By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Pharma Business Week — New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), a leading global venture capital firm, announced that it has established an office in Kendall Square in Cambridge to serve its growing portfolio and deal-sourcing work in the greater Boston area. NEA’s current portfolio of Cambridge and Boston area investments includes nearly two dozen healthcare and technology companies, and the firm is also a founding partner in The Experiment Fund , a seed-stage fund operating on Harvard’s campus (see also New Enterprise Associates, Inc. ). “NEA has been among the most active venture capital investors in the Boston area for many years, and we are particularly excited by the opportunities we see here today,” said Peter Barris , NEA Managing General Partner. “Great startup ecosystems form–and flourish–at the intersection of entrepreneurial culture, world-class universities and institutions, and capital. Boston’s entrepreneurial activity has increasingly concentrated around some of the world’s top academic institutions, research facilities and corporations, and we’re very excited to play a role in fueling that ecosystem and become even more deeply rooted in the community.” Kendall Square in Cambridge is home to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has become a dynamic hub for innovation, with more technology and biotechnology companies per square mile than anywhere else in the world–including global leaders like Amgen , Biogen, Genzyme , Novartis , Pfizer, Akamai , Google , and VMware . NEA’s own portfolio in the Boston area includes recently public biopharma companies TESARO and Epizyme . NEA’s newly established office is also in close proximity to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, the Broad Institute , and numerous other venture capital firms. ” Boston’s strengthening entrepreneurial activity spans the tech and healthcare sectors, but biopharma is really leading the charge,” said David Mott , NEA General Partner and head of the firm’s healthcare investing practice. “From startup to big pharma, the environment for company building, innovation and entrepreneurship has never been better, and Boston’s concentration of talent and capabilities is unrivaled. Anchoring the firm’s presence in Kendall Square will enable us to work more closely with our entrepreneurs and partners, and to aggressively seek new investment opportunities.” NEA’s growing activity in the region has been supported by investing staff from both coasts, with 13 partners collectively holding about two dozen board seats in the Boston area. A significant concentration of NEA’s portfolio companies in the greater Boston area are located in Cambridge , with about half a dozen located in Kendall Square . Resource: View Map of NEA’s Boston Area Portfolio Keywords for this news article include: Technology, Finance and Investment, Investment and Finance, New Enterprise Associates Inc. . Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world. Copyright 2013, NewsRx LLC
