Florida ranked ninth in the country for venture capital investment in the second quarter, according to the MoneyTree Report, published by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.
For the fourth-largest state in the country, is that something to crow about? Florida’s CFO Jeff Atwater thought so, headlining his newsletter yesterday with the news. The $94.8 million invested in 11 ventures was an increase of 168 percent from the first quarter, he pointed out.
But even Atwater admitted the state has “a long road ahead” and "we have to do better." The second quarter investment only accounts for 1.4 percent of the total venture capital investment made nationally. To put it another way, Pinterest alone raised more than the entire state.
Nevertheless, South Florida had a very strong showing, netting nearly half of the state’s total. The details:
Open English of Miami: $28 million. Funders: Insight Venture Partners, Kaszek Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, undisclosed investor.
As reported in this blog last week, Open English announced it recently secured $43 million in venture funding, which includes the $28 million from the second quarter. Altogether, Open English has raised more than $55 million, co-founder and CEO Andres Moreno told me last week.
Already with 1,000 employees, Open English is an online English language school that has been expanding quickly in Latin America. Moreno said he will be using the investment for further expansion, particularly in Brazil, where it launched in November.
OrthoSensor of Sunrise, $15 million. Funders led by: Zeigler Meditech.
OrthoSensor, led by CEO Jay Pierce, focuses on the development and commercialization of intelligent devices to treat muscular-skeletal disease.
“There is so much happening in the convergence of medical devices, technology and the Internet. We sit in the middle of this and are applying it to muscular-skeletal health — hip and knee replacement, osteoporosis, trauma, all that stuff,” said Pierce, the CEO. “We’re real excited about this. It is basically iPhone converging with orthopedics.”
The Series B funding will be used for the commercial launch of the OrthoSensor Knee Balancer, sales and marketing, and R&D in several areas including intelligent implants, Pierce said. In total, the company has raised $33 million in Series B, he said. (Photo is of Jay Pierce.)
Depositphotos of Fort Lauderdale, $2 million. Funders: TMT Investments PLC.
Depositphotos, led by CEO and founder Dmitry Sergeev and launched in 2009, is a platform to
buy and sell royalty-free files, such as photographs, vector images, videos, etc.
VirtualWorks of Boca Raton, $560,000. Funders: New World Angels.
VirtualWorks, led by CEo Edward Iacobucci, who co-founded Citrix Systems,
is pioneering a new software category called content virtualization. It has reportedly already raised more than $8 million in previous funding rounds led by New World Angels.
We can expect another another strong showing this quarter, with Open English’s additional funding. Also, Miami-based Flomio, maker of a platform for building NFC and RFID enabled applications, closed a seed round of $525,000, led by RMR Capital, and included participation from TechStars, the Cloud Power Fund, Matthew Lally (Augme, Pickflair), and Clint Watson (FASO), TechCrunch reported on Friday. Flomio, founded by Richard Grundy, was recently accepted into TechStars Cloud, the cloud computing-focused incubator.
Nationwide, venture-capital investments totaled $7 billion during the second quarter, down 6.7 percent from the same quarter last year but up 17 percent from this year's first quarter, according to the MoneyTree survey. Deals involving early-stage companies totaled 410, worth $2.1 billion. It was the largest number of early-stage deals since early 2001, according to the report. The quarterly MoneyTree survey is based on data compiled by Thomson Reuters.