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Report: Southern California Venture Capital Totals $464M In Q3

Venture capital investments in Southern California in Q3 totaled to $464.18M, according to the latest numbers released by the PricewaterhouseCoopers/NVCA Money Tree Report this evening, based on data from Thomson Reuters. Nationwide, there was $4.8 billion invested in 780 venture capital deals for Q3. The investment totals nationwide were down 31 percent in dollars, and 19 percent in terms of the number of deals from Q2, as investment in all sectors slowed. Silicon Valley had the lion's share of the venture funding dollars in Q3, with $1.75 billion invested in the region.

For the quarter, San Diego County garnered the most venture capital, with $231.3M invested; Los Angeles had $169.7M, and Orange County $63.1M in investments. The biggest investments in Southern California for the quarter were for San Diego's SkinIt, a maker of customized "skins" for electronic devices, with $60.0M in funding raised; followed by Otonomy, a San Diego maker of treatments for hearing disorders, which raised $38.5M. Other large deals include Santa Barbara-based CytomX, with a $30.0M funding, fellow San Diego cloud computing firm RightScale, with $25.0M raised. In Orange County, the biggest deals were for Irvine-based WaterHealth International, a developer of water purification products with $22.1M raised, and Irvine-based Brand Affinity Technologies, a provider of celebrity endorsement services, with $21.6M in funding.

In terms of industries funded, Biotechnology by far led the funding, with $162.2M raised by companies in the sector. Media and Entertainment came in second, with $70.1M--but only because San Diego's SkinIt boosted totals by $60M. The other large sector for investments was Software, with $54.8M in total funding for the quarter.

The most active Southern California investors, including all of their investments both inside and outside of the region, were the Tech Coast Angels (7 investments), and Rustic Canyon Partners (6 investments); Redpoint, Mission Ventures, and GRP all had 4 investments total.

One interesting details in the report, is that there was a surge in first time investments in Southern California companies in Q3, with $187M of all of the funding for the quarter to deals classified as first round deals; about $72M was invested in second round investments in companies.