Boston Wraps Up Its Best Venture Quarter In Years

The TechCrunch wrecking ball is smashing into Boston as startups in the city are coming off their best quarter in years.

Boston-based startups managed to haul in over $1.2 billion in venture financing in 142 deals for the quarter, marking the strongest fundraising environment for Boston tech startups since 2009.

Taking the pole position in Boston’s tech resurgence is the online home furnishing retailer Wayfair, which raised $157 million ahead of a planned initial public offering later this year.

The company is a bit of an outlier in Boston’s technology scene, where biotech, clean technology, and life sciences startups have hoovered up most of the big financing rounds in recent years.

Still the company’s success and the recent public offering for Care.com hold out the promise of a new wave of consumer-facing tech innovation coming out of Beantown.  And while the Care public offering caused consternation in some corners over Boston’s tech scene and the coverage it receives, the startups in the city are flourishing in several sectors.

One need only look at Boston’s startup map on Techscene to see how robust the tech ecosystem in Boston remains. And, as with San Francisco, startup companies are moving back from the exurbs to take up space in the greater metropolitan area.

Beyond Wayfair’s big round, startups like the data storage company Actifio managed to join the billionaire club for startups; while application testing company, uTest, and the security company Bit9 also raised large new rounds of funding. In fact, less than half of the companies among the top ten startups by capital commitment in the first quarter were from the life sciences sector, which points to the potential for diversity among the city’s tech scene.

Photo via Flickr user Emmanuel Huybrechts