Author: Connie Loizos

BioClinica, a Newton, Pa.-based clinical trials management company, and JLL Partners, a New York private equity firm, announced that they’ve successfully completed the tender offer by BC Acquisition Corp., an affiliate of JLL Partners that last month began a $7.25 per share offer for all outstanding shares of BioClinica. In January, JLL agreed to acquire BioClinica for $123 million.

PRESS RELEASE:

BioClinica(R), Inc. BIOC +0.55% , a leading global provider of clinical trial management solutions, and JLL Partners, Inc. (“JLL”), a leading private equity investment firm, today announced the successful completion of the tender offer by BC Acquisition Corp. (“Purchaser”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BioCore Holdings, Inc. (“Parent”), each of which is an affiliate of JLL, for all of the outstanding shares of common stock of BioClinica. Purchaser and Parent are affiliates of JLL and one of the investment funds managed by JLL, JLL Partners Fund VI, L.P. (the “Sponsor”).

Based on information provided by Computershare Trust Company, N.A., the Depositary for the offer, as of the expiration of the offering period at 12:00 midnight New York City time, at the end of March 11, 2013, a total of approximately 13,912,736 shares representing approximately 88.327% of the outstanding shares of common stock of BioClinica (in addition to 2,252 shares tendered under guaranteed delivery procedures), had been validly tendered and not withdrawn. Purchaser has accepted for payment all shares validly tendered in the offer.

JLL also announced that, to complete the acquisition of BioClinica, JLL will effect, without prior notice to, or any action by, any other BioClinica stockholder, a short-form merger in which Purchaser will merge with and into BioClinica, with BioClinica surviving the merger and continuing as a direct wholly owned subsidiary of Parent. JLL intends to exercise its option under the merger agreement to purchase newly issued BioClinica shares in order to ensure ownership of at least 90% of the outstanding BioClinica shares to complete the short-form merger. In the merger, each of the remaining untendered shares of BioClinica common stock (other than shares as to which appraisal rights are properly demanded under Delaware law, if any) will be converted into the right to receive the same $7.25 per BioClinica share net to the seller in cash. The merger is expected to occur within the next several days and a subsequent press release will be issued at that time. Following the merger, BioClinica’s common stock will cease to be traded on the NASDAQ Global Market.

About BioClinica

BioClinica, Inc. is a leading global provider of integrated, technology-enhanced clinical trial management solutions. BioClinica supports pharmaceutical and medical device innovation with imaging core lab, internet image transport, electronic data capture, interactive voice and web response, clinical trial management, and clinical supply chain forecasting and optimization solutions. BioClinica solutions maximize efficiency and manageability throughout all phases of the clinical trial process. With over 20 years of experience and more than 2,000 successful trials to date, BioClinica has supported the clinical development of many new medicines from early phase trials through final approval. The company operates state-of-the-art, regulatory body-compliant imaging core labs on two continents, and supports worldwide eClinical and data management services from offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.bioclinica.com.

About JLL Partners

JLL Partners is a leading New York-based private equity investment firm with approximately $4 billion of capital under management. JLL Partners’ investment philosophy is to partner with outstanding management teams and invest in companies that they can continue to grow into market leaders. JLL Partners has invested in a variety of industries, with special focus on the healthcare and pharmaceutical services industries. For more information, please visit www.jllpartners.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made in this press release are “forward-looking statements” intended to qualify for the safe harbors from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements may be identified by, among other things, the use of forward-looking terminology such as “believes”, “expects”, “may”, “should” or “anticipates” or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology, or by discussions of strategy that involve risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements include the decision by BioClinica, Inc. to enter into an agreement to be acquired by the holding company controlled by JLL Partners, the ability of BioClinica, Inc. and the holding company controlled by JLL Partners to complete the transaction contemplated by the definitive agreement, including the parties’ ability to satisfy the conditions set forth in the merger agreement, and the possibility of any termination of the definitive agreement. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on our current expectations, and those made at other times will be based on our expectations when the statements are made. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the expected timetable for completing the proposed transaction; the risk and uncertainty in connection with a strategic alternative process; financial results; the demand for our services and technologies; growing recognition for the use of independent medical image review services; trends toward the outsourcing of imaging services in clinical trials; realized return from our marketing efforts; increased use of digital medical images in clinical trials; integration of our acquired companies and businesses; expansion into new business segments; the success of any potential acquisitions and the integration of current acquisitions; and the level of our backlog are examples of such forward-looking statements; the timing of revenues due to the variability in size, scope and duration of projects; estimates made by management with respect to our critical accounting policies; regulatory delays; clinical study results which lead to reductions or cancellations of projects and other factors, including general economic conditions and regulatory developments, not within our control. Further information can be found in the risk factors contained in the Annual Report of BioClinica, Inc. on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012 and most recent filings. BioClinica, Inc. does not undertake to update the disclosures made herein, and you are urged to read our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Important Information about the Tender Offer

This announcement and the description contained herein are for informational purposes only and are not an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell securities of BioClinica, Inc. The tender offer described herein is being made pursuant to a Tender Offer Statement on Schedule TO (including the Offer to Purchase, the related Letter of Transmittal and other tender offer materials) filed by Parent, Purchaser and the Sponsor with the SEC on February 11, 2013, as previously amended. In addition, on February 11, 2013, BioClinica filed a Solicitation/Recommendation Statement on Schedule 14D-9 with the SEC related to the tender offer. The Tender Offer Statement (and related materials) and the Solicitation/Recommendation Statement contain important information that should be read carefully before any decision is made with respect to the tender offer. Those materials may be obtained at no charge upon request to Innisfree M&A Incorporated, the information agent for the tender offer at (888) 750-5834 (toll free). Stockholders also can obtain these documents when they are filed and become available (and all other offer documents filed with the SEC) free of charge from the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov. In addition, copies of the Tender Offer Statement (and related materials) and the Solicitation/Recommendation Statement and other filings containing information about BioClinica, Inc., the tender offer and the merger may be obtained, if and when available, without charge, by directing a request to BioClinica, Inc. Attention: Ted Kaminer, Chief Financial Officer, at 826 Newtown-Yardley Rd., Newtown, PA 18940, or on BioClinica’s corporate website at http://www.bioclinica.com.

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Twenty-month-old Metaps, a Tokyo-based company focused on helping developers “monetize” their products and services over the Android operating system, has raised approximately $11 million from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan, along with existing investors.

PRESS RELEASE:

Metaps Inc. (HQ:Tokyo, Japan, President and CEO:Katsuaki Sato, hereafter “Metaps”) has secured JPY 1 billion (approx. $11MM USD) in Series B private equity financing from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan (Japan Head:David Milstein, hereafter “Fidelity”) along with existing investors. Metaps is pleased to partner with Fidelity, bringing their global investment expertise to springboard the company’s strategy to the next level.

Metaps is an Android monetization platform that supports developers by providing them with the necessary tools to attract customers, activate users, and monetize traffic. Metaps enables developers to free themselves of traditional SNS development platforms. Since its launch in August 2011, Metaps has been focusing on Asian markets to consult developers mainly in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and additionally North America.

As of February 2013, participating Android apps using the Metaps platform have achieved an amazing 62 million downloads, making this the largest network in Asia. Since the summer of 2012, sales of Android smartphones increased globally at a staggering rate, which fueled Metaps’ 60% average monthly growth. When combined over one year, Metaps revenue has grown over 175 times. Most importantly, the remarkable growth has been due to the Asian smartphone makers in Korea and Taiwan along with the growing usage of Android OS, which in turn has enabled the success of the world-wide Android application market. Mainly, games are the category of apps that enjoy the greatest results, which has contributed to the success of developers using Metaps.

The proceeds from this private placement will be used for securing top talent and growing Metaps service in Asia along with expansion to other countries. The company aims to accelerate business and become the largest Android monetization platform in the world by the end of 2013.

About Fidelity Growth Partners Japan

Fidelity Growth Partners Japan is the venture capital and private equity arm of FIL Limited (hereafter “FIL”), focused on investing in Japan. Fidelity helps companies accelerate growth by providing them with FIL’s proprietary capital, expertise and access to global resources. FIL has actively invested in Asia for more than 15 years, and has venture capital and private equity investment teams in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and Tokyo with decades of experience in the Asia Pacific region. FIL also has a financial services business which operates under the brand name of Fidelity Worldwide Investment, and is a global leader in asset management, providing investment products and services to individuals and institutions in the UK, continental Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

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Retailigence, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company whose back-end database helps track whether items are stocked in the stores of its retail customers, has raised $6.3 million in new funding from its existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Motorola Solutions, along with new investors Telenav and OPT, one of Japan’s largest digital ad agencies. Retailigence had previously raised $4.2 million.

