Seattle VCs fare well on MIT list, but where are the local startups? |
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Seattle VCs fare well on MIT list, but where are the local startups?
Seattle venture capital firms sometimes get a bad rap for failing to bankroll cutting-edge companies. But MIT Technology Review doesn't quite see it that way. The esteemed publication recently listed the 25 most innovative privately-held companies in the world, and interestingly enough no fewer than five venture capital and angel investment firms with ties to the Seattle area have companies on the list.
That's the good news. Now, here's the bad news. None of the companies they are backing are from the Seattle area.
We've pointed out before how some of Seattle's venture capital firms seem to be spending more time perusing deals in Boston or the Bay Area.
Most notably, the granddaddy of Seattle's venture capital community and one of the firms that's well representated on the MIT list, OVP Venture Partners, has recently invested in San Mateo, Calif.-based RedSeal, Mountain View, Calif.-based Complete Genomics, Boston-based Novomer, San Mateo-based Aggregate Knowledge; and South San Francisco-based Limerick BioPharma.
And that's just in the past year.
OVP had three companies on the MIT list: Novomer, Complete Genomics and Fate Therapeutics, which was started in Seattle but moved to San Diego.
Other venture firms with three companies on the list include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, Flagship Ventures and Polaris Venture Partners, which has offices in Boston and Seattle.
Other firms with Seattle ties on the MIT list include Arch Venture Partners (Bind Biosciences, Fate Therapeutics), Staenberg Ventures (Serious Materials) and Bezos Expeditions (Twitter). Incidentally, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who was just named one of the top angel investors in the U.S., also made an accompanying list from MIT of the top 25 publicly-traded companies in the world. (So did Google, which Bezos helped fuel with an early investment).
Kirkland-based OVP -- founded in the Seattle area in 1983 -- is touting the inclusion of its portfolio companies as a sign of its ability to pinpoint innovative technologies.
That's fine and dandy. And the growth of those companies outside the region could indirectly benefit residents of Washington and Oregon since the states do invest in venture capital firms like OVP.
But isn't it a little disconcerting that -- at least in MIT's view -- the best that Seattle venture firms have to offer are companies from outside the Pacific Northwest?
After all, if a Boston or San Diego or San Francisco startup scores a home run -- the ensuing jobs will be created in those regions and the wealth created (for the most part) will stay in those cities.
What's it going to take to get a few Seattle area startups on MIT's list next year?
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