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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

  • Aptera Rolls Out Newest Model, Says It’s On the Road to Financial Stability

    Aptera 2e G (1)
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    After lying low for much of the past year, startup automaker Aptera Motors of Vista, CA, said it has secured at least $10 million in VC funding and unveiled the latest version of its three-wheel vehicle—powered entirely by a battery from A123 Systems of Watertown, MA.

    At a media briefing staged yesterday in the hangar of a private jet aircraft company, Aptera officials unveiled what they described as a “fully engineered” Aptera 2e, an all-electric, two-passenger car capable of using the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gas to drive more than 200 miles. Immediately after the event, Aptera shipped the vehicle off to Detroit, where it has qualified to compete this summer against 37 other cars in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. The multi-stage competition is offering a $10 million purse ($5 million in two categories) for production-ready, clean, affordable, and fast automobiles that can travel the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon.

    “We want to show it to you here today before it goes off to Michigan for the competition,” Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur told the crowd, which included journalists, TV camera crews, and representatives from 23 companies that are supplying key components to Aptera.

    Tom Reichenbach, Aptera’s chief engineer, said the aerodynamically sleek car revealed at yesterday’s briefing was “built with components that we intend to go to production with,” and nearly “90 percent of the material cost of the 2e will be sourced from U.S.-based suppliers.”

    Aptera 2e and Tom Reichenbach

    Aptera 2e and Tom Reichenbach

    Aptera screened about 20 prospective batteries before selecting a 20 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion “nano phosphate” battery developed by A123 Systems, Reichenbach said. Weight became a crucial factor in engineering the car, and Reichenbach said the battery package accounts for just 476 pounds—or less than a fourth of the car’s overall weight of 1,800 pounds. He also said, “Through clever packaging, their energy density was better than anything else we could find.”

    The company cited key contributions by numerous other suppliers, including …Next Page »

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  • Histogen Reports Lasting Effects In Small Study of Baldness Treatment

    histogen-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Few life sciences companies have gotten as much mileage from a pilot trial that enrolled two dozen patients as San Diego’s Histogen, a startup developing a variety of therapies derived from human cells that are grown in the laboratory. On the other hand, we have discovered at Xconomy that the appetite for news about potential treatments for baldness is unusually high.

    Histogen has announced a one-year follow-up study of 24 patients who participated in an experiment using its Hair Stimulating Complex, or HSC, shows “statistically significant” new hair growth. Participants in the study, which was done in Honduras, also showed a statistically significant increase in hair density.

    The latest findings basically extend results that Histogen reported last July from the study, in which HSC, which consists of certain proteins and other molecules secreted by human fibroblast cells grown in a laboratory culture, was injected just below the scalp. The persistence is what’s significant in the latest study, Histogen founder and CEO, Gail Naughton, tells me by phone.

    “Most of the experts asked, ‘How long will it last before hairs drop off?’ ” she says. Naughton adds that currently approved treatments for baldness, such as finasteride (Propecia) or monoxidil (Rogaine), must be used every day to prevent hair loss. She maintains that Histogen’s treatment appears to have some lasting effect, at least in 85 percent of these patients.

    Histogen Study Results

    Histogen Study Results

    Histogen laid off all 36 of its employees last year after its fund-raising efforts were knocked into a hat when a cross-town rival, Carlsbad, CA-based SkinMedica, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the startup. With the case still pending, Naughton says Histogen managed to raise additional funding needed to keep a core group of 12 employees working, and to support the follow-up research. Since my last update three months ago, Naughton says Histogen also has gotten a commitment for substantial funding needed to underwrite additional research in Singapore.

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  • Venture Activity Report Charts Surge in Energy and Cleantech Investments, Smaller-Sized Deal

    Quarterly Trend Chart 1
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Venture investments continued to improve during the first three months of 2010, led by a strong comeback in both dollars and deals involving startups focused on energy and utilities, according to a report released today by CB Insights, the New York firm previously known as ChubbyBrain.

    Venture firms sank $5.9 billion in 731 deals nationwide during the first quarter, according to the CB Insights Venture Capital Activity Report. Those numbers look especially strong—more than 50 percent higher—in comparison to the same quarter of 2009, when VC investments of $3.9 billion in 483 companies hit an 11-year low.

