We have continued to report on a relatively steady stream of venture capital fundings over the last several weeks despite Wall Street's woes. But many of the fundings coming to light now actually closed months ago. Witness the $2.3 million Series A in Planet Metrics led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, announced this week, and AdaptiveBlue's $4.5 Series B, led by RRE Ventures with participation from Union Square Ventures, announced in October. Both closed in August, before the economy failed.
So we were heartened by a recent conversation with Lou Volpe and Andre Zarur from Kodiak Venture Partners, who say the Waltham, Mass. venture capital firm will soon announce two new fundings of early-stage startups, one that closed in the third quarter and the other in the fourth quarter.
Both seed-stage companies are headquartered in the Boston area: One is working on a device that will aid in the detection and treatment of cancer and was developed with universities and hospitals in the area, and the other is a clean-energy company developed in partnership with both MIT and Stanford University, says Zarur.
We look forward to hearing more details on both deals.
More details will also be forthcoming soon about an arrangement with one of the VC firm's limited partners that is supporting some of the older companies in Kodiak's portfolio.
"We put an arrangement in place with an LP where they did a couple of things," Volpe (pictured) tells Tech Confidential. "They purchased a small ownership position in a number of our companies as well as put up additional capital for us to continue to invest in and support those companies."
Although Volpe declined to provide details, he said the portfolio companies benefiting from the arrangement with the LP are "vintage 2000 to 2004 and there hasn't been an IPO market, and we were a little concerned about our ability to continue to support them during a couple years of challenging times. This is a vote of confidence in Kodiak and in those companies." -- Mary Kathleen Flynn
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