PRESS RELEASE:

Retailigence (www.retailigence.com), the leading Online-to-Offline (O2O) Local Marketing and Commerce Platform company, today announced $6.3 million in new funding to respond to growth in demand following its triple-digit revenue growth in Q4 2012.

Retailigence’s preeminent open O2O platform has proven to substantially enhance marketing and commerce performance for brands and retailers compared to traditional digital marketing approaches. O2O refers to any and all activity that originates online yet eventually results in a shopper going to a physical store. Forrester Research predicts that by 2016 more than half of the $3.5T spent in US retail offline will be influenced by the web. (Forrester’s US Cross-Channel Retail Forecast, 2011 To 2016.)

“Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have dramatically changed the way shoppers interact with brands and retailers,” said Jeremy Geiger, founder and CEO of Retailigence. “Brands and retailers are adopting new path-to-purchase strategies to capitalize on these trends, and that’s where Retailigence comes in. With Retailigence, marketers can alert shoppers on their mobile devices exactly when a particular product is available and indicate where it can be purchased at the closest retail location, increasing in-store sales to the benefit of both product brands and retailers.”

Retailigence currently works with top retailers such as Home Depot, Best Buy and Nordstrom, as well as brands in the fashion, consumer electronics and CPG categories. The Retailigence retail network now covers 50 percent of U.S. retail sales. Leading brands and retailers rely on Retailigence’s O2O platform to convert mobile consumers into local shoppers with the following solutions:

adPOP (Point-of-Purchase) – Ad solution that dynamically embeds Retailigence’s proprietary access to local store inventory data into hyperlocal mobile ad creative to improve local ad relevance and to guide shoppers along the local path-to-purchase. The solution has proven not only to increase awareness and engagement for brands, new products and retailers, but also tangibly increase sales.

appNET – Commerce solution for retailers that helps hundreds of thousands of shoppers every day, using any one of the large and growing number of mobile application partners, find specific products and brands for instantaneous convenience.

“This type of real time product inventory data is the holy grail for mobile and local shopping,” said Michael Boland, Senior Analyst at BIA/Kelsey. “Given that the vast majority of retail spending happens offline at local physical stores, it can really close the loop on the increasing levels of shopping that’s influenced online and in mobile.”

Existing Retailigence investors DFJ, Quest, and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital participated in the Series B funding as well as new investors including Telenav (TNAV), the leader in personalized navigation, and OPT, one of the largest digital ad agencies from Japan and Retailigence’s exclusive Japanese digital ad partner.

Brands looking to improve both traditional and ROI-oriented digital ad performance by an average 50% should contact Retailigence at [email protected].

Retailers looking to capture the significant online-to-offline commerce opportunity that has demonstrated increased top-line revenue by as much as 10% should contact Retailigence at [email protected].

Advertising solution providers and agencies that want to improve ad performance by adding local relevance should contact Retailigence at [email protected].

Advertisers with Japan operations interested in taking advantage of the growing O2O shopping behavior trend in Japan should contact Retailigence Japan at [email protected]

About Retailigence

Retailigence is an Online-to-Offline (O2O) local marketing and commerce platform that utilizes brick-and-mortar inventory data obtained directly from retailers to turn online consumers into offline shoppers. Serving both retailers and brands, Retailigence distributes local store inventory-based advertising via its own network of location-based application partners, mobile ad networks, mobile ad exchanges, search providers and social networks. The result is an increase in both top-of-funnel awareness and bottom-of-funnel sales for brands, new products and retailers. Retailigence is a privately held company based in Silicon Valley backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Motorola Solutions, Quest Venture Partners, Telenav, OPT and other leading investors.

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The OKAngel Sidecar Fund, an investment vehicle created through a partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and the U.S. Treasury State Small Business Credit Initiative, has invested $300,000 in Sway Medical Technologies. Tulsa, Ok.-based Sway makes portable balance testing software for iOS devices, ostensibly allowing phsyicians to better assess their patient’s stability and their risk of falling, among other things.

PRESS RELEASE:

The OKAngel Sidecar Fund, managed by i2E, Inc., recently closed a $300,000 investment in Tulsa, OK-based Sway Medical Technologies. The i2E managed fund participated in an investment round of $700,000 that included co-investment from Oklahoma angel investors.

Sway Medical is a mobile software company focused on the development of medical grade mobile applications that monitor patient outcomes in the field of orthopedics, geriatrics, and pharmacology while providing a better on-field assessment of concussion symptoms in athletes. The company’s initial product is the Sway Balance software, an FDA cleared balance system for stability assessment using existing hardware in a mobile device.

OKAngel Sidecar Fund is one of three Accelerate Oklahoma! investment vehicles created in 2011 by i2E through a partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and the U.S. Treasury State Small Business Credit Initiative. The OK Angel Sidecar Fund specifically targets opportunities to invest alongside Oklahoma angel investors.

The co-investment ratio with the federal funds upon closing exceeds 1:1 and subsequent investments and traditional financing are expected to result in a greater leverage ratio within five years.

About Sway Medical

Management: Chase Curtiss, CEO

Year started: 2011

Location: Tulsa, OK

About i2E, Inc.: With offices in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, OK, i2E’s nationally recognized services include business expertise and funding for Oklahoma’s emerging small businesses.

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Green Innovations, a Miami, Fla.-based distributor of American Hygienics Corporation’s 100% tree-free bamboo-based product line, has added Philip Rundle to its strategic advisory board. Rundle spent 16 years with the consumer goods giant Kimberly-Clark, including as marketing director and business unit director for South Africa and the U.S.

PRESS RELEASE:

Green Innovations Ltd. (otcqb:GNIN) GNIN +19.87% (“Green Innovations” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that Mr. Philip C. Rundle has agreed to join the Company’s Strategic Advisory Board. Mr. Rundle is considered a visionary business leader with over 20 years of extensive domestic and international experience in the tissue, diaper, wipes, and feminine care products business.

“Philip’s direct industry experience at Kimberly-Clark and more recently at a leading USA tissue manufacturer make him ideally suited to help guide the Green Innovations team as we continue to execute our business strategy,” stated Bruce Harmon, Chief Executive Officer of Green Innovations. “I look forward to working with him to gain and apply his unique insight to potentially accelerate and expand our growth plans.”

During his career, Philip spent 16 years with Kimberly-Clark, a $21B leading international consumer goods company. In 1999, after holding various positions within Kimberly-Clark, including Marketing Director and Business Unit Director for South Africa and the USA, Mr. Rundle was named Vice President, Central and Eastern Europe. In 2003, he was named Vice President of NATO Brand Development, which brought him back to the USA. In this role, Philip led the effort to revitalize revenue and profit growth, and directed an international team of employees. His most recent industry role has been as CEO of a leading tissue manufacturer based in North America, where his efforts led to double digit growth and brand leadership for the past three years. He currently consults for a leading private equity firm on potential acquisitions in the consumer products group (CPG) field. Philip has a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from Damelin College and an Advanced Management Diploma in Business Administration from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

“In many ways, Green Innovations is where my previous company was when I first joined their team a few years ago,” stated Rundle. “I was able to use my industry contacts, insight, and experience to help establish them as a leading paper products supplier in the USA very quickly. Now I’m eager to utilize some of what I learned to help Green Innovations build their brands and achieve their sales and distribution objectives.”

The Company’s Strategic Advisory Board now consists of four members; Kalpesh Parmar, Mark DeFilippo, Michael Perfetti, and Philip Rundle.

About Green Innovations Ltd.

Green Innovations Ltd., through its wholly-owned subsidiary Green Hygienics, Inc., is the exclusive licensed North American distributor of American Hygienics Corporation’s 100% tree-free bamboo-based product line, including personal care and paper-based goods. The Company provides consumers the opportunity to enjoy high-quality and performance eco-friendly goods from dedicated experts that have been producing bamboo products for over a decade, along with the cost-benefit of local raw material manufacturing, and the satisfaction of knowing that by using these products they are doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint and to continue the movement towards a more healthy and sustainable planet.