    The results also are stronger sequentially. The $5.9 billion is a nearly 7.3 percent gain over the $5.5 billion that was invested during the fourth quarter of 2009. The analysts at CB Insights suggest that both VC investors and entrepreneurs are gaining confidence about their prospects in the wake of the financial crisis that took the U.S. economy over a cliff in late 2008, according to the analysts at CB Insights.

    Q1 2010 CB Top 10 Cities

    Healthcare remained the single largest sector for venture money, although less VC money was invested in more deals than the previous quarter. Venture activity in Massachusetts and New York also gained against California, although the Golden State still claims the lions’ share of both dollars and deals.

    In its 32-page report, CB Insights says, “While $5.9B remains far below quarterly levels seen before the …Next Page »

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  • From Boston to San Diego, Companies Maneuver to Catch Online Video Wave

    vmix-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Apple’s recent launch of the iPad has triggered intensifying interest in online video distribution, which seems to be reflected in a string of announcements that coincide with today’s kickoff of the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual conference in Las Vegas.

    As if reminding everyone of the size of their network, Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), announced today that unprecedented demand for online coverage of major sport events—including streaming video—pushed traffic on its global network to a single-day peak of 3.45 terabits per second on Friday. That’s roughly equivalent to the capacity needed to download the entire text of the U.S. Library of Congress in less than a minute.

    The company noted that surging interest in major sporting events, including professional golf and baseball, helped to drive traffic to a new peak for high definition streaming video—part of a network platform that Akamai launched in 2009. San Diego-based VMIX also announced today it has broadened its relationship with Akamai by standardizing its online video capabilities with Akamai’s HD Network.

    As Wade recently reported, Brightcove, another Cambridge, MA, company that has been a longtime proponent of Adobe’s Flash-based digital video technology, has moved to …Next Page »

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  • Qlipso Acquires Veoh Networks, V-Vehicle Ousts Founding CEO, Local Technology Clusters Converge on Bioinformatics, & More San Diego BizTech News

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    With all the life sciences news in San Diego last week, it would be understandable if you thought there was no high-tech news to be had. A simpler explanation, though, is that I was out of the country. So I cast the net a little beyond Xconomy’s pages for this summary.

    —A shakeup at San Diego’s V-Vehicle occurred after the U.S. Department of Energy rejected the startup automaker’s request for more than $321 million in loans. Chairman Ray Lane of the famed VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers stepped in as CEO, replacing founding CEO Frank Verasano. With Lane in Northern California and V-Vehicle’s planned production facility in northeastern Louisiana, it seems unlikely the company’s headquarters will remain in San Diego much longer.

    —Aptera Motors, the Carlsbad, CA-based startup developing a two-door, three-wheel electric vehicle, has been seeking a production partner in China, according to the China Car Times. Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur later said the Aptera model to be built in China will be sold in China. Wilbur says, “We have no plans to build U.S. vehicles in China.”

    —Falling somewhere between healthcare and information technology, bioinformatics is an emerging field that represents new opportunities for San Diego’s high-tech community. UCSD’s new chief of biomedical informatics, Lucila Ohno-Machada, told Denise that San Diego has all the ingredients necessary to become the country’s No. 1 center for bioinformatics.

    —What’s left of San Diego’s Veoh Networks was acquired by Los Angeles-based 2Peer Ltd., which operates the Flash-based social video startup Qlipso. The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog says 2Peer CEO Jon Goldman acquired Veoh just hours before its planned bankruptcy liquidation filing for less than $20 million. Veoh had raised close to $70 million from its venture backers.

    —Ryan reported that a gold rush of sorts is underway as software companies develop technology to share medical images. A case in point is eMix, a separate corporate entity created within San Diego-based DR Systems.

    —In an extensive review of Apple’s iPad, Xconomy’s early adopter (Wade) concluded that the hype was largely justified. He found the electronic tablet is useful in a genuinely new way, and represents the beginning of the end of the mouse-and-keyboard era of personal computing. A few days later, however, Xconomy’s fearless leader (Bob), declared that the iPad won’t become a breakthrough success.

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  • MaxLinear Scores Successful IPO, $321M V-Vehicle Loan Request Rejected, Genomatica Raises $15M in VC Funding, & More San Diego BizTech News

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    It’s been a while since San Diego’s high-tech community saw this much deal news in one week—and most of it was good news, too. We gathered it all in one place for you here.

