Venture Funding: The State of the San Diego Tech Scene
Beyond our great weather & lifestyle, San Diego tech companies have a lot to be excited about. I am so pumped on the momentum, I recently left Hired to start my own marketing and employer-branding agency to continue to help grow great local companies. Reach out if I can be of service to your business.
With my time, I am going to highlight what San Diego tech has been building and where it’s going
Our Venture Funding
The last year has seen strong growth in our business ecosystem. While biotech remains a major driver of late stage capital it also is becoming more data and tech driven which recruits great software and product talent to the region. Early stage capital to Tech is growing in density and of the top 10 largest deals in the 4th Quarter of 2017, four of ten fundings were to Tech companies.
Overall, venture funding to the region is strong, with small growth from 2016 total funding of 1.90 billion to 1.92 billion in 2017. (See article by @Bruce Bigelow) Comparatively, Seattle did $1.7 billion & Austin did $1.2 billion in Venture Funding in 2017.
Here’s a chart comparing the number of deals per city over the last 11 years.
San Diego is consistently in the Top 10 number of venture deals per U.S. city.
New & Expanding Venture Capital Firms
A number of new Venture Capital funds have been raised or are being raised that are either based in San Diego and/or are focused on investing specifically in San Diego. Early stage capital for Tech is back in San Diego!
List of 2017 & 2018 New Venture Fundraises
· ClearVision Equity — San Diego-based growth fund with 7 local Tech investments already deployed within the last year
· Section 32 — San Diego-based Bill Maris is raising a 2nd fund after expending the first fund of $160M, both are Tech & Biotech focused
· Social Leverage — The local & distributed team is raising $50M for their third fund
· Hinge Capital, formerly Venture51 — San Diego-based & raising a 4th fund of $80M
· Anzu Partners — Opened an office in San Diego & closed their new $128M fund
· Moore Venture Partners — San Diego-based and currently raising Fund III
· Blueprint Equity — San Diego-based and currently raising their debut fund of $100M with Sheldon Lewis, formerly of Paylease, and Bobby Ocampo, formerly of Revolution Ventures
With the growing amount of funding flowing into our companies, there’s a lot of momentum building for tech in San Diego. Stay tuned for the next post focusing on how our tech companies are doing.
Follow me on Twitter @NealBloom