For further information regarding Green Innovations Ltd., contact:

Green Innovations Investor Relations(866) 947-5567 (Toll-free)E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.greeninnovationsltd.com

Disclaimer

This press release contains “forward-looking statements”. Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future, and specifically references to accelerating and expanding growth plans, and achieving sales and distribution goals. The reader can identify these forward-looking statements by forward-looking words such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “potential,” “anticipate,” “forecast,” “believe,” “estimate,” “project,” “plan,” “continue” or similar words. The reader should read statements that contain these words carefully because they discuss future expectations, contain projections of future results of operations or of financial condition, or state other forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding potential products, customers, revenues, expansion efforts, and future plans and objectives of Green Innovations Ltd. (“Green Innovations”). The risk factors listed in our disclosure documents and the cautionary language on this website provide examples of risks, uncertainties and events that may cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations and projections described by Green Innovations in its forward-looking statements. Actual results relating to, among other things, product launch, sales, customer acceptance and market share could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Factors affecting forward-looking statements include: consumer preferences, competition from more established brands, ability to develop market share; changes in the operating costs; changes in economic conditions, foreign exchange and other financial markets; changes of the interest rates on borrowings; hedging activities that Green Innovations develops or produces; changes in the investments levels; litigation; legislation; environmental, judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments in areas in which Green Innovations operates; technological, mechanical and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Green Innovations’ development activities; and labor relation matters and costs. The reader should refer to the risk disclosures set out in the periodic reports and other disclosure documents filed by Green Innovations from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities.

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Tech Valley Communications, an Albany, N.Y.-based telecommunication service provider operating networks in New York and Northern New England, has hired Patrick Coughlin as its senior VP of sales and marketing. Coughlin previously held the same position at the backhaul provider Fibertower.

PRESS RELEASE:

Tech Valley Communications, a facilities based telecommunications service provider operating networks in New York and Northern New England, today announces the appointment of Patrick Coughlin as Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing effective immediately. With more than 18 years of experience in sales leadership, including building strategic relationships with major wireless carriers, fiber service providers and enterprise customers, Mr. Coughlin is ideally suited to lead Tech Valley Communications’ Sales & Marketing force and contribute to the company’s ongoing expansion.

“In conjunction with the Company’s continued growth plans, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Patrick to our executive team,” states Kevin O’Connor, Tech Valley Communications’ President and Chief Executive Officer. “Patrick’s extensive experience and impressive track record leading carrier, wholesale and enterprise sales and marketing efforts will help us fully leverage existing and new customer relationships and our extensive fiber network in the Northeast.”

Mr. Coughlin previously held the position of Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Fibertower. As part of his responsibilities, Mr. Coughlin frequently interacted with major customers and led revenue growth efforts. Prior to that position, he served as Vice President of Enterprise & Carrier Sales and Marketing at RCN Metro (formerly NEON Communications and Globix Corporation) from 2006 to 2009; and as Senior Director of Sales at NEON from 2001 to 2005. Mr. Coughlin also served as a Senior Account Executive with NEON and other telecom companies, including AT&T and USTelecenters, during which time he was recognized for being a leading sales contributor for major accounts.

“I am very excited about the opportunity to join the Tech Valley Communications team,” comments Mr. Coughlin. “Throughout my career, I have had the pleasure in working with various highly regarded fiber providers, and am honored to continue that work with Tech Valley Communications. My background and relationships will serve Tech Valley Communications well as we expand our carrier relationships, pursue new customer segments and explore new ways to grow the business. I’m looking forward to helping Tech Valley Communications solidify its position as the leading provider of fiber based services in the New York and Northern New England market today.”

Learn more about Tech Valley Communications at http://www.techvalleycom.com/.

About Tech Valley Communications

Tech Valley Communications (TVC), headquartered in Albany, NY, provides fiber optic data, voice, and high-speed Internet services to enterprise, carrier and wholesale customers in Upstate New York and New England utilizing its own FirstLight(R) fiber optic network. TVC offers a robust suite of advanced telecommunications products, including dedicated Internet access, Metro Ethernet networks (E-LAN, E-Line), MPLS, traditional TDM solutions, SIP trunks, virtual PBX and audio-conferencing, managed commercial wireless systems, and Data Center Collocation. TVC’s clientele includes national cellular providers and CLECs and many leading enterprises, spanning high tech manufacturing and research, hospitals and healthcare, banking and financial, secondary education, colleges and universities, MDUs (Multi-Dwelling Units) and local and state governments. Tech Valley Communications is the parent company of New Hampshire based CLEC, segTEL. Tech Valley Communications is a portfolio company of Boston-based private equity firm Riverside Partners.

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Matrix Partners, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture firm, has brought aboard a new general partner. Jared Fliesler joins the firm from the privately held payments company Square, where he served as VP of user acquisition and business operations. Prior to Square, Fliesler was an executive with Slide and is credited with helping to negotiate the company’s $200 million sale to Google in 2010.

PRESS RELEASE:

Matrix Partners, a premier venture capital firm with a 30-year history, today announced that Jared Fliesler has joined Matrix as a general partner. He will be based in the firm’s Silicon Valley office. Fliesler comes to Matrix from Square, where he served as Vice President of User Acquisition and Business Operations. Prior to Square he held senior positions at Google and Slide.

“Jared thrives on resolving complex issues unique to emerging tech companies. He’s an expert at helping small teams scale, navigating through product changes and implementing creative marketing techniques,” said Dana Stalder, Matrix general partner. “And it is his ability to cultivate strong relationships with founders that makes him such a strong fit for Matrix and an asset to our portfolio companies.”

Fliesler, 28, comes to Matrix after helping grow Square’s payment processing business from $2 billion annualized to more than $10 billion and the number of activated accounts from 800,000 to more than 3 million. Under his leadership, Fliesler’s teams scaled retail availability from a few hundred locations to nearly 40,000, optimized risk metrics to the best in the company’s history, and successfully executed on a number of key partnerships.

Prior to Square, Fliesler was an early employee at Slide, where he focused on growing both its footprint and revenue. After Google’s acquisition of Slide in 2010, Fliesler went on to run product and operations for the Slide group within Google. There he was responsible for crafting the product strategy with a focus on mobile and social products, ultimately leading to the successful launch of PhotoVine.

“Only an incredible opportunity could get me to leave Square, and that’s what I found at Matrix,” said Fliesler. “I want to have the biggest possible impact and I can do that best by working closely with entrepreneurs to solve their most pressing problems at the whiteboard. Matrix not only values but expects this type of active partnership; it’s not a firm that simply writes a check and walks away.”

At Matrix, Fliesler will focus primarily on early-stage companies across a broad number of areas. He will also assist companies across the portfolio with their growth and product strategies.

To learn more please read the Matrix blog post here.

About Matrix Partners:
Matrix Partners is a premier venture capital firm that has generated outstanding returns for more than three decades. By focusing on early-stage investments and emphasizing long-term relationships with entrepreneurs, the firm has delivered several of the industry’s top performing funds of all time. Matrix Partners has offices in Cambridge and Waltham, MA; New York, NY; Palo Alto, CA; Mumbai, India; and Beijing and Shanghai, China. Matrix Partners has invested in several game-changing, industry-leading businesses such as Apple Computer, Aruba, HubSpot, JBoss, Netezza, Phone.com, Polyvore, Starent Networks, Tivoli Systems, Veritas, Zendesk, and Zong.

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Dallas-based SunTX Capital Partners has sold its portfolio company, Huron, a Lexington, Mich.-based supplier of tubular assemblies and precision-machined products. Terms of the sale, to a “financial sponsor,” were not disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE:

SunTx Capital Partners (“SunTx”) today announced the sale of its portfolio company, Huron, Inc. (“Huron” or “the Company”) to a financial sponsor. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Huron, based in Lexington, Michigan, is a leading supplier of value-added tubular assemblies and precision machined products for the automotive industry. Originally founded in 1943, Huron utilizes advanced technologies and state-of-the-art systems to engineer and manufacture a diverse variety of customized products for the automotive industry. The Company has been successful in securing new business awards for its products and services, particularly in relation to emerging powertrain technologies. Customers of Huron include some of the world’s largest car manufacturers, as well as Ford Motor Company and Toyota and other key automotive OEM and Tier I suppliers.

