Kyle
Austin Texas is the place to be for startups every March during the annual South By Southwest Interactive festival. Startups from across the country, and the globe spend anywhere from $10,000 to several hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the biggest pop during the festival. Well what about the Austin startup scene the rest of the year?
We all know about Austin success stories like that of GoWalla who sold their company in an acquihire to Facebook. They shut the service down this year during SXSW before relocating to Paolo Alto. However there are a lot more startups in Austin, how many? Well there’s an Austin startup list website that lists over 1400 startups, ranging from easly stage companies to those that are funded or on the brink of acquisition.
While the rest of the country saw an 18% decline in venture capital investments and deal volume fell 9% over the same period last year, Austin saw a 47% increase in venture capital funding during the first quarter.
Austin venture backed businesses tallied up $250 million dollars in 32 financings in the first quarter, reports the Austin Business Journal.
That number was fueled by three huge deals. Apollo Endosurgery got a $47.6 million dollar investment. In February Kinner Software received a $40 million dollar investment and in March Pivot3 Inc saw an investment of $23.3 million dollars.
source: Austin Business Journal
