Los Angeles: Ready for its closeup?

It's that time again: CB Insights has released its quarterly VC report. The money's still big, though with a focus on seed deals. Quarter three closed with 835 deals totaling $7.5 billion invested. But CB Insights is quick to dispel any bubble talk, pointing out that unless Q4 brings $9.2 billion in funding, 2012 will show an overall drop in VC investments.

On the regional front, California, New York and Massachusetts are still the big three. Massachusetts is in the number-two spot overall, but in the Internet sector, California gets seven out of every ten deals, New York two and Massachusetts one. Not too shabby.

However, this time around--after getting complaints that Southern California was "the Rodney Dangerfield of VC markets"--CB Insights broke out its California stats to see how the region that would be Silicon Beach fares all on its lonesome. Turns out, having made 70 deals totaling $695 million, it's quite well:

Based on VC funding, SoCal was actually the 3rd biggest market ahead of NY and just behind Silicon Valley and Massachusetts.

Looks like we've just been bumped. Pause for sad trombone noises from the direction of downtown.

Otherwise, New York fared well, hitting a five-quarter deal-count high. And this time around, the good folks at CB Insights allowed that maybe, just maybe, New York isn't a consumer-Internet obsessed one-trick pony, after all:

Although still very tech dominated, the quarter did see NY register signs of life in both green tech and healthcare which typically are nowhere to be found.

The report also notes that, on a national level, seed funding continues to increase. It accounts for 31 percent of overall deal volume; in combination with Series A, it's 55 percent. But don't worry yourself into a bubble-induced case of dyspepsia just yet. The report also points out that these are

Seed VC is a low risk call option for most VCs. If all Seed VC deals failed, it’d be the equivalent of a single medium-sized VC fund going out of business. That happens all the time and presents no risk to the entire VC ecosystem. When it becomes easy to raise big Series C and D rounds, then we’ll talk about a bubble.

Thank goodness. We wouldn't want it all to burst and end up with the Winklevii shut away in their glorious Hollywood Hills home, like latter-day Gloria Swansons.