Ned Fleming, Founder and Managing Partner of SunTx commented, “Today’s announcement marks an important milestone for all parties involved. The sale of Huron is a validation of our firm’s investment strategy of seeing value in mid-sized operating companies where others do not and patiently working with management to build a better company for its stakeholders, while creating value for our investors. SunTx has enjoyed supporting Huron’s successful transition from a supplier of commodity components to a supplier of strategic products to many of the auto industry’s biggest names. We have been an investor in Huron since 2005 and we wish the Company continued success.”

Bob Bales, President of Huron, noted, “Huron is clearly an industry survivor and is well-positioned to continue growing the business.” Mr. Bales added “We sincerely thank Ned Fleming and the SunTx team for their support, particularly during the automotive industry’s most challenging economic times. SunTx has been an excellent partner; they encouraged us to think broadly and creatively and helped us strategically position the Company. Their input complemented our operational acumen.”
Donnelly Penman & Partners served as financial advisor and Haynes and Boone, LLP served as legal counsel to SunTx with respect to the transaction.
About Huron, Inc.
Huron, Inc. is based in Lexington, Michigan and is the leading supplier of value-added tubular assemblies and precision components used in automotive engine, transmission, fuel and climate control systems. The Company is one of the largest independent producers of precision bar-turned products in the U.S. and has successfully leveraged its position to expand into specialized tubular fabrication market. More information about Huron can be found at www.huroninc.com.

About SunTx Capital Partners
SunTx Capital Partners, LP, is a Dallas-based private equity firm that invests in middle market manufacturing, distribution and service companies. SunTx specializes in supporting talented management teams in industries where SunTx can apply is operational experience and financial expertise to build leading middle-market companies with operations typically in the Sun Belt region of the United States. SunTx was founded in 2001 and currently has over $600 million of assets under management. The capital committed by SunTx comes from the principals of SunTx as well as from institutional investors, including leading university endowments and corporate and public pension funds. More information about SunTx can be found at www.suntx.com.

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Julep Beauty, a Seattle-based beauty brand, has raised $10.3 million in Series B funding led by the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and including Western Technology Investments and Version One Ventures. Previous investors in the company, including Maveron; Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter; and Precedent Investments also participated in the new round.

PRESS RELEASE:

Julep Beauty Incorporated, one of the fastest growing beauty brands in the U.S., is breaking ground in product innovation and using the power of new ecommerce platforms and social tools in place of traditional marketing. Today Julep announced that it has raised $10.3 million in a Series B round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from returning investor Maveron, the venture capital firm co-founded by Dan Levitan and Howard Schultz. Existing investors also include Lady Gaga’s Manager, Troy Carter, and Precedent Investments, a joint venture capital fund financed by entertainment powerhouse Overbrook Entertainment’s James Lassiter, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Western Technology Investments and Version One Ventures are also participating.

“I started Julep out of a passion for connecting with my sisters and girlfriends through beauty,” says Jane Park, CEO and founder. “For me, beauty is about connection, not competition. So my vision is to bring a new social approach to the beauty industry by having a two-way conversation online with our fans, incorporating their ideas directly into our rapid product innovation cycle.”

Park, a former Starbucks executive, has grown Julep as a multichannel beauty brand fueled by digital and social media. Unparalleled innovation and speed-to-market, coupled with vocal social media engagement instead of traditional marketing, have enabled the brand to produce more products in an 18-month span than any other beauty company. The brand’s wildly popular Julep Mavens program is a monthly beauty subscription service that allows consumers to engage directly through new product trial and online discussions.

Today, brands in the *$160 billion a year global beauty industry lag behind other industries in using the social web to build businesses. Park uses the power of e-commerce platforms, big data and social tools to accelerate the growth of the Julep brand. “We don’t have to spend millions of dollars launching a new product–our social media girlfriends are highly engaged consumers who help us get the word out,” says Park. In the last year and a half, Julep has launched 52 new beauty products including mascaras, lip glosses and glycolic scrubs, and 186 nail colors. The number of products launched each month is so impressive because of Julep’s distinctive marketing blueprint: the freedom to operate without the limits of physical shelf space.

In 2012, Julep was recognized as an Indie Brand of the Year finalist in the prestigious 2012 Cosmetic Executive Women Beauty Awards. The company also launched on QVC and in Sephora nationwide as part of the Julep brand’s continued trajectory. This round of Series B financing will help further propel Julep in the beauty space, with innovative launches into the major categories of skin care and color cosmetics already planned for 2013 and 2014.

“Jane, Kate [MacDonald – Chief Experience Officer and COO] and team have leveraged the Internet to build Julep into a compelling brand at a pace previously unheard of in beauty,” said Jeff Jordan, partner, Andreessen Horowitz. “We are delighted to be leading this round of financing that will give the company the resources to continue their impressive traction.”

“As direct TV proved to be a launching pad for enduring beauty brands decades ago, we believe new social media channels will be the catalyst for launching the next great multi-channel beauty companies,” says Maveron board member Jason Stoffer, who led Julep’s first institutional round of financing. “Julep is a pioneer in using Facebook, Pinterest and the social web to deeply engage its community of beauty lovers around color and fashion forward beauty products.”

Joining Julep’s Board of Directors is Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow.com. Current Board Members include Jason Stoffer from Maveron and Jeff Kearl, the founder and current chairman of the Board of Skullcandy, and Padma Rao, who led marketing at online gaming company Zynga.

*Source: Economist.com

About Julep

Founded in Seattle, Julep Beauty Incorporated is one of the fastest growing beauty brands. Julep was born from the belief that beauty is about connection; a celebration of the bond between girlfriends. Leveraging the expertise gained in their four boutique nail parlors in the Seattle area, Julep has created a line of the most effective, toxin-free beauty products and the latest limited-run nail colors. The wildly popular Julep Maven beauty subscription program features full sizes of Julep’s growing beauty products offerings, including skin care and color cosmetics. To further their mission of empowering and connecting women, Julep’s Powered by Girlfriends(TM) project donates a portion of proceeds from every sale to organizations that support women. For more information, please visit www.julep.com. Follow Julep: Twitter @JulepMaven / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/julep/ Pinterest http://pinterest.com/julepmaven/. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJHb6Tgrla4

About Andreessen Horowitz

Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm that provides seed, venture and growth-stage funding to the best new technology companies. Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz helps entrepreneurs become successful CEOs and build important and enduring companies. Its investing partners are Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, John O’Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan, Peter Levine and Chris Dixon, all widely recognized experts in the creation, scaling and operation of high growth technology companies. The firm has $2.7 billion under management across three funds. Among its 170 investments are Airbnb, Apptio, Box, Fab, Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Jawbone, Lytro, Pinterest, Quirky and Twitter. The firm was established in June 2009 and is located in Menlo Park, California. www.a16z.com

About Maveron

Maveron is a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in consumer companies. Founded in 1998 by Dan Levitan and Howard Schultz, the firm has offices in Seattle and San Francisco. Representative Maveron investments include Altius Education, eBay, Capella Education, General Assembly, Shutterfly, Trupanion and zulily. For more information about Maveron, visit www.maveron.com.

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CardioKinetix, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based medical device company, has completed the $23 million second-tranche of its Series E financing, bringing the total round to $48 million. Panorama Capital is the company’s newest investor. It joins previous investors U.S. Venture Partners, JPMorgan Partners, New Leaf Venture Partners, SV Life Sciences, H&Q Healthcare Investors, and H&Q Life Sciences Investors.

PRESS RELEASE:

CardioKinetix Inc., a medical device company pioneering a catheter-based treatment for heart failure, announced today that it has completed the $23 million second-tranche of its Series E financing, bringing the total financing round to $48 million. Panorama Capital has newly joined the Company’s investor group of U.S. Venture Partners, JPMorgan Partners, New Leaf Venture Partners, SV Life Sciences, H&Q Healthcare Investors HQH -1.65% , and H&Q Life Sciences Investors HQL -0.63% .

This financing follows the Company’s achievement of several recent milestones including the treatment of more than 100 patients with the Parachute(R) device, enrollment in PARACHUTE IV, the Company’s U.S. randomized pivotal trial, initiation of European commercialization, and receipt of a dedicated German reimbursement code.

“This financing allows us to further advance our programs to bring Parachute therapy to heart failure patients around the world,” said Maria Sainz, President and CEO of CardioKinetix Inc.

“The combination of the heart failure market size, the growth of structural heart procedures, and the elegant design of the Parachute is a very attractive investment for our firm and we are excited to join the other investors and support CardioKinetix,” said Rod Ferguson, Managing Director and co-founder of Panorama Capital.

