Investor Watch: December 16, 2021

Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund got together with PitchBook to research whether efforts to support and document venture capital investment outside the usual coastal hubs was yielding fruit. What they found was that in 2021, for the first time in a decade, the proportion of seed- and early-stage capital invested in Bay Area startups is on pace to drop below 30%. Moreover, it’s a record year so far for Bay Area- and New York City-based VCs investing outside the Bay/NYC/Boston, with $24 billion deployed in 2021 YTD, versus just $4 billion a decade ago.

Their “Beyond Silicon Valley” report also found what may be the most promising trend of all: more than 3,000 active investors outside the Bay/NYC/Boston, up from 1,000 in 2011. “This includes more than 1,400 new institutional VC firms launched outside of the Bay/NYC/Boston — these new firms are more likely to invest in local/regional startups, creating new sources of local capital and insight across the country,” the report states.

Intentionally excluding Austin, Seattle, Chicago and L.A. from their exercise because those areas already have demonstrated critical mass of startup and VC momentum, the Rise of the Rest report then offers snapshots of why 12 other metro areas are on the rise: Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham (though those two are formally in separate MSAs now), Salt Lake City, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and Washington, D.C. Why are those areas thriving? When they spoke to leaders in those 12 cities, “the reasons vary, but some common denominators emerge,” the report explains. “Tech talent has spread everywhere following COVID-19; livability is crucial; culture matters; local corporations are helping; sector expertise is increasingly important; and universities are initiating a new era of entrepreneurship education.”

I examined those 12 hand-picked cities, the four excluded cities with sufficient critical mass and the four metros in the VC capitals of the Bay Area, New York City and Boston against the prism of Site Selection’s most recently published Top Metros rankings for corporate facility attraction and Mac Conway Award winners, which factor in capital investment, job creation and per-capita statistics. I found only seven of the report’s 20 cities among the Top Metros, and only three among the Mac Conway Award winners. What that tells you is this: Look to the report’s longer charts and Site Selection’s metro-area rankings for overlapping clues to the next hot markets for VC and innovation. — Adam Bruns

The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round, and what goes around comes around. Combine those two and you get the latest news from Proterra, the developer and manufacturer of commercial electric vehicles (primarily buses), which this week announced a new $76 million, 200-job EV battery factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to satisfy rising demand for its vehicles. Six years ago we published this story about the company’s pull from the Palmetto State (where we first documented its arrival in 2010) toward California because of policy and customer proximity. Now those policies and customers have proliferated everywhere, including back in South Carolina.

“With our company’s history in South Carolina and the Upstate region,” said Gareth Joyce, president of Proterra, “we are excited to build on our strong partnership with the state of South Carolina, Spartanburg County, and the City of Greer and bring EV battery system manufacturing to the region.”

Tragically, the company’s co-founder former CEO, former Tesla finance director and former Kleiner Perkins partner Ryan Popple, 44, passed away this week, just days after he stepped down from the board as the company announced a leadership succession plan. “When I joined Proterra in 2014 as CEO, we believed that public transit would be the first commercial vehicle segment to electrify and that the transit market would be a catalyst for transportation electrification,” he stated last week when that plan was announced. “Today, we have transformed that vision into a public company with three business platforms that serve over 130 customers and have helped save carbon emissions over 20 million service miles.”

“Ryan embodied entrepreneurial spirit and devoted his life to creating a better future,” the company said in a statement. “Above all, Ryan was a husband, father, and friend. We mourn with his family.”

Squint and you’ll see LEGO bricks. This is an aerial of the company’s only other Asian manufacturing site from the day it opened in November 2016 in Jiaxing, China, employing 1,200. LEGO Group’s Vietnam factory highlighted above will employ more than three times that number.