    —Investor demand helped boost Carlsbad, CA-based MaxLinear’s shares (NYSE:MXL) by 33 percent on their first day of trading, with volume of nearly 6.9 million shares. MaxLinear, which makes wireless semiconductors for receiving and processing television and video signals over a broadband wireless connection, got about $50 million of the almost $90 million raised in the initial offering of 6.4 million shares, which was priced at $14 per share.

    —Connect, the San Diego nonprofit group for technology and entrepreneurship, found that 319 startups were launched in 2009, about 13 percent more than the 282 startups of 2008. The data point was just one part of a report on San Diego’s innovation economy that Connect released for the fourth quarter of 2009.

    —The Department of Energy turned down an application for $321 million in loans submitted by San Diego-based V-Vehicle, a venture-backed startup automaker that planned to build a factory in Northeastern Louisiana. The V-Vehicle Co. sought funding under the DOE’s Advanced Vehicle Technology Loan Program for what it called …Next Page »

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  • Heavy-Duty Hybrid-Electric Drive Maker Discloses its IPO—In Canada

    ISE logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Oops. In a debut that was largely overlooked by market watchers in San Diego and elsewhere, heavy-duty hybrid-electric drive systems maker ISE Corp. has announced its successful IPO last month on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the ticker symbol ISE.

    The company, based in suburban Poway, CA, says its initial public offering of 3.45 million shares was priced at C$6 a share (about $5.83 U.S.) on Feb. 23, and raised gross proceeds of C$20.7 million (about $20.1 million U.S.), according to a statement issued yesterday. ISE says it intends to use the net proceeds to repay a loan, and for research and development, capital equipment purchases, and to expand sales and marketing.

    ISE founder and chairman David Mazaika told me in late 2008 to think of their products as a very large version of the Toyota Prius. The company’s core technology is focused on three critical subsystems: energy storage, controls software, and power electronics. Since 2000, the company says it has sold more than 300 hybrid-electric drive systems, which have accumulated over 12 million miles of fleet operation. Much of that has come from Long Beach Transit, an ISE customer since 2001. Long Beach Transit reached 10 million miles in revenue service last year with its fleet of buses powered by ISE’s hybrid-electric drive systems.

    ISE, founded in 1995, has 138 employees, more than one-third of which are software, electrical, mechanical and systems engineers. The company didn’t say in its statement why it chose to go public in Canada instead of the U.S.

    “ISE is an excellent example of a U.S.-based company that has successfully accessed the capital it needs on Toronto Stock Exchange,” Kevan Cowan, President TSX Markets and Group Head of Equities says in the statement released by ISE.

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  • The Active Network Stops for Overhaul Following a Decade of Acquisitions

    activenetwork_logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    About as far back as I can remember, The Active Network usually has made at least one acquisition by this time of year.

    But it’s been a silent spring over at Active HQ in San Diego’s Sorrento Valley, where the venture-backed company develops software that customers use to manage recreational sports events, including online registration, payments, and marketing. Combining a business that’s focused on helping people to get out and about (triathalons, campground reservations, tennis tournaments) with strong capabilities in software development (I’m imagining code written by pudgy and translucent-skinned programmers who feed at night on bear claws from the snack machine) makes me wonder sometimes how active The Active Network’s 2,200 employees really are.

    But I digress.

    Until recently, The Active Network has been pursuing an aggressive growth-through-acquisition strategy that I once compared to kudzu, “the vine that ate the South.” To fund its growth, the company has raised more than $200 million from VC firms and other investors, including ESPN, Canaan Partners, Tao Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners, Comdisco Ventures, and Performance Equity Partners. But The Active Network made its last noteworthy acquisition more than a year ago, when it bought the online campground reservation provider Reserve America from IAC, (NASDAQ: IACI).

    So what happened? Is there a reason for The Active Network’s inactivity on the M&A front?

    As it turns out, there is.

    CEO Dave Alberga tells me that while the company has made some very small, undisclosed acquisitions, it began an ambitious program in late 2008 to overhaul and replace …Next Page »

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  • Startup Automaker V-Vehicle Hits Roadblock After Government Rejects $321M Loan Request

    frank-varasano
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Plans by the famed Kleiner Perkins VC firm, Google, T. Boone Pickens, and other investors to launch a new automaker are now hanging by a thread.