About Heart Failure

Heart failure is a common, debilitating, and potentially deadly condition in which the heart is unable to supply sufficient blood flow to meet the needs of the body. Symptoms of heart failure negatively impact quality of life and include shortness of breath, persistent coughing or wheezing, buildup of excess fluid in body tissues (edema), fatigue, lack of appetite or nausea, impaired thinking, and increased heart rate. More than 20 million people around the world are affected, with approximately six million in the United States, where it is responsible for 1.1 million hospitalizations annually.(1)

About the Parachute(R) Ventricular Partitioning Device

The first-of-its-kind Parachute Ventricular Partitioning Device is a minimally invasive treatment for patients with heart failure caused by damage to the heart muscle following a heart attack. Clinical data demonstrates improved overall cardiac function and quality of life for patients treated with the Parachute device.

Through a small catheter inserted in the femoral artery, the Parachute implant is deployed in the left ventricle to partition the damaged muscle, excluding the non-functional heart segment from the healthy, functional segment to decrease the overall volume of the left ventricle and restore its geometry and function. This minimally invasive procedure is performed in the catheterization laboratory under conscious sedation.

The Parachute Ventricular Partitioning Device has received CE Mark. In the U.S., the Parachute system is an investigational device limited by federal law to investigational use only and is not available for sale.

About CardioKinetix Inc.

CardioKinetix, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is pioneering the catheter-based Parachute(R) Ventricular Partitioning Device for heart failure. Privately held, the company is backed by SV Life Sciences, New Leaf Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, JPMorgan Partners, Panorama Capital, H&Q Healthcare Investors, and H&Q Life Sciences Investors. For more information please visit www.cardiokinetix.com.

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Health Catalyst, a Salt Lake City-based data warehousing company that’s focused on healthcare, has added $8 million to its Series B round, care of Kaiser Permanente Ventures and CHV Capital. Previously, the company had raised $33 million for its Series B, from investors that include Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Sorenson Capital.

PRESS RELEASE:

Health Catalyst, the leader in healthcare data warehousing, announced it has increased its Series B round by $8 million, with participation from Kaiser Permanente Ventures and CHV Capital, a venture capital fund guided by the strategic objectives of Indiana University Health, Indiana’s largest health care system.

The Health Catalyst platform represents a paradigm shift in the rapidly growing market for healthcare performance improvement. The company’s agile, healthcare-specific data warehousing platform enables hospitals and health systems of any size to respond to the evolving shift from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement, and more easily manage patient populations under new care models.

Coming on the heels of a $33 million investment in December by Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Sorenson Capital, this latest financing bolsters Health Catalyst’s ability to invest in development, services, and people to support its clients as well as strengthen its ties to industry-leading health systems.

“Kaiser Permanente Ventures’ mission to partner with entrepreneurial companies to advance clinical quality, service and affordability closely matches Health Catalyst’s own goals to help hospitals standardize around the safest, most effective care practices while also reducing inefficiencies,” said Dan Burton, Chief Executive Officer of Health Catalyst. “Like Kaiser Permanente Ventures, CHV Capital represents an ideal partner for Health Catalyst — a strategic investor with direct ties to one of the country’s most innovative, data-driven health systems. In addition to gaining a financial partner in CHV Capital, our commercial and development relationship with Indiana University Health will enable both organizations to accelerate our shared goal of being leaders in delivering patients the highest quality of care through the most cost efficient means possible. We are excited to welcome both investors and look forward to leveraging their organizational expertise and resources to help take Health Catalyst to the next level.”

Todd Cozzens, a Partner at Sequoia Capital and a Health Catalyst board member, said, “These strategic relationships with Kaiser Permanente Ventures and CHV Capital will lead the way to major innovations for the US healthcare system. Every hospital and health system is coming to understand that having an electronic health record is not enough. They need a fast, agile, healthcare-specific data warehouse to organize, visualize and utilize all of the data at their fingertips and address the shift to risk-based contracting and quality performance. Health Catalyst has proven with several leading health systems that its technology and management team will deliver every time.”

Kyle Salyers, Managing Director at CHV Capital, said, “Healthcare data warehousing and analytics is a necessity in order to succeed in the future of healthcare. It will bring actionable information to the point of care and to administrative leadership. We and our colleagues at IU Health see Health Catalyst as the market leader in delivering a data warehousing platform and analytic accelerators with scale, flexibility, speed to deployment, and ultimately a tangible return on investment.”

Health Catalyst’s technology platform can be implemented in a matter of months and enables hospitals of all sizes to better leverage their investments in electronic health records (EHRs) to more effectively measure quality outcomes, meet regulatory and financial incentive reporting requirements, and eliminate waste.

Health Catalyst technology is utilized in the care of more than 20 million patients, including at Allina Health, Indiana University Health, MultiCare Health System, North Memorial Health Care, Providence Health & Services, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and Texas Children’s Hospital.

About Kaiser Permanente Ventures Kaiser Permanente Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Kaiser Permanente, makes investments in medical device, diagnostics, healthcare services and information technology companies that advance the quality and affordability of health care. Since its inception in 1997, Kaiser Permanente Ventures has invested in more than 40 venture-capital backed companies at all stages of development, and contributed organizational expertise, time and resources to the success of these companies. For additional information please visit www.kpventures.com.

About CHV Capital A return-driven venture capital fund, CHV Capital, Inc. (CHV) is guided by the strategic objectives and mission of Indiana University Health, Indiana’s largest health care system. These objectives include fostering economic development and the life sciences in Indiana. CHV Capital, Inc. actively seeks syndication investment opportunities, particularly with Midwest institutional investors. We engage only in investment opportunities where CHV management, boards and partners are uniquely positioned to add value.

About Health Catalyst Based in Salt Lake City, Health Catalyst (formerly Healthcare Quality Catalyst) delivers a proven, agile data warehouse platform that actually works in today’s transforming healthcare environment. Currently over 20 million patients utilize Health Catalyst’s Adaptive Data Warehousing platform and solutions. Founded by healthcare veterans who developed their solution after struggling for years to try to make non-healthcare data warehousing solutions work, the Health Catalyst data warehouse utilizes an adaptive approach designed specifically to address the complex nature of healthcare data. Health Catalyst’s platform combines technology solutions and clinical expertise borne out of repeated successful implementations that significantly improved quality of care and reduced healthcare costs. Health Catalyst’s proven solutions are deployed at leading health systems including Allina Health, Indiana University Health, MultiCare Health System, North Memorial Health Care, Providence Health & Services, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and Texas Children’s Hospital. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter.

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Plastiq, a Boston-based online payments company, has raised $6 million in financing. The round was led by Atlas Venture and Flybridge Capital Partners and also included investors in an earlier, $2.3 million financing sewn up last spring. Those other investors include NextView Ventures, Greenoaks Capital Management and individual investors such as Harvey Golub, the former chairman and CEO of American Express.

PRESS RELEASE:

Plastiq, an online payments solution provider based in Boston, Massachusetts with offices in Toronto, Canada has closed a $6M round of Series A financing. The round was jointly led by venture capital firms Atlas Venture and Flybridge Capital Partners. Investors from the previous round, NextView Ventures and Greenoaks Capital Management LLC, also participated alongside angel investors including Harvey Golub, former Chairman and CEO of American Express.

“I first met Dan Choi and Eliot Buchanan at Harvard’s i-lab when they were undergraduates and watched them develop their concept to reality,” said Jeff Bussgang, general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. “The early traction the company has achieved is amazing. With its innovative vision, state-of-the-art product, and strategic partnerships, Plastiq is well positioned to transform the payments industry.”

Ryan Moore, partner at Atlas Venture commented, “The team of people Eliot has assembled is unparalleled in their expertise and equally motivated to build a truly game-changing payments platform.”

Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Bussgang serve on the Board of Directors of Plastiq.

Plastiq is advancing innovative payment solutions across North America. The Plastiq online platform allows consumers to use their credit cards for payments in situations when they previously could not. Plastiq charges consumers a nominal fee for each transaction, historically charged to the merchant, for the added flexibility to strategically use their preferred credit cards. The Plastiq platform allows consumers and merchants to transact from anywhere in the world at any time from any internet-enabled device.

