Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington emerge as vibrant start-up areas

March 10, 2008 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

venturegrowth.jpgThe fastest growing major centers of U.S. venture capital investment are Seattle, Los Angeles, and the Washington DC metro area, all quietly growing their venture base over the last ten years, according to the National Venture Capital Association.

Silicon Valley and New England remain the country’s leading regions for investment, but New England has seen its portion of the overall investment pie shrink, even as these other regions have grown. Silicon Valley has kept its portion relatively constant — at about a third of the overall total.

Smaller regions seeing strong growth include New Mexico and Pittsburgh. Here are the findings (downloads Word file).

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • It strains the intellect to suggest two disparate years years with dramatically differents amounts of investments suffice to point out a trend. Might this be a an image enhansing NVCA attempt to convince policy makers that the industry is spreading its wealth. A closer look at the data reveals, in fact,that the share of venture capital going to California and Massachusetts actually increased from 50% to 59% of all VC investments in 1997 and 2007.
    Secondly to suggest that all investments were for start-ups also defies logic, since the industry invests more than 80% of its funds in more mature companies.
    Might NVCA be more interested in Congress' attention to the tax breaks it gets?