VC Dollars Rise Above Pre-Recession Level in MoneyTree’s Second-Quarter Survey

Venture capital activity improved slightly year-over-year, with a total of $7.5 billion invested in 966 new companies nationwide during the quarter that ended June 30th, according to the MoneyTree Report released today.

Investment levels represented the highest quarterly total since the pre-recessionary second quarter of 2008, according the report, which is prepared by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, based on data from Thomson Reuters. The partners are expected to release details on regional venture activity trends later today.

The $7.5 billion invested during the quarter represented an 18.7 percent increase over the previous quarter, when $6.3 billion was invested across the country, according to the report. The 966 deals also represented an 18.6 percent gain over the 814 deals done during the first quarter. Compared to the same quarter in 2010, however, the numbers appeared less impressive, amounting to a 5 percent increase in dollars (from nearly $7.2 billion) and a 3 percent decline in deals (from 998).

In a similar way, the MoneyTree Report highlighted the $2.08 billion in financing that went to 206 biotech and medical device and equipment-makers during the quarter, saying it represented a 37 percent increase in dollars and a 12 percent gain in deals compared to the previous quarter. A year-over-year comparison, however, shows a 2.7 percent decline (from $2.14 billion invested) and a 21 percent decline (from 261) in deal volume from the second quarter of 2010.

The single biggest deal of the quarter involved the Boston-based online retailer CSN Stores, which raised $165 million from Battery Ventures, Great Hill Equity Partners, HarbourVest Partners and Spark Capital. The second biggest was a $138 million investment in the Gilt Groupe, another e-commerce provider based in New York, followed by a nearly $115 million venture round for Fisker Automotive, the Anaheim, CA-based electric vehicle maker.

The latest numbers in the MoneyTree Report’s roughly correspond with

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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.