Swimming against the tide
Venture capital investment is settling to pre-Internet-bubble levels but tri-county start-ups are holding their own, with a handful of start-ups keeping the deals flowing and the cash coming in.
Nationally, the picture is ugly: Venture capital investments dropped 37 percent, from $8.3 billion to $5.3 billion, in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, according to data from DowJones VentureSource. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association showed an even worse decline, from $7.6 billion to $3.6 billion.
Southern California didn’t fare well. Investments here dropped 74 percent year-over-year to $159 million in the second quarter — the worst since 2003, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report.
The Tri-Counties, by contrast, raised as much as $22 million in just a handful of deals. That’s about the same as the $23 million raised in 2008’s second quarter, which included $17 million in a single round of funding for Santa Barbara-based AppFolio.
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