In relative terms, Massachusetts and New England had a good year of investing last year. Across the country, venture investments were down 20 percent as VCs rethought late-stage valuations and shifted attention to early-stage transactions. But investing in Massachusetts was off only 15.8 percent in dollars, giving the state its second best year since 2000, […]
Trident Capital Cybersecurity said it closed on an oversubscribed $300 million fund, likely the largest venture fund dedicated solely to security. The new money, 50 percent more than initially targeted, will enable the firm to expand its support of companies well beyond early rounds. It also will lead to the hiring of a fourth managing […]
The restaurant-tech category is cooking, with investors pouring about $600 million into 100 deals in 2016, according to CB Insights. Food-delivery startups like DoorDash and Grubhub were the early celebrities in the space. But restaurant tech goes far beyond delivery, encompassing anything that makes running a restaurant easier, from point-of-sale software that automatically splits the […]
Two new entrants into the corporate venture space recently announced themselves. Scania AB, a Swedish manufacturer of heavy trucks and buses, and Northwestern Mutual, the Milwaukee-based financial services mutual organization, said they are launching funds for strategic investment in their respective industries. Scania Growth Capital will be managed by an external investment team drawn from the venture and […]
President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., also known as the travel ban, has spawned a number of protests. It’s also caused confusion and uncertainty among the startup and investment communities, particularly in such tech hotspots as Silicon Valley, where many companies rely on immigrant workers who come […]
A year-and-a-half ago, Intel Capital kicked off its $125 million Diversity Fund with the goal of backing more companies run by women and under-represented minorities. In October, the mandate grew to include U.S.-based entrepreneurs from the LGBTQ community, entrepreneurs living with disabilities and military veterans. The diversity effort also became a horizontal strategy, not just […]
Appdynamics, which was planning to launch an IPO, was the largest VC-backed company to sell last month. But Cisco Systems’ $3.7 billion purchase of the application-performance-monitoring company — one of the so-called unicorns with a pre-takeover valuation above $1 billion — was announced and has not yet closed. In all, 18 M&A deals for venture-backed companies closed […]
With the election of Donald Trump, Republicans from Capital Hill to the White House have big eyes for legislative reform, and no reform is bigger than the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Efforts to unravel the ponderous law began prior to the swearing in of the new president as Congressional Republicans sought […]
Not all healthcare companies are created equal, especially when it comes to the undoing of Obamacare. So far, venture investors are taking the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in stride. That’s because they are convinced that it will have little impact on most of the life sciences investing, including the key sectors of biotechnology, genomics […]
By percentages, healthcare was the biggest loser at the end of last year, but internet investing took the largest hit in the sheer capital deployed as venture investors stepped back in droves from the sector. Investing in U.S.-based internet companies fell 26 percent in the final three months of the year, which meant startups received […]