Dan Choi, COO and Co-Founder stated, “Last year’s initiatives demonstrated consistent demand for our service, and I’m excited to see continued growth in 2013.“ Through the relationships Plastiq has made with credit card associations, financial services providers, and merchants, the company is defining a new, convenient way for users to make payments when they were not able to do so previously.

“This round of funding is a testament to our value proposition and customer demand across North America,” said Eliot Buchanan, CEO and Co-Founder. “We’re extremely pleased that these investors share our vision for Plastiq.”

About Plastiq Inc.
Plastiq is an online payment provider based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded to provide convenient, flexible, and secure payment options, the company is advancing innovative payment solutions across North America. For more information, please visit www.plastiq.com.

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Codenvy, a San Francisco-based cloud environment for coding, building, and testing apps, today announced it has closed $9 million in Series A led by Toba Capital with Auriga Partners and a number of angels participating.

PRESS RELEASE:

Codenvy (formerly Exo IDE), the cloud environment for coding, building, and testing apps, today announced it has closed its first round of financing of $9 million in venture capital. Led by Toba Capital with Auriga Partners and a number of angels participating, the initial funding will accelerate the company’s growth and employee count to 40. The company has announced itself as Codenvy with 50,000 registered developers and the largest selection of integrated partners including GitHub, RedHat Openshift, Google App Engine, Amazon Web Services BeanStalk, VMWare CloudFoundry, Heroku, AppFog, CloudBees and ZeroTurnaround.

“Other than the developer’s workbench, every other IT application has already moved to the cloud”
“Other than the developer’s workbench, every other IT application has already moved to the cloud,” said Vinny Smith, founder of TobaCapital and former CEO of Quest Software (NASDAQ: QSFT). “At Quest, we saw the impact Toad could have on millions of DBAs. We are going to help Codenvy have the same impact on software engineers.”

Over the past decade, cloud computing has disrupted nearly every facet of IT. From sales, marketing, finance, support – all of these applications are being re-engineered to take advantage of cloud’s instant access, no download, and pay-as-you-go attributes. Despite this transformation, developers, teams, and organizations still continue to use desktop IDEs as their workbench of choice. Desktop development and IDEs have high failure rates for developers, and are costing enterprises untold millions.

Codenvy overcomes the constraints of desktop IDEs like configuration, memory, and compute. Developers gain up to two hours of additional coding time each day due to cloud-powered always-on workspaces, parallel multi-core compilation, continuous iterative deployment, and multi-cursor pair programming. Teams benefit from having a shared workspace that integrates with agile tools, code management systems, and production PaaS runtimes.

“The IDE model for application development hasn’t changed in four decades. It’s so pervasive; the IT industry has become complacent to its severe limitations,” said Tyler Jewell, CEO of Codenvy. “Cloud gives us a unique tool to disrupt the traditional model and to improve developer productivity through innovation. We are thrilled to partner with investors that have deep experience in the enterprise and share a common vision for Codenvy.”

Codenvy’s robust ecosystem of partners gives developers a simple way to deploy and operate code on the largest selection of PaaS vendors. Its Eclipse-like programming model enables an easier transition for Eclipse developers and plug-ins.

“In today’s marketplace, developers are met with increasing demands with limited resources and time. We are working with Codenvy to eliminate waste in the process of building, testing, running and managing applications,” said Sacha Labourey, chief executive officer, CloudBees. “Our partnership with Codenvy provides enterprise developers with an integrated set of services spanning development to production.”

Availability and Pricing

Codenvy is free for public projects, and has a monthly subscription for private projects and those that require larger builder and tester resources. Codenvy also offers Codenvy Enterprise, a private cloud installation for organizations with strict compliance requirements.

About Codenvy

Codenvy is the cloud development environment for coding, building, and testing applications. Codenvy’s 50,000 developers gain up to two additional hours of viable coding time each day due to cloud-powered always-on workspaces, parallel multi-core compilation, continuous iterative deployment, and multi-cursor pair programming. For more information visit http://codenvy.com/.

About Toba Capital

Toba Capital is a venture firm focused on enterprise software and infrastructure. Toba backs entrepreneurs building transformative businesses, both as an investor and as an ongoing operational partner. The firm was founded by Vinny Smith, an early investor and former CEO of Quest Software.

About Auriga Partners

Auriga Partners is an independent venture capital firm. Based in Paris, it invests in information technologies and life sciences, in innovative high potential ventures, in seed or early development stages, in Europe, North America and Israel. Auriga Partners manages three funds for a total of more than 330 millions euros. Along with investing the necessary capital, Auriga Partners brings also its savoir-faire in developing and solidifying executive teams, organizing companies, broadening their networks and forming strategic and corporate partnerships.

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Risk Management Systems, a Newark, Calif.-based maker of catastrophe risk management software, has named Paul Dali as chairman of its board of directors. Dali, a longtime venture capitalist, most recently founded the venture firm KeyNote Ventures. Earlier in his career, he was also CEO of Regis McKenna.

PRESS RELEASE:

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) is pleased to announce that Paul Dali has been named chairman of its board of directors. Mr. Dali has been serving as an advisor to the board for the past year, providing invaluable perspective as RMS develops new technology and business capabilities to enable insurers and reinsurers to achieve breakthrough benefits from resilient and real-time risk management practices.

“Paul has already made an extraordinary contribution to RMS, and it’s clear he has the vision and determination to support our business transformation over the next few years,” commented Hemant Shah, CEO of RMS. “We are extremely fortunate to have attracted Paul, with his wisdom and passion for our business, to this important role.”

Mr. Dali, who has a strong strategic focus on the ‘real-time enterprise’, is a progressive and visionary leader and investor. He has backed a number of highly successful technology companies whose products proved to be breakthroughs in computer multimedia and infrastructure software. Prior to his career in venture capital, he served as CEO of Regis McKenna, one of the largest high-tech marketing companies in the U.S., and prior to that served as general manager of the PC Division of Apple Computer and chairman of Apple’s marketing council.

The RMS board, which was historically comprised of corporate executives from RMS and its parent company, DMGT (dmgt:LSE), now includes three new Silicon Valley directors whose roles are to serve as independent non-executive directors, assisting RMS as it executes its plan and providing guidance in key areas of expertise. Martin Morgan, CEO of DMGT, who has served as chairman of RMS for 14 years, remains a director of the board.

In addition to Paul Dali, Dr. Gerald Held, a corporate director on numerous public and private technology company boards, and former Silicon Valley software executive, joins the RMS board as an independent director. Dr. Held has over 40 years’ experience, including serving as the head of database product development at Oracle Corporation, and leading software development and strategic planning at fault-tolerant and scalable systems pioneer, Tandem Computers. Dr. Held has been an active advisor to RMS over the past three years as it develops its software architecture and cloud computing technology.

Dominique Trempont, a seasoned executive and board member with a focus on cloud and new media, also joins the RMS board. Mr. Trempont has over 30 years’ experience as an executive, CEO, and member of the board of directors of highly successful technology companies. He served as chief financial officer and head of operations for NeXT Software, which was acquired by Apple, and was CEO of a leading software-as-a-service company focused on enterprise self-service applications. He was also on the board of 3Com. Mr. Trempont currently serves on the boards of global public companies, DMGT, and Real Networks, and on those of private cloud-based companies, Trion Worlds, a leader in multiplayer gaming, and ON24, a leader in webcasting and virtual events.

The rest of the board is comprised of:

– Hemant Shah, CEO of RMS

– Steve Robertson, CFO of RMS

– Stephen Daintith, CFO of DMGT

– David Dutton, DMGT executive director

– Suresh Kavan, CEO of DMGI

Notes to editors

Mr. Dali is based in Arizona; Mr. Held, and Mr. Trempont are based in California; and Mr. Morgan is based in the U.K.

About RMS

Risk Management Solutions is the world’s leading provider of products and services for catastrophe risk management. More than 400 leading insurers, reinsurers, trading companies, and other financial institutions rely on RMS models to quantify, manage, and transfer risk. Founded at Stanford University in 1988, RMS serves clients today from offices in the U.S., Bermuda, the U.K., Switzerland, India, China, and Japan. For more information, visit our website at www.rms.com.

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View Systems, a Baltimore, Md.-based maker of security products, including weapons detection systems, has appointed Reid Miles to its board of directors. Miles is CEO of Miles Howland & Co., a New York-based investment advisory firm.

