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. Read More
News flash: it is not 1999 anymore, and it appears that corporate venture capitalists have adjusted accordingly. CB Insights released its Q1 Corporate Venture Capital Report yesterday, revealing that CVCs participated in just 84 deals totaling $1.09 billion, a record low for the past five quarters.
But while overall CVC funding is down 20 percent, funding for the Internet sector is up 30 percent, with CVC deals in that sector increasing for the third straight quarter. Read More
The Facebookers Will Inherit the Earth
A new report from CB Insights attempts to gather up all the ventures of the roving Facebook Mafia and put a number on how much money these Silicon Valley chosen ones have raised. “For those unfamiliar with the term, the Facebook Mafia refers to alumni of Facebook who’ve gone on to found new startup companies,” the report says.
So how much have these enterprising Facebookers convinced investors to give them? $271 million since 2006, with $130 million of it all in the first half of 2012 (Quora is responsible for $50 million of that). Momentum “appears to be accelerating,” the report says. Doesn’t it always? Read More
The data service whizzes at CB Insights released a new report today on venture capital financing in the first quarter of 2012. On first glance, the news doesn’t look great for New York. The data shows that funding in New York dropped to a five-quarter low. “But the state’s deal activity stayed strong so we don’t think the decline is a problem (yet),” says the report.
Eep, was the parenthetical really necessary? Not likely. ”NY remains a hub for early stage investment with 30% of deals in the seed stage and another 30%+ in the Series A stage,” the firm added, assuaging fears. Read More
Some fresh data out this morning from CB Insights shows New York slipped backed behind Beantown in terms of overall venture capital. But that is largely due to the deals in biotech and medical companies that Boston did. When it comes to tech, and more specifically the web companies Betabeat covers most, New York is still second only to Silicon Valley. Read More
If the tenants at the city’s NYU-Poly incubator are any indicator, Wall Street is soooooo 2006. A number of the 20 tenants working out of 160 Varick Street are now wantrepreneurs who have given up finance salaries–by force or choice–for “fin-tech” start-ups.
These former suits are leveraging what they learned on the Street to create financial products and services that, in theory, their old employers will have to compete with, or buy into.
Crain’s New York points to Michael Chuang, who used to sell bonds and mortgaged-back securities for Lehman and then UBS. In March 2008, he founded iTB Holdings, an online brokerage dealing exclusively with bonds, relying on his parting gift from Wall Street ($3 million in savings) as well as funding from friends, family, and angel investors. He now has five full-time employees at the Varick Street incubator and ten more in Eastern Europe. Read More