    The Department of Energy has rebuffed San Diego-based V-Vehicle’s request for more than $321 million in loans—throwing into jeopardy the automaker’s ambitious plans to build an “environmentally friendly” car. When V-Vehicle’s founders and investors announced the company’s plans last June in Monroe, LA, Louisiana economic development officials proclaimed in a press release “New American Car Company Will Make History in Louisiana.”

    The Associated Press and other news outlets are reporting the DOE turned aside a $241.2 million loan request to revamp an idle headlight plant in northeastern Louisiana and a related $79.9 million loan to coordinate engineering with V-Vehicle’s suppliers. Today, state and federal officials say they’re trying to find out why.

    In a statement released yesterday, V-Vehicle says work began last year in Monroe, LA, under $133 million of state tax credits and incentives, where were targeted for completion in the fall of next year.  The company says its first production prototype of the V Car is in testing, and national sales were projected to begin late next in 2011.

    In its statement yesterday, V-Vehicle also revealed more than it previously has about why its vehicle would be “environmentally friendly,” saying, “The V Car’s miles-per-gallon would be among the best of all four-passenger gasoline-powered vehicles sold in …Next Page »

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  • KidZui Caps Significant Progress in Difficult Year with $4M in Fresh Funding

    kidzui-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    KidZui’s founding chairman and CEO Cliff Boro called me from the airport last night to confirm recent reports saying that the San Diego startup, which has been developing a kid-friendly Internet browser, has raised $4 million in additional venture funding.

    The four-year-old startup launched its KidZui browser (which is a Firefox add-on) in 2008, and Boro says KidZui now has more than 1 million registered users. The browser gives kids an authentic Internet experience by allowing them to surf hundreds of thousands of websites, watch online videos, and play games. It’s just that all of the content has been screened and approved by KidZui’s editorial team. But as the CEO explained to me last summer, it’s a tough market with already-established and well-funded rivals like PBSkids, Webkinz, Nickelodeon, and Club Penguin.

    San Diego’s Mission Ventures led the $4 million round, and Boro tells me that Mission’s managing partner, Leo Spiegel, has joined KidZui’s board. KidZui previously raised almost $12 from Emergence Capital Partners, First Round Capital, Maveron, and other investors—and Boro says the VCs also joined in the latest round.

    “We plan to use the funding for general working capital, and continue to work on making our product better and on expanding our partnerships,” Boro says.

    The company recently arranged some high-profile partnerships. Under a deal with Best Buy, for example, the consumer electronics retailer now offers to load the KidZui browser as part of its software installation service. Through a new partnership with DreamWorks, KidZui is integrating the lead character from the animated movie “How to Train Your Dragon” in its social networking experience as part of an integrated sponsorship.

    Boro says KidZui has increased its audience by 300 percent over the past year, “and spent less than $10,000 on marketing.”

    Still, it hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride since last August. At that time, Boro told me he had reduced KidZui’s headcount to 25 staffers from 30. He’s laid off more workers since then, and KidZui now has 15 employees. “We definitely cut expenses last year and are running pretty lean,” Boro says. “We’ve made significant progress in a difficult year.”

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  • Genomatica Raises $15M to Build Demo Plant For Sustainable Chemical Production

    genomaticaprimarylogo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    We’ve been waiting for this one since last summer.

    San Diego-based Genomatica is announcing today it has raised $15 million in a Series C venture round led by a new investor, TPG Biotech, to build a demonstration plant to make a common industrial chemical through a renewable technique, and to develop a bigger pipeline of other petrochemical alternatives.

    Genomatica’s existing investors, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Alloy Ventures, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, joined in the round with TPG Biotech, which is affiliated with TPG, the global $45 billion investment firm. The company has raised a total of $38.5 million since it was founded in 2000, according to CEO and co-founder Christophe Schilling.

    Genomatica, which describes itself as a sustainable chemicals company, uses a fermentation tank filled with sugar and genetically engineered microbes to produce mass quantities of 1, 4 butanediol. Also known as BDO, the hydrocarbon is an intermediate chemical widely used by the petrochemical industry to make plastics, solvents, pharmaceuticals, textiles and automotive components.

