Prepared by: Dante Fichera

This week “What’s Hot” are venture backed companies based in California operating in the software industry and have raised their Series B round. This period many of the venture financings were spread evenly throughout the united states with the exception of California.

In addition, two companies began trading on Wall Street with over $1.72 billion raised in equity through IPOs. The two IPO’s this reporting period are as follows and includes the long anticipated GOOGLE:

1. Google for $1.666 billion
2. SNB Bancshares, Inc. for $49.64 million

CapitalHunter.com verified that $440 million of venture capital was invested in 28 U.S.-based companies during this week’s strong reporting period. The average deal size was approximately $15.71 million. The amount of venture capital invested this period increased by 62% over last week’s $271 million.

Geographically,8 California companies raised $140 million in venture financings. The largest private equity financing in California this period was into JMP Group raised $34 million. JMP Group is a San Francisco that is focused on providing (1) proprietary equity research, equity sales, trading and other services to institutional investors active in growth and middle-market companies within five target industries -- business services, consumer, financial services, healthcare and technology; (2) corporate finance and strategic advisory services to growth and middle-market companies within those five target industries; and (3) asset management products and services to institutional and high net worth investors through our family of hedge funds.

The software sector raised 37% of the venture capital this period. Four software companies raised over $81 million in venture financing. The largest software financing was by Patchlink.com who had raised $30 million in venture capital. Patchlink.com is a software company that provides advanced network management and security software solutions.

Companies raising their Series B round of financing led this week’s venture capital activity. Series B companies represented 43% of the total venture capital deployed this period. The largest Series B financing was into Replidyne for $40 million. Replidyne is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative anti-infective products.

The following six and other unnamed investors funded the above mentioned top three venture capital investments for $104 million:

A total of 55 worldwide equity financings of private and public companies occurred during this reporting period. Each of the 55 equity financings are profiled in a weekly report which include venture financings, private placements, secondary offerings, PIPE’s, and IPO’s. Also available is access to over 30,000 other historic equity financings through the CapitalHunter.com searchable database.

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CapitalHunter.com is a web-based financial information company that identifies, preserves and electronically disseminates worldwide data on venture capital and other equity financings. Customers utilize the CapitalHunter.com searchable database to research newly and historic financings and to identify active investors.