Austin’s venture capital flow slows in the second quarter
That’s down 2% from 2014, but deals this year are still outpacing last.
Atotal of $162million was raised by 27 companies during the quarter, a 2 percent decline fromthe same quarter a year ago.
Venture capital activity in Austin edged down in the second quarter, but investors continued to back a range of companies in sectors including software, biotech and mobile.
A total of $162 million was raised by 27 companies during the quarter, according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. That’s a 2 percent decline from the same quarter a year ago, and a 39 percent drop from the first quarter of this year, when venture funding surged to a threeyear high of $267.1 million.
Early-stage companies accounted for 12 of the deals, attracting 48 percent of the dollars invested in the second quarter. Investment in young companies is important to the Central Texas economy because it allows them to hire
more workers, potentially expand their office space and accelerate product development and marketing.
Central Texas’ performance during the first six months of 2015 is still ahead of activity during the same period a year ago. So far this year, 57 deals have raised $429.1 million, a 17 percent increase over the $367.3 million invested in 54 deals at this point last year.
Nationwide, venture capitalists invested $17.5 billion in 1,189 deals in the second quarter, a 30 percent increase in terms of dollars, and 13 percent in the number of deals compared to the first quarter.
The software industry was the largest recipient nationally, with $7.3 billion going into 491 deals. In Austin, software also brought in the most money, with 11 deals receiving a total of $48 million.
“As valuations increase and more and more companies choose to stay private longer, we are likely to see software’s share of total venture capital continue to rise,” said Bobby Franklin, president of the National Venture Capital Association.
Austin’s biggest deal of the quarter was biopharmaceutical company Mirna Therapeutics, which received $41.8 million in to continue human drug trials of its cancer-fighting treatments.
Mirna is developing treatments for cancer and other diseases using microRNA, molecules that play crucial regulatory roles in cells. The new investment brings the total raised by Mirna to $70 million, which includes about $20 million in state money from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.