    When Genomatica said last June it had succeeded in making commercial-grade batches of BDO, Schilling told me that achievement had cleared the way for construction of a small-scale industrial BDO demonstration plant. Now, after nine months, the company has secured the necessary funding to move ahead with those plans. Schilling says the demo plant will be big enough to produce about a ton of BDO a day, although he adds that the company has not yet disclosed where it plans to build the plant. Such a facility would require a 30,000-liter fermentation vessel (about 7,925 gallons) housed in a facility that could be as big as 20,000 square feet.

    In a statement released by Genomatica, TPG Biotech principal Patrick McCroskey says, “After careful and rigorous scrutiny of this competitive field, no company is better suited to drive low-cost petro-alternatives into the chemical industry. In short order and through …Next Page »

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  • First-Day Trading Lifts MaxLinear Shares 33 Percent Above IPO Price

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Eager investors boosted the stock of Carlsbad, CA-based MaxLinear (NYSE: MXL) by more than 33 percent today in the company’s debut, with shares closing at $18.70 in first day of trading of nearly 6.9 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Last night, MaxLinear’s IPO underwriters increased the offering to 6.4 million shares (from 5.4 million), and priced the stock at $14 a share, raising a total of nearly $90 million for MaxLinear and its venture investors. As we previewed, MaxLinear is a semiconductor company that specializes in designing radio frequency chips that receive and process broadband TV and video signals.

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  • San Diego’s Xpenser Touts Free Web and Mobile-Based Expense Tracking

    Xpenser-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    At the end of his presentation late yesterday at the DEMO Spring 2010 conference in Palm Desert, CA, Parand Tony Darugar said that when he returns to San Diego following the three-day event, “I will have no receipts in my wallet, and I won’t have to do an expense report.”

    That’s because he uses Xpenser, a Web-based expense-tracking service that Darugar created with procrastinating, on-the-go executives like himself in mind. Before founding Xpenser, Darugar says he let his monthly business expenses pile up—until his wife, who is a financial planner, pulled him aside and told him he was six months and $20,000 behind in filing his monthly expense reports.

    Darugar says filling out corporate expense forms is a tedious chore that many folks describe as “a pain in the neck” and a “waste of my time.” Xpenser is a free service operated by Tastr, a San Diego startup that Darugar founded, and which was among 65 companies to launch new products at the three-day DEMO conference. In fact, Tastr was the only San Diego company to attend the event.

    While Darugar also demonstrated Xpenser’s capabilities at a TechCrunch event in September, he announced at the DEMO event that Xpenser is introducing premium accounts that have expanded features, and that charge a fee for business customers and their corporate clients. He also emphasized that Xpenser is a platform that can be used on the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones. Corporate expense tracking is an increasingly crowded field, but Xpenser seems to have some unique features.

    As a free service, Xpenser’s strength is in its versatility. Users create their own account through the website, which automates the process of filling out expense forms by allowing users to use a cell phone or any other device to report each expense as it is incurred. The user can phone it in and leave a voice message, or use text messaging, e-mail, Twitter, instant messaging, and other online services. He even showed how to use an iPhone to take a photo of a receipt and send it to the Xpenser website, where it is converted into a Web-based format that can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet, Quicken QIF format, and other programs.

    Darugar gave several examples during his six minutes in the spotlight at DEMO. To record an $18 taxi ride from the airport, he used his cell phone to call an Xpenser phone number and described the trip for a voice recognition program that transcribed and stored the information. He also showed how to use an iPhone camera to simply take a photo of a receipt and transmit it to his Xpenser account.

    I watched Darugar make his presentation in a live Web broadcast that DEMO arranged with BitGravity, a DEMO demonstrator and DEMOgod award winner in 2008.

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  • Facing Job Exodus, San Diego IT Execs Launch Council on Globalization and Competitiveness

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    IT executives from some of San Diego’s better-known employers, including Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Sony Electronics, and Broadcom are banding together to find new ways to retain local IT jobs and to counter the effects of foreign outsourcing.

    The formation of a new regional business group, the San Diego-based Industry Council for Competitiveness and Globalization (ICCG), comes as the Washington D.C.-based Alliance for American Manufacturing released a study that claims the U.S. lost 2.4 million jobs to China from 2001 to 2008.