PRESS RELEASE:

View Systems, Inc. VSYM +14.57% , a rapidly growing provider of security products, announced today that Reid R. Miles, Chief Executive Officer of Miles Howland & Co. LLC, is joining its Board of Directors. Mr. Miles will work closely with View’s Board and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Gunther Than. Mr. Miles will assist the Company in broadening the expertise of its Board of Directors and recruiting additional senior management. Mr. Miles will also be working with Mr. Than and the Board to develop strategic partners for the Company to accelerate the growth of the business.

“View Systems is a leader in the growing access security and recognition control industry,” noted Mr. Miles. “The Company is a proven solutions provider and technology innovator within a growing market for its systems. The Company has recently entered into the educational facilities market, which augments the historical client base in the sports, law enforcement, public facilities and private facilities sectors.”

Dr. Martin Maassen, Chairman of View Systems, stated: “We are pleased to announce that Mr. Miles has chosen to join our Board. His expertise in working with entrepreneurial companies will be of value to the Board and management team, as the View team executes its next stages of growth to enhance shareholder value.”

Mr. Miles is an experienced board member having served on corporate boards since 1996. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Miles Howland & Co. LLC an investment management firm based in New York with a focus on alternative assets including private equity, hedge funds and real estate. In addition to his career in finance, Mr. Miles has ten years of management experience in the technology industry, having worked in management positions with IBM Corporation and NEC.

About View Systems: View Systems, Inc. manufactures and installs weapons detection identification systems, video management platforms and tele-data communication networks. The Company has a client base that includes correctional facilities, schools, courthouses, government agencies, event and sports venues, and commercial businesses. More information can be found at www.viewsystems.com.

Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that certain statements in this release are “forward-looking statements” and involve both known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such uncertainties include, among others, certain risks associated with the operation of the company described above. The Company’s actual results could differ materially from expected results.

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Quotient Biodiagnostics, a transfusion diagnostics business based in Edinburgh, Scotland, has raised $5 million from Quotient CEO Paul Cowan and the healthcare venture capital firm Galen Partners based in Stamford, Conn. Over the past 18 months, Quotient has raised more than $19 million altogether.

PRESS RELEASE:

Quotient Biodiagnostics (“Quotient”), a global transfusion diagnostics group, is pleased to announce that its shareholders have invested a further $5.0 million in the company. Over the past 18 months Quotient has raised over $19 million of new equity.

The company will use the new equity to continue development of its next generation automation platform for transfusion diagnostics. In connection with this, Quotient is pleased to announce the appointment of Ed Farrell as the corporate President responsible for this project. Ed joins Quotient from Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics.

Quotient is also continuing to pursue its plans to build a new facility to facilitate the expansion of its existing liquid reagent business in Scotland.

“Following the initial Galen investment in February 2012, the group has made significant advances. I am also pleased to welcome Ed Farrell on board at this key point in the next stage on the Company’s development” said Paul Cowan, Chief Executive and Founding Shareholder of Quotient. “Key business areas have experienced revenue growth exceeding 50% compared with the prior year. Additionally, major progress has been made towards the development of the group’s next generation automation platform for blood typing, both internally and externally. With the appointment of Ed Farrell we look forward to advancing this project to commercial launch over the next few years.”

“We are pleased to invest further growth equity in Quotient” said David Azad, Managing Director of Galen Partners. “Paul and his team, in Scotland and the US, have achieved what they said they would achieve in delivering high quality, innovative products to transfusion professionals worldwide. We are excited about the direction of the company.”

About Quotient Biodiagnostics

With a proven record over the past 30 years, Quotient is a trusted leader in transfusion diagnostics. The group serves major transfusion diagnostic companies as an innovative product development and supply chain partner. Additionally Quotient serves the blood banking and transfusion medicine community through the direct provision of high quality transfusion diagnostic products. It is also developing a next generation automation platform for the transfusion diagnostics market, offering the ability to make better-informed clinical decisions whilst delivering major benefits over existing laboratory practices.

Based in the USA, Quotient Biodiagnostics, Inc. (the group’s North American sales and marketing business) provides the US blood banking community with trusted transfusion diagnostics products manufactured over many years outside of the US. For more details about the full range of products offered by Quotient in the United States of America, please visit our website www.quotientbd.com.

Alba Bioscience is the product development and manufacturing arm of Quotient. It has a distinguished record of developing and manufacturing innovative transfusion diagnostics for Quotient and other major transfusion diagnostics groups worldwide. For more details about the full range of products offered by Alba Bioscience and Quotient outside of the USA, please visit our website www.albabioscience.co.uk.

About Galen Partners

Galen Partners is a leading healthcare venture capital investment firm. The firm focuses on growth equity investments in healthcare technology and services, medical products, and specialty pharmaceutical companies. With nearly $1 billion under management, raised through five funds, Galen has helped build more than 70 companies since our founding in 1990. The firm continues a tradition of strategic collaboration and partnership with its portfolio company management teams to build healthcare market leaders. For more information, please visit Galen’s web site at www.galen.com.

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Keith Rabois, a serial operating executive who most recently resigned as the chief operating officer of the payments company Square, has joined the venture firm Khosla Ventures as a partner. Before joining Square, Rabois spent numerous years at LinkedIn, first as a vice president, then as an executive VP of strategy and business development. Earlier in his career, Rabois, who has a law degree, was also an executive VP focused on public policy at PayPal. He also spent a year as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Clarium Capital, the hedge fund run by PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.

Khosla Ventures, launched in 2004 by longtime VC Vinod Khosla, prefers for its investors to call themselves “venture assistants” rather than “venture capitalists.”

From Vinod Khosla’s blog:

“Venture Assistance”: A philosophical view of what boards should and should not do

Most VCs pitch their venture firm as value added to a company’s entrepreneurial founders. Personally, I think leading VC firms do a pretty good job of being supportive of their companies, and most entrepreneurs funded by good funds like their investors. But, on the question of “value added,” most venture capitalists, even among the leading firms, are pretty passive and ineffective when it comes to assisting companies. In my view, many if not most of them haven’t done enough in their careers to earned the right to advise entrepreneurs, a job I consider laden with responsibility.

A lot of VCs, especially those from the more financially oriented firms, do more harm to startups than good when they get themselves on company boards without ever having built acompany themselves, or seeing one from the inside. What value can a VC as board member add to a company? We constantly ask our young guys (who are monitored pretty closely if they go on a board and are in learning versus advising mode and mostly are at Khosla Ventures for three years before they go out and beentrepreneurs themselves) is “What have you done to earn the right to advise entrepreneurs?” I don’t want entrepreneurs to get inexperienced advice on important matters.

Our belief in bringing the best resources to our companies is why we’re very excited about the newest addition to the Khosla Ventures team: Keith Rabois. While recruiting him to join us, what I kept asking myself wasn’t whether he’d be a great investor (which he is), but rather whether he’d be sought out by entrepreneurs as a mentor, advisor, and board member. Almost all our reference-checking was done with entrepreneurs (successful and aspiring, seasoned and first-timers), not other investors. The reference checks repeatedly elicited feedback like “He asks the toughest questions”, “He pushes me the most and makes me think”, “He’s always there when I need help”, “Most valuable among all my board members and advisors”, “Doesn’t just tell me what I want to hear”, “Can imagine the future”, “Helps with recruiting”, and on and on.

As an entrepreneur and operator at PayPal, Linkedin, Slide, Square, and other places, and as a mentor to many startups over the years, Keith has earned the right to advise entrepreneurs. He knows, through Paypal and Square, what growth looks and feels like, and he knows what entrepreneurial struggles feel like through his experience at Slide. He knows how to advise entrepreneurs on hiring/firing,running teams, managing funding, when/how to control burn rate, and making other tough management decisions in the real environment of startups. He’s a practical hands-on kind of guy in growing companies, and he fits Khosla Ventures’ “venture assistance model” of people who have earned the right to advise entrepreneurs.

That leads me to one of my favorite questions around younger entrepreneurial companies – what is the role of a board member?

