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Editor's Eye on Atlanta: Kinetic Ventures is Lone Atlanta Firm that Invested in a Top 10 VC Funded Company
Posted March 24, 2011
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By Brian Wolak
A couple weeks ago, we wrote about Suniva being the only company in the Atlanta area that made The Wall Street Journal's Top 50 Venture-Funded Companies.
We decided to revisit the list from the other perspective - from the venture capitalists' side - to see if there were any local VC firms that had ownership stakes in the top 10 companies on the Journal's list.
As it turns out, there was one and a half.
Let's start with the one. Kinetic Ventures has an office in Atlanta (the other is in Chevy Chase, Md.) and is one of at least nine investors in Cyan Optics Inc., ranked 6 on the list.
Cyan is based in Petaluma, Calif., and provides technology to deliver voice, video and data over broadband networks. It doesn't appear that Kinetic has a place on Cyan's board, but Cyan is one of numerous companies that Kinetic includes among its portfolio companies on its Web site.
Led in part by managing director , Kinetic Ventures says that it invests in high growth, industry defining communications, information and power/clean technology companies. Its Kinetic Ventures VIII fund primarily invests in early stage companies with a focus on communications, information technology, and power/clean technology.
Chu has been with Kinetic since 1998 and has led investments in BroadWare, VerticalOne, FoodBuy, Vertical Acuity, Alereon, and Tower Cloud.
Citybizlist has posted stories twice about Kinetic Ventures making investments, most recently last August when we noted that it led an $18 million round in bank and merchant "uniter" Cardlytics, based in Atlanta.
The other investor in one of the top 10 companies on the Journal's list was not local in the exact definition of the word, and not exactly a venture capital firm. It was SBA Communications, which has its southeast regional office located in Pelham, Ala., less than a three hour drive from Atlanta.
SBA joined Soros Fund Management LLC in investing $128 million in Lisle, Ill.-based ExteNet Systems, ranked 5, and designs, builds, owns and operates outdoor and indoor wireless networks - for wireless service providers, government agencies, along transportation corridors, and in health care, corporate offices, high-rises, and higher education.
SBA, which has headquarters in Boca Raton, is one of the largest independent tower owners and operators in the United States, as well as one of the nation's largest providers of professional site development services to companies in the wireless telecommunications industry.
These were the two "local" firms that had investments in the top 10 companies, but that doesn't mean that other Atlanta firms weren't among the investors in the other 40.
If you care to take a gander, here's the list: http://tinyurl.com/686ya8l
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