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Phila. venture capital 'on the rise?' (Update)

Millions, not billions

(Adds comment from PACT's Dean Miller) The Philadelphia area in 2015 again attracted less than its share of venture capital investment, according to a U.S. metro deals count posted by the National Venture Capital Association, but the gap is narrowing by one important measure, says the leading local VC advocacy group. See the data here.

Philadelphia was the nation's fifth-largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), according to the last 10-year U.S. Census. It was sixth for number of deals (115), tied for seventh in the number of companies with at least one deal (93), and ranked 13th for the value invested by VCs in local companies ($540 million).

That's progress, says Dean Miller, president of the Philadelphia Association for Capital & Technologies (PACT), the local VC advocacy group. "We haven't ranked sixth since 1997," Miller told me. "It's our peak ranking for almost the past 20 years." Deal count is more important than dollar totals, he says, since "a single large deal can skew the numbers...Our region is on the rise in terms of entrepreneurial activity and investment." 

The San Francisco area ranked No. 1 with 797 deals and $21 billion invested; New York was No. 2 with 416 deals and $7 billion; Boston, San Jose and Los Angeles each attracted hundreds of deals and billions of dollars; Seattle, Washington, San Diego, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta and Denver each raked in more VC cash than metro Philadelphia firms. We're in the big leagues, at least.