Massachusetts remains one of the nation’s biggest venture capital hubs. Although it has lost a bit of its mojo in tech VC to New York, it retains a healthy tech ecosystem and an even better healthcare sector where it actually sees a higher share of large venture-backed exits than Silicon Valley. The region also remains an active center for energy and clean tech investments.
Of course, much of the conversation about Massachusetts venture capital does tend to revolve around the state’s tech VC fortunes. While it does not garner the hype of NY, the Massachusetts tech VC ecosystem should not be discounted as it does have several Tech IPO Pipeline companies waiting in the wings. Most recently, Boston-based eCommerce firm Wayfair raised A $150M funding round and joined the $1B+ valuation club and is rumored to be seeking an IPO as soon as this year.
But we wanted to take a look at how venture capital activity in Massachusets is really trending and dig into the data a bit to see how the state is doing.
Specifically, this analysis uses CB Insights VC data to dive into the top sectors, stages and largest deals of 2013 in Massachusetts.
For more VC financing and exit data across all sectors and U.S. tech hubs, see the full 2013 Venture Capital Activity and Exits Report.
On a year-over-year basis, 2013 saw Mass. register a slight drop in both venture capital deals and dollars. In total, Mass. took in $3.04B across 318 deals last year which was down fractionally from the $3.06 billion and 333 deals in 2012.
Massachusetts Financing Trend By Sector
Compared to NY’s increasingly one-track VC focus on tech, 30% of VC deals in Mass. went to the healthcare sector. Internet led Mass. deal share in 2013 at 37%, while mobile & telecom which is the fastest growing area of VC investment only took 10% of deals and came in a distant third.
And with Massachusetts seeing more of the largest VC-backed healthcare exits than Silicon Valley, funding to healthcare companies remained strong as they took close to half of all funding in the state in 2013 and saw a wide lead over the Internet sector which took 23% of all funding dollars.
Massachusetts Financing Trend By Stage
Series A investments took the largest share of VC deals in Mass. last year, followed by Series B deals. On a year-over-year basis, seed VC deal share in Mass. grew from 17% to 21% while Series C deals saw the largest drop in share across the maturity spectrum falling from 18% in 2012 to 11% in 2013.
On the funding front, Massachusetts saw notable YoY jumps in both Series A and Series B funding share. Series C and Series D funding share both saw drops in share of 5%+. Seed funding share remained level despite the seed deal increase.
The Largest Massachusetts. VC Deals of 2013
Peeling back the largest VC-backed deals in Massachusetts last year reveals the prominence of large healthcare deals as they dominate the largest financing in Massachusetts last year. Some of the largest deals include Flagship Ventures-backed RNA therapeutics firm Moderna, Delphi Ventures-backed Karyopharm Therapeutics, which went public in November and SR One-backed Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, which also went public just last month.
For more Mass. financing and exit data and analytics, check out the CB Insights Venture Capital Database. Sign up for free below.