Good board members add many kinds of strategic value that’s critical to building a successful company, and they do it in multiple ways. Most of us don’t know what we don’t know when operating in a new area. The right advisor asks the questions you never knew were important. They serve as guides, helping you navigate the difficult road ofbuilding a company from the ground up, spotting things that an entrepreneurmight otherwise miss (risks and opportunities alike). They carry with them an extensive network that they can bring to bear on all the different problems and challenges that might crop up along the way, whether it’s finding a critical hire with the perfect match of skills and experience or getting a company amake-or-break meeting with a decision-maker at a potential marquee customer. At Khosla Ventures, our “operating partners” are part of our philosophy of offering real targeted help, whether it’s teaching entrepreneurs how to build recruiting orgs that get the best talent or helping craft marketing strategies around new product launches. Good board members also bring different skills and points of view, developed though years of experiences (and failures). They force companies to address the toughest, make-or-break issues before it’s too late, and they push entrepreneurs to greater heights than they might reach themselves. Having this kind of advisor as your coach is like turbo-charging your entrepreneurial engine from the sidelines.

Entrepreneurs usually deal with many problems at the same time, and being a CEO is a very lonely job. They’re often so buried in the details, whether things are going great or poorly, that they fail to look up over the horizon. The job of a good boardmember and advisor (I use these terms interchangeably) is to help teams raise their heads and spot oncoming problems, scope out hidden opportunities, and get a broader perspective. If things are going great, anticipating problems is even more important since overconfidence can kill a company. Challenging the team to think about risks or position some long-term assets can make a big difference in helping an entrepreneur “create” a larger opportunity. Asking questions that an entrepreneur does not wants to hear is an equally important role, and having advisors who’ve made mistakes before helps. I often talk about my lessons from years of screwing up. The value of diversity in a team and engineering the gene pool of a team to the risks and opportunities itfaces are critical factors that good advisors can bring to a first-time entrepreneur. Understanding how to avoid needing to hire a CEO or what to do when you need to hire a CEO are all better informed by a wealth of previous mistakes. I often say I have a larger collection of personal mistakes than most people in the venture business.

How do I measure my partners and myself? If with our advice, prodding, and challenging, a team does not expand its opportunity by 2x or more, or if we have not pushed a team to recruit at higher levels than they would have without us or gotten unreachable candidates to consider the company (a company in my view becomes the people it hires), or if we have not helped a team grab opportunities (strategic or tactical big customers) or address risks earlier than they otherwise would have, then we have not added value. We have not done my jobOur goal isn’t to be the nicest among all investors, but rather to push teams to be as great as they can be, to help them see hard reality and the risks coming their way, and to press them to worry about burn rate or accelerate their spending depending upon the circumstances. By the same token, though we can push teams hard (sometimes other VCs will say we push them too much, but these are the passive VCs along for the ride), we are extremely loyal to companies and entrepreneurs who we are engaged with closely (in especially hard circumstances, more so than most VC firms).

Even more critically, in almost three decades of being on boards and advising companies, I have never once voted against what a team wants to do, even when I strongly disagree with their choice. I will debate every issue hard and push my point of view but leave the final decision to the team. I don’t believe boards of entrepreneurial private companies should ever vote (except on the one issue of hiring and firing the CEO). If the team doesn’t believe in what the board voted on, then they won’t be successful at implementing it. The team that spends eighty hours a week working on a company, understanding all the nuances of the hundred things going on, and being responsible for implementing a decision, should make the decision (not the board that drops in casually every six or eight weeks). The more I believe a team is going the wrong way in their approach, the more I will bug them, push them, cajole them, and plead with them, but I always suggest I and other advisors/board members stop short of making the decision for the team. Decision-making should be a sharp line no board should cross. If a team knows the decision will be left to them, you get much more honest input and feedback, open discussion and vigorous (and sometimes uncomfortable) debate, better understanding of fears and opportunities, and more transparent self-assessments. I find many boards do the opposite by not engaging intimately with teams but still trying to vote on what companies should do. And occasionally, when I find I don’t have good chemistry with a team, I often bow out and let them go on their own way and stop being active in the company. Not every relationship is fun and one has to acknowledge that. If a team does not want help, we don’t want to provide it.

In contrast to this personal view of an ideal board, many boards are often polite and agreeable, in many cases to a fault. In one instance, a board I was on did not tell a company (which was well-financed and had $45M in the bank) that they did not believe in the plan the team was pursuing. The board members were nice, friendly cheerleaders. I was almost isolated in myview. Three years later and after many wasted years of many lives, the company was sold for $3M and the team was fired almost immediately after the acquisition. I swore I would not let this happen again and have since carried the statement “we prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness” on our website. Instead of focusing on regular board “governance” (an activity I think is only minimally needed in good startups), I ask CEOs to focus on the mostcritical and pivotal risks, questions, and opportunities facing the company. Boards should challenge teams to be bigger, better, and more cautious or more ambitious as appropriate, almost to the limit (but no more) of an entrepreneurs comfort and capability. They should make entrepreneurs think hard and critically. They should have the ability to understand a company’s business well enough to brainstorm strategy in a way the team not only respects but seeks out. I hope every one of my partners brings this to the boards they are on, and I hope entrepreneurs value this as much as I think they should.

Some of the good entrepreneurs we talked to about Keith Rabois told us he was their toughestcritic and their hardest questioner, and that made him even more attractive to us at Khosla Ventures. We want entrepreneurs to achieve all they can and avoid as many risks as possible. Good entrepreneurs should want activist, thoughtful, loyal, and experienced board members who are also respectful and deferential without being hypocritical nice guys. Incidentally, the less confident, more self-focused (rather than company mission-focused) an entrepreneur is, the more they prefer to be left alone.

What else can a great board member like Keith bring to the party? Understanding a new space, having the imagination to imagine the possible, and guiding very lean startup-likeexperiments to move towards those goals while not assuming every strategy will work the first time. Most successful plans go through many twists, turns and evolutions, a fact seldom recognized by linear-thinking, “are you meeting your plan” type of board members. Real experience working in startups sensitizes a board member to these realities of startup life. Good advisors have startupexperience themselves. Good advisors have also done a lot of hiring and know what to look for. I have seen boards put together naïve, almost clinical hiring specs that look like something out of Business 101. Real life is much more complex, nuanced, and flexible, andunless you have made enough mistakes in hiring (I assume I cannot do betterthan a 66% success rate in judging how good a hire will be), you don’t know how to advise a team in my view. Hiring may be the most critical thing a company does (if you believe as I do that a company “becomes the people they hire”) and experience in “success and failure factors” in recruiting as well as the “credibility to attract the unreachable candidates” becomes among the most important thing a company’s board contributes. I still spend more time recruiting for our companies (even down to individual critical engineers when needed) than any other single activity.

Good advisors and board members help entrepreneurs avoid mistakes they might not see because they’re heads down focused on trying to build their business. Board members should serve as a trusted inner-circle of advisors that motivate company management to self-assess and improve, and good boards help founder CEOs scale by helpingthem build the right teams to support them. Sometimes companies need to spend time doing down-the-road planning and sometimes they need to focus on just getting stuff done for the next six months. Good boards know the difference, and they know what’s important when. At Khosla Ventures, we encourage our entrepreneurs to do regular 360 reviews, think about gene pool engineering, do risk analysis, focus on measurable goal setting, do honest competitive analysis, execute RIFLE market analysis when needed, and, most importantly, do rigorous “If-then financial planning”. We call these processes our “standard operating procedures” and, once a quarter, decide for each company at our internal meeting which of these are most relevant to direct a team’s attention to.

Good entrepreneurship is like having a delicate recipe cooked by an expert chef with ingredients added in the right amounts at the right time. The recipe for startup success is tough to intuit on your own without the help of good advisors. Those advisors don’t make decisions for management. Their only role is to assist entrepreneurs by giving honest advice, even when it’s uncomfortable to hear. They’re not there for governance, making decisions, or casting votes. They’re there to listen, argue, debate, and guide, but leave the final decision to the team that’s going to have to execute it. In the end, advisors should push and challenge without ever making a team feel like they cannot make the final calls or that a board member’s interests diverge from theirs.

We never refer to ourselves as venture capitalists. We try to be “venture assistants”. Getting good advice is much more important than getting funding. It’s much easier to get money than get the right kind of advice. Making all of the judgment calls that running a startup entails is where having the right advisors really matters. There’s a delicate balancing act between technology, innovation, experience, burn rate, and many other factors that are seldom appreciated by people who have not built large, successful companies that started out small. And having the right kind of help to manage that balancing act creates step-function-type changes in a company’s trajectory. It’s the difference between building a hundred-million-dollar business and a billion-dollar business.

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DecisionPoint Systems, an Irvine, Calif.-based data collection systems integrator, has appointed Dave Goodman as