    The Alliance, an advocacy and lobbying organization formed in 2007 by the U.S. steel industry and its labor union, says California accounts for almost 370,000 of the job losses—including high-tech and IT jobs in data processing, computer programming, and technical support. The alliance contends that the 370,000 lost jobs represents about 2.2 percent of California’s workforce. On its website, the alliance says Massachusetts lost 72,800 jobs (or 2.2 percent of its statewide workforce) and the state of Washington lost 44,000 jobs (or 1.4 percent of its workforce) over the same period.

    Alliance spokesman David Roscow tells me the group issued the report as part of its continuing effort to focus the attention of U.S. policymakers on China’s trade subsidies, currency policies, and other practices that have adverse effects on the U.S. economy, and amount to “cheating,” according to the Alliance.

    The formation of the new business group in San Diego also comes as many local technology and life sciences companies—especially the biotech startups—are turning to …Next Page »

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  • MaxLinear IPO Prices Stock Above Range at $14 a Share

    MaxLinear logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    What began as a modest IPO for Carlsbad, CA-based chipmaker MaxLinear appears to be heating up. In a statement released tonight that MaxLinear increased its initial offering to 6.4 million shares at $14 a share—from 5.4 million shares at a range of $11 to $13 a share. The new stock offering is one of six IPOs expected this week, which has market watchers buzzing about the busiest week for IPOs in a couple of years. The company’s shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MXL (NYSE: MXL).

    A number of forces have converged to make the MaxLinear IPO hotter than most. MaxLinear focuses on designing semiconductor chips that enable people to watch TV on devices with a wireless broadband connection. The company’s offering also comes during an auspicious week in the markets. Financial Engines, an investment adviser based in Palo Alto, CA pulled off the biggest IPO since the fall of 2009 when it went public last week.The S&P 500 Index has also reached its highest trading level since September. Market analysts have been saying that MaxLinear’s IPO, like the Financial Engines IPO last week, is over-subscribed.

    As I mentioned in a preview of MaxLinear’s IPO, the company initially expected to raise $42.7 million, or nearly $50 million, if the underwriters exercise over-allotments that could bring the total offering to 6.25 million shares. With the last-minute increase to 6.4 million shares, MaxLinear’s offering is expected to raise close to $90 million.

    The company’s filing showed that about 1.27 million shares, or 27 percent of the initial offering, are being sold by MaxLinear’s venture investors, which include San Diego’s Mission Ventures, (which owns a 13 percent pre-IPO stake); U.S. Venture Partners, (21.6 percent); Battery Ventures, (13.8 percent); and UMC Capital, (7.1 percent). The company plans to use the capital for general corporate purposes and acquisitions.

    The Carlsbad chipmaker’s IPO also was stoked Monday evening by “Mad Money” pitchman Jim Cramer on CNBC. In his inimitable way, Cramer said, “MaxLinear is a play on many of the big themes that we’ve been hitting on all the time. The company designs high-performance, low-cost radio frequency receiver chips that capture and process broadband signals—which allows us to watch broadband video on cable boxes, digital TVs, mobile phones, computers, vehicle displays, and other networks. This is at the heart of the tsunami. Broadband video on your phone?! Oh man! That defines the tsunami!”

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  • Torrey Pines Investment Raises $30 Million Toward $150M Target For Next Fund

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Torrey Pines Investment, a San Diego life sciences investment firm with close ties in Russia, has raised $30 million for a second venture fund that is targeting $150 million.

    Nicolay Savchuk, a Russian-born mathematician and Torrey Pines director, was traveling yesterday and said he was not available to comment on the fund-raising effort, which was reported previously by Mergermarket and VentureWire.

    In an email to me, though, Savchuk said, “The capital will be used to finance acquisition and development or co-development of [drug] candidates from pharma and biotech companies towards monetization event at the next big value step—usually at the proof of concept in human [trials].”

    Savchuk and Jay Lichter, the CEO of San Diego-based aFraxis, outlined how co-development works in a presentation last month to the San Diego Venture Group. Lichter said aFraxis completed pre-clinical testing of a promising compound for treating a form of autism in record time, and at a savings of roughly $4 million, by joining forces with Torrey Pines Investment. Savchuk explained that in exchange for an equity stake in aFraxis, his company financed the pre-clinical testing through a full-service contract research organization it owns near Moscow. The testing validated a neurological target for Fragile X syndrome that was identified in the laboratory of MIT Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa.

    Savchuk told the venture group audience that his firm likes to identify and invest in potential drug candidate “assets”—and use its R&D capabilities in Russia to produce “data packages” that hopefully validate continued development.

    In his email to me, Savchuk explained that Torrey Pines Investment plans to use its funding to continue similar collaborations, which are arranged by Torrey Pines and its affiliate ChemRar High Tech Center of Moscow. Torrey Pines, he said, works “in partnership with original pharma, biotech, or in concert with like-minded investors executing virtual development model similar to Afraxis, Roche / Viriom and other deals we closed in the recent past.”

    The ChemRar High Tech Center is part of a bio-medical research cluster in Moscow that was key to Russian Pharma 2020, the government-industry partnership that outlined a way to update Russia’s pharmaceutical industry.

    Torrey Pines Investment was formed in 2002. Savchuk has not disclosed how much was raised in the firm’s first fund or how many deals it has done, although he told VentureWire the second fund already is bigger than the firm’s first fund.

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  • Avaak Raises $10M to Expand Market for Wireless Video Monitor

    avaak-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Avaak, the San Diego startup that specializes in ultra low-power wireless video networking technology, says today it has raised $10 million in a Series B round of venture funding led by Qualcomm Ventures, the San Diego chipmaker’s strategic investment arm. Existing investors Trinity Ventures, InterWest Partners, and Leapfrog Ventures joined in the round. The three Silicon Valley VC firms invested about $7 million in Avaak’s first round in 2007.

    As I explained last year, Avaak sells a wireless Internet gateway and two small video cameras, which are linked with the gateway through a wireless mesh network, enabling consumers to monitor their homes or businesses remotely. Users can access the real-time video feed via the Internet on their computer or a mobile device.

    Avaak co-founder and CEO Gioia Messinger says in a statement released by the company that the additional capital would be used to expand Avaak’s Vue system into retail distribution, and to make further enhancements to the company’s products. Messinger, who is attending the DEMO Spring 2010 conference in Palm Desert, CA, could not be reached for comment earlier today.

    Nagraj Kashyap, who is vice president of Qualcomm Ventures (and is also attending the Demo conference), said in a statement, “Avaak has taken video monitoring to a new level of simplicity, allowing consumers to view live video on their mobile devices… Qualcomm is pleased to support Avaak as it enters its next exciting growth phase.”

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  • Searching For Signs of a Comeback in San Diego’s Innovation Economy

    Economy Which Way
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    San Diego’s innovation economy obviously imploded last year—dragged down by general economic conditions that were hammered by the collapse in Southern California real estate, the breakdown of the capital markets, and a decline in tourism. Now there are signs that things are stabilizing, and might even be gradually improving, according to several reports released last week.

    In a report on San Diego’s innovation economy, the Connect nonprofit group for technology and entrepreneurship found that 319 startups were launched in 2009—including 74 in the fourth quarter. That’s about 13 percent better than the 282 local startups that Connect counted in 2008, but still shy of the 332 startups formed in 2007. In its roundup of San Diego’s innovation economy, Connect also makes these points:

    —The value of M&A deals in the San Diego area soared during the fourth quarter. Connect tallied 29 deals totaling nearly $1.3 billion that were closed, compared with 32 deals totaling $99 million in the previous quarter.

    —The value of venture capital investments in the San Diego area increased to $300 million during the fourth quarter of 2009, a 52 percent increase compared to the same quarter in 2008, according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. It was 16 percent more than the $259 million that VCs sunk into San Diego companies during the third quarter of 2009. Of 30 fourth-quarter deals, more than half (53 percent) involved early stage investments, rather than later-stage companies.

    —The top 10 investments during the fourth quarter, based on the MoneyTree Report: Zogenix, ($35 million); Fate Therapeutics, ($30.5 million); Evofem, ($25.0 million); SmartDrive Systems, ($25 million); Pfenex, ($24.0 million); Receptos, ($23.6 million); Fyfe Company, ($20.0 million); Altair Therapeutics, ($17 million); Cyntellect, ($15.5 million); Celula, ($15 million).

