Venture capital investments in early-stage companies in Los Angeles fell significantly in the second quarter, down 23 percent to $245 million, a new report has found.

The decline was surprising given that Los Angeles set a record in the first quarter by bringing in $451 million in total funding, a 134 percent jump, according to a quarterly survey by Ernst & Young LLP and VentureOne Corp., a publisher of venture capital statistics.

Don Williams, a venture capital partner for Southern California at Ernst & Young, said funding for information technology start-up, many of them in the entertainment industry, dried up in the second quarter.

“Information technology has been the largest investment industry group for probably 10 to 12 years, and it’s been driven recently by cell phones and content for cell phones,” he said.

Orange County had a 32 percent jump in venture capital investments of $216 million in the second quarter, while funding for San Diego start-ups fell 12 percent to $269 million.
Nationwide, private investors poured $6.7 billion into U.S. start-ups in the second quarter investing the largest amount of money invested since the dot.com bubble burst in 2001.