September 6, 2012 – It’s been an eventful year! Besides our name change, we recatalyzed with a new board, focus and mission to better describe who we are, what we do and who we do it for.
The facts and highlights from the year are below, but I wanted to take a minute to reflect on our mission to help stimulate the Massachusetts economy and create jobs. Our past successes and new focus provide us the ability to take the lead in investments and support entrepreneurs in the earliest stages of development,where traditional VCs have generally avoided. MassVentures is about getting companies started – companies like uTest, lifeIMAGE and OwnerIQ, that we funded from an early stage, co-invested with the VC community and have seen upwards of 200% CAGR in revenues over the past four years, increased employment eight-fold over that time and raised funding at ever-increasing valuations. I’m confident that investments like these and the new START program investments, focused on the commercialization of SBIR-funded technologies, are helping to grow the local economy and lead Massachusetts out of the recession faster than the rest of the nation.
In 2013, we look forward to new investment opportunities, new partnerships with the venture community and supporting the innovation economy here in the Commonwealth to help strengthen our economy even further and to continue with the success created in the past 12 months.
Best,
Jerry Bird
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The Facts and Highlights
2012 Programs
- Seed program – equity or convertible debt funding of up to $100K
- First Round program – initial investments of $250K – $500K in Series A equity capital and follow-on funding
- START program for SBIR-funded companies
Capital
- $5M in traditional investment capital from MassDevelopment
- $6M START program
- $3M from recent portfolio exits
Successes
- uTest
- OwnerIQ
- lifeIMAGE
- Libboo
- vSnap
- START program winner, Locately, is acquired
- Cambridge Viscosity is acquired
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And Beyond…
For the next year, we look to put our knowledge and capital to work in new companies with a particular focus in the following areas:
- Software
- Healthcare IT
- Industrial automation & robotics
- Internat & digital media
- Mobile applications and platforms.
With our past successes and domain expertise in these areas, we have a deep understanding of the players, opportunities and investment groups that will help to support and drive growth in the years ahead.
Entrepreneurs are encouraged to submit their business proposals through our website.
We look forward to hearing from you and wish you success in the coming year!