    —Connect also found that life sciences, high-tech, and other innovation companies added 1,069 new jobs in 2009, including 209 in the fourth quarter. Life sciences and software companies each accounted for roughly a third of the new jobs.

    Of course, job creation in the innovation sector pales in comparison to …Next Page »

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  • MaxLinear Ready for IPO, Lindbergh Grandson Announces Electric Aircraft Prize, EMN8 Raises $14.4M, & More San Diego BizTech News

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    We had an interesting mix of high-tech news last week, as several efforts to raise capital took shape, and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s grandson announced an electrifying new incentive prize. Read on to learn what it’s all about.

    —Carlsbad, CA-based chipmaker MaxLinear is expected to go public this week. The company, which specializes in designing wireless chips used to receive and process TV and Internet video signals, is expected to raise between $43 million and $50 million. MaxLinear plans to use the capital for general corporate purposes and acquisitions. The company’s shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MXL.

    —Seattle-area resident Erik Lindbergh came to the Torrey Pines Glider Port Friday to announce the creation of the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize, or LEAP, which is intended to help launch the fledgling electric aircraft industry. Four LEAP awards, which have yet to be funded, will be awarded annually at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture, the air show held each July in Oshkosh, WI.

    —San Diego’s EMN8, a maker of self-service kiosk technology, is raising more than $14.4 million in venture funding. EMN8 sells its touch screens for use in fast-food restaurants, theaters, theme parks, and other retailers.

    —Ventana Capital founder Tom Gephart wants to rally support for a proposal to win $5 billion (with a ‘b’) in federal economic stimulus funding, which would be invested in startup companies throughout the U.S. Gephart’s plan calls for dividing the billions among a family of 20 venture capital firms, and which would provide $250 million for each firm to invest and manage.

    —Tom Cassidy, the retired rear admiral hired to lead a DARPA-funded effort to develop a robotic spy plane in 1987, has retired from the company he helped create—General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of Poway, CA. The company has made more than 380 Predator and Reaper aircraft, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Cassidy, 77, will remain as nonexecutive chairman of the company that Neal and Linden Blue created as an affiliate of San Diego’s privately held General Atomics.

    —Organizers said there was a record turnout for Roth Capital Partners’ 22nd Annual OC Growth Conference, which was held last week at Laguna Niguel, CA. More than 370 companies and 3,000 investors and analysts attended the event. There were 21 presenting companies from San Diego, including Qualcomm, Overland Storage, DivX, and Maxwell Technologies.

    —Fallbrook Technologies spokesman Emile Barrios told me the San Diego cleantech company has partnered with China’s Tri-Star Group to manufacture Fallbrook’s proprietary design for a more energy-efficient continuously variable transmission bicycles and light electric vehicles. Tri-Star will make Fallbrook’s transmission at its plant near Shanghai, China.

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  • Lindbergh Grandson Launches Incentive Prizes for Advances in Electric Aircraft and Green Aviation

    Erik Lindbergh
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    As paragliders and hang gliders swooped overhead, the grandson of famed aviator Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh chose a stunning panoramic San Diego clifftop to announce the formation of a new incentive prize to recognize advancements in electric aircraft technology.

    Seattle-area resident Erik Lindbergh says the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize, or LEAP, is intended to stimulate the development of more environmentally friendly aviation technologies, and help the fledgling electric aircraft industry take off. Lindbergh LEAPLindbergh created the prize, which actually consists of awards in four categories, through a nonprofit organization he founded, the Creative Solutions Alliance (CSA), which has partnered with the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). The four LEAP awards, which have yet to be funded, will be awarded annually at the EAA’s annual AirVenture “fly-in,” the popular air show held each July in Oshkosh, WI.

    Organizers also have arranged for students and teachers from a Seattle-area high school to participate in the process and attend the awards ceremony in Oshkosh this summer. Lindbergh says six students and six teachers from Aviation High School, a project-based magnet school in Des Moines, WA, just south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, will attend in a bid to develop curriculum and stimulate student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Lindbergh is a founding board member of the high school, which was started in 2004.

    In introducing the prize, Lindbergh says it …Next Page »

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