The following is an excerpt from The Beat, Minne Inno's daily newsletter covering tech, startups and innovation in Minnesota. Sign up for The Beat to have the top headlines delivered to your inbox each weekday afternoon.
Today, we’re going to geek out over some statistics. Over the past few years, more and more capital has been flowing to regions like the Midwest. But just how much? And from where?
St. Louis, Missouri-based venture capital firm Lewis & Clark Venturespublished a report today detailing the top deals, exits and funds from non-coastal tech hubs within the last year. The firm’s Between the Coasts (BTC) report found that 12 up-and-coming startup ecosystems combine to make up nearly 90% of deal activity in this area since 2012. Minnesota came in 11th with 104 deals. The top three positions went to Texas (630 deals), Colorado (373 deals) and Illinois (325 deals).
But just how much capital is being invested between the coasts? Louis & Clark reports that around $9.7B has been invested through 2.7K deals throughout region between 2012 and 2017. That may seem like a monumental sum, but keep in mind it’s spread across a huge portion of the country. As expected, a lot of cash is still concentrated on the coasts. In the same five-year timespan, about $45.4B was invested through 4.4K deals on the West Coast.
But regions like the Midwest are making progress. Here are the top five non-coastal VC deals from 2017:
- Qualtrics (Provo, Utah) raised $180M in April 2017.
- Bright Health (Minneapolis) brought in $160M in June.
- BioMotiv (Cleveleand, Ohio) closed on $146M in July.
- Uptake (Chicago, Illinois) raised $117M in November.
- DOMO (American Fork, Utah) snagged $115M in December.
While the largest VC funds still reside on the coasts, 2017 saw an increasing number of funds popping up in places like the Midwest. One of the Twin Cities’ notable new arrivals is Revolution‘s Rise of the Rest (ROTR) seed fund. In February, Revolution announced that Mary Grove, founding director of Google for Entrepreneurs, would join the firm as partner on ROTR. Grove will be based in Minneapolis and is expected to start next month.
But Revolution isn’t the only firm with a growing interest in non-coastal tech hubs. Here are the top five BTC funds raised last year:
- S2G Ventures Fund II (Chicago, Illinois): $180M
- Rise of the Rest Seed Fund (Washington, DC): $150M
- Origin Ventures IV (Chicago): $81M
- Scaleworks Fund (San Antonio, Texas): $60M
- Peak Ventures Fund II (Lehi, UT): $53M
Learn about the region’s top exits and read the full report here.
