Author: Nancy Dahlberg
Publisher: Miami Herald
Date: July 17, 2014
A jaw-dropping $1.2 billion fueled Uber, the ride-sharing company, in the second quarter, driving venture capital investment sharply higher nationwide. Yet in South Florida, VC investment slowed.
Venture capitalists invested $112.2 million in 13 Florida companies in the second quarter of 2014, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. To put that number into perspective, the state drew less than 1 percent of the national venture capital total in the quarter. As was the trend nationally, software companies in Florida grabbed most of action, with $62 million flowing into them, according to the report released Friday and based on Thomson Reuters data .
To be sure, quarterly venture capital investment activity in Florida rose sharply from the $71.9 million invested in 13 deals in the first quarter. But in a change from previous quarters, South Florida companies did not receive the lion’s share of the state’s second-quarter funding. That would be Orlando, which received more than $61.4 million of the state’s total, dominated by a $50 million investment in Kony Solutions, a mobile software company. Read more here.
