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.