Funding in Boston Tech Isn't Slowing Down — Yet

Maybe you’ve heard the talk, the rumors, the fears: Tech funding is slowing down as the bubble loses some air. Many of the unicorns aren’t actual unicorns, IPOs are nonexistent and many startups that aren’t making money from customers aren't being given any from VCs.

The anxieties seemed to get some confirmation from the fact that last week, not a single tech funding deal in Boston was announced. Highly unusual stuff.

This week has seen more activity. But it seemed worthwhile, since we track all of the funding deals in Boston each week anyway, to take a look back on the quarter to see if it’s been worse on the whole.

Bottom line: Boston tech funding really hasn’t been substantially off this quarter.

That’s not to say it won’t slow down from here. One CEO I spoke with recently, Crimson Hexagon’s Stephanie Newby, said she’s “glad we’re not going out today” to start raising money, for instance. I.e., the general sentiment is that things have cooled off even if the numbers themselves aren’t showing it yet. That's because many rounds that are closing now, like Crimson Hexagon’s, began their fundraising process a number of months ago.

Below I include what I found while looking back at our New Money posts for each week in Q4 of last year, and then for Q1 of this year (which still has a few days left). A caveat—I make no claim that this is a complete measure, since not all deals are reported publicly, and we don’t always see all of those that are. In short, the margin of error here is potentially sizable. Which is part of why I can say that Q4 and Q1 aren’t different enough from each other to definitively say things have slowed down in Boston tech funding:

Photo by Troy Alexander, Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 2.0).