VC Series A Web Tech Deals in August

Written by Bernard Lunn / September 15, 2009 8:00 AM / 2 Comments

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Today is the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, which triggered the financial meltdown. That was when ReadWriteWeb started tracking Series A deals in Web technology. Thanks to our partner ChubbyBrain, we can now do this reliably and easily. Executive summary for August: down from July, with seed deals very weak. Analysis: decadent Europeans are not the only ones who take holidays in August. Read on for details.

All That Beach Time Is Bad for Business

August clocked in at $78.6 million, well below the blistering months of May and July, but on par with April and June's $77.1 million, and more than double that of dismal January.

Here are the month-to-month growth numbers for seed and Series A deals in the Web and mobile space in the US:

January: $30.3 million
February: $45.5 million
March: $55.7 million
April: $73.7 million
May: $103.2 million
June: $77.1 million
July: $93.5 million
August: $78.6 million

Get back to work VCs!

Trend-Spotting

Seed activity was pathetic, with only two deals, totaling $1.75 million. This could possibly have been a tracking issue, because seed deals often aren't reported. That is the next frontier of innovation financing transparency.

Which Ventures Received Money?

Which VCs Wired the Money?

Co-investors are shown on a single line.

Altos Ventures, First Round Capital
Art Bilger, Rick Braddock, Michael Eisner, Bill Guthy, Donn Rappaport
Arthur Ventures
Bay Area Equity Fund
Benchmark Capital
BlueRun Ventures
Connecticut Innovations
DFJ Frontier
Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Blumberg Capital, Plug and Play Ventures, SoftTech Venture Capital, Founders Fund, TechStars, Metamorphic Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, GSD&M IdeaCity, undisclosed angel investors
First Round Capital
Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, Opus Capital
Highland Capital Partners
ICCP Venture Partners, Startup Capital Ventures, ICCP Venture partners
iNovia Capital
Javelin Venture Partners
Kohlberg Ventures
Madrona Venture Group
Menlo Ventures, Simon Equity Partners, Scott Jones
Mueller Media, Undisclosed Angel Investors
New Atlantic Ventures, LaunchCapital
NextStage Capital, New York Angels, Rose Tech Ventures, Chris Anderson, Undisclosed Angel Investors
Originate Ventures
Pittsburgh Equity Partners
Richard Tahta, Undisclosed Investors
Ross Siegelman, Bob Zipp, Josh Hannah, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Amicus Capital, Matrix Partners
SGIO LLC
Silverton Partners
Stripes Group

The Three Biggest Deals

Wanova: $13 million
Based in: San Jose, California.
Investors: Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, Opus Capital.
"Wanova provides Distributed Desktop Virtualization solutions that transform how companies manage, support and protect their desktops and laptops."
MyWebGrocer: $13 million
Based in: Colchester, Vermont.
Investor: Stripes Group.
MyWebGrocer runs websites on behalf of grocery chains and sells advertising to consumer packaged goods companies across all of the sites, which collectively have a reach of 4 million shoppers.
Zumbox: $8 million
Based in: Westlake Village, California.
Investors: Art Bilger, Rick Braddock, Michael Eisner, Bill Guthy, Donn Rappaport.
Zumbox delivers paperless mail online, from street address to street address.

It is interesting that the investors for the third largest deal are individuals and not a company. $8 million is a lot for individuals. Is this a threat to institutional VC?

Also, the second largest deal comes from a relatively unknown fund (Stripes Group) and a location not normally regarded as a white-hot den of technology (Vermont).

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Comments

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great post, thanks guys. Just one remark - it would be fantastic if a short description could be added to each startup so that one gets a sense of what type of venture, product or even business model is behind the name without clicking through all the links...

Posted by: martin | September 15, 2009 8:28 AM

I think the reason that two of the biggest deals fall outside of the norm is because we are far from back to even close to the norm. Most funds are holed up, even if their LP's are beating on them to make money instead of charge them money. They are working at keeping their current investments alive.

What would be interesting is to see how many of the deals and how much of the money you report is actually follow on investments by the same or close to the same groups keeping a previous investment alive? I suspect that you would find it to be a high number.

The nose to the ground says that funds are not investing unless it's nearly a family member deal.

I hope I am wrong, and if I am right I hope that it chagnes soon. One of the biggest world wide competitive advantages the US has/had is it's innovation, and currently we are about to release our hold on that to the rest of the world. That would be a shame, because investors lost their balls at a time when they should be wading in taking advantage of the market to push better deals for themselves. None of these companies are going to exit in the next 3-5 years, so what does the world look like in 3-5 years? That's the question, not what does the market look like next year, or even the year after.

So what's holding them up? Fear, out and out fear.

How's that go? "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

Thanks good article none the less.

Posted by: Kurt Baumann | September 17, 2009 9:19 AM