Going solo: More VCs deciding to invest alone

Like most firms in the collegial venture capital industry, Kodiak Venture Partners regularly seeks out other VC firms to join an investment round. But in January, when it invested $7 million in an Atlanta startup, it chose to go solo.

And Commonwealth Capital Ventures was the only institutional investor when it backed Woburn-based ByAllAccounts in a $5 million February financing round.

Both VC firms are part of a national trend in which venture investors — faced with deploying capital from larger and larger funds — are forgoing syndicate deals and instead are investing alone. The go-it-alone approach is an attempt to boost portfolio returns, but it may come at a price of diminishing the collaborative VC culture that brings a mix of minds to solve business problems.

Last year, 34 percent of the national venture-backed deals were completed as solo investments compared with 22 percent in 2000, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.