in Broomfield. The company makes cloud-based document generation and reporting applications that work with Salesforce.
—Layer3 TV raised $47.8 million in a round led by North Bridge Venture Partners and Evolution Media Partners. The two-year-old company, which relocated to Denver from Boston last year, describes itself as a “next-generation cable provider,” that will offer a service that combines television, social media, and what it calls “the best of digital life.” Layer3’s leadership team includes veterans of Google, CNN, Fox, Comcast, Motorola, Time Warner, Cablevision, and Microsoft.
—Orbotix, better known as Sphero, raised $45 million in a round led by Mercato Partners that included an investment from a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. The Boulder-based connected play and robotics company is well known as the maker of Sphero, the robotic ball, and broke big this spring when it was revealed it would make a droid for the upcoming “Star Wars” movie.
—Green Chef raised $15.1 million from New Enterprise Associates. Green Chef is a Denver company that ships organic meals to costumers once a week via FedEx or UPS. The boxes contain recipes and enough pre-measured and prepared ingredients for three meals, and the meals can be customized to be gluten free, vegetarian, or paleo.
