An Indianapolis private investment firm has raised one of the largest-ever funds in the state. Centerfield Capital Partners pulled in $171 million that it plans to invest in about 20 companies. Its two previous funds totaled $60 million and $116 million.
Infuse Accelerator hopes to make early-stage investments in 12 to 15 companies a year.
Getting $50,000—often from friends and relatives—to develop a product and set up a company still is easy enough in Indiana, small-business leaders and venture capitalists say. But once a firm needs a few million dollars to grow into a revenue-generating operation, the area can’t compete with Silicon Valley’s magnetism for venture capital.
Seven Indiana companies attracted $16.4 million in venture capital during the first quarter. Nearly all the money was paid out to Carmel-based ChaCha Search Inc., which secured a $14 million investment in January.
Indianapolis-based startup Dreamapolis is finalizing the details of its first Dreamapolis Accelerator class, a 12-week crash course designed to help high-potential urban businesses get up to speed quickly.
Allos Ventures has raised $40 million from local tech industry luminaries and others to invest in early-stage tech companies in the Midwest, a segment that has seen funding dry up. The fund, Allos II, aims to invest $3 million to $7 million each in about a dozen early-stage companies—not upstarts but those already generating solid revenue streams.
To understand why Indiana’s life sciences entrepreneurs are frustrated with the flow of venture capital, look no further than this statistic from a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report: 2012 was the slowest year for first-time life sciences investment since 1995.
The latest round of funding will enable ChaCha to make “significant” investments in new products to expand both mobile and online services, CEO Scott Jones said. Internally, the project is dubbed “Go Big.”
Venture capital investments in Indiana dropped off in 2012, but local investors see the market here steadily gaining strength.
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. is looking to renew its commitment to life sciences by creating a $30 million venture fund. The amount dedicated to one sector would be equal to the state’s allocation for all high-tech startups over the past two years.
Indianapolis-based Nico Corp. wants to use its new round of capital to develop brain surgery products to address diseases that were often considered inoperable, such as metastatic brain cancer and intracerebral hemorrhages.
Early-stage venture capital has been harder and harder to come by for life sciences companies in recent years, but two Indianapolis investors are working to raise sizable funds to help fill the gap.
The amount of venture capital invested in medical-device and equipment companies nationally has declined each quarter this year, reaching levels not seen since 2004, according to data released Oct. 19 by the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In just over a decade, the interactive marketer has rocketed from bootstrapped startup to New York Stock Exchange-listed company with a market value of $1.5 billion.
Scale Computing, a maker of data-storage devices that recently launched a “datacenter in a box,” has landed another $12 million in venture funding.
Private firms that need to raise relatively modest amounts of capital have a hard time finding money. Now three Indianapolis entrepreneurs think they have the answer: crowdfunding. Individuals make small investments that are aggregated to fund a business. Indianapolis-based Localstake wants to be the matchmaker.
Research and development comes under pressure in an age of austerity.
Funding for U.S. startups fell 12 percent in the second quarter as venture capitalists poured less money into fewer deals than a year earlier. But the number of companies getting funded in the earliest stages of development reached the highest level in more than a decade.
The annual Innovation Showcase aims to connect area entrepreneurs with interested investors. Think speed dating with higher stakes.
The state of Indiana and former Colts are among the lead investors in Fishers-based software provider CloudOne, the company announced this week.
