San Diego Venture Funding Down Slightly in 2016

The U-T has a rundown of 2016 venture funding in San Diego based on the information provided by VentureSource. Overall it shows venture capital investment is down nationally and here locally for 2016. Nationally investment was down 32% and locally we saw a 29% slowdown. While 93 companies received funding in 2015, that was down to 87 in 2016.

A Startup for Startups

After a series of regretted decisions in different businesses involving haphazard recommendations from friends and not a lot else, founders Ryan Mickle and Ian Hunter decided it was time for startup founders to have a better guide to the decisions all businesses have to make. Founderkit has become a go-to source for people starting a business to make decisions in the areas of engineering, productivity and organization, data and analytics, sales, APIs, legal, people and recruiting, growth and marketing, and finance. The recommendations are ranked not only by popularity, but also how recent they are, and the company is trying to distinguish them based on who they come from. The contributors (people who make the recommendations) have grown to include almost 1,000 Y Combinator founders as well as Slow Ventures, First Round, Social Capital, Upside Partnership, and Fuel Capital, and it will continue to grow its arsenal of contributors.

San Diego’s Energy Storage Player

Greentechmedia.com delves into the energy storage business scene from 2016. Among the companies highlighted is San Diego’s Orison, which funded itself last year through a Kickstarter campaign that brought in $350,000. Their product is a home appliance that plugs into the wall and acts as a battery for power storage. They are still working through some final issues prior to manufacturing. It will be interesting to see how this company fares once we can see how the products perform in homes.

San Diego in the Mix of 2016 Startup Health Funding

Startup Health issued a report on funding around health startups in 2016. San Diego ranked fourth in the country among the usual suspects of San Francisco, Boston, and New York. The overall numbers showed $8 billion invested in 500 companies as well as an increase in the number of investors. The report calls 2016 the beginning of the “Moonshot Movement,” generated by Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot and the Chan Zuckerberg initiative to cure all disease within 100 years.

San Diego Innovation and Real Estate

For a quick read on how downtown real estate moves are set to affect the innovation community in San Diego, Bisnow has a visit with SD Economic Development Corp CEO Mark Cafferty.

Pivots and Opportunities

SDSI Springboard Taking Applications

San Diego Sports Innovators’ Springboard accelerator program is taking applications. The program accepts growing companies with what it calls the “it factor for success.” According to its website, there is a pretty good track record with 89% of their graduates still in business today and $47.5 in funding for their 61 graduate companies. Applications are being accepted through February 13.

Be There or Be….

• 2017 Venture Outlook
  January 25, 5:30-8:30 p.m., Qualcomm, Building N
  With Scott Kupor, Managing Partner of Adreessen Horowitz and Chair of the National Venture Capital Association
• Dev Bootcamp Presents Greg Pollack: 12 Steps to Become a Successful Developer (Besides the coding part)
  February 22, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Mindtouch, 101 West Broadway, #1500

Tags: Blogs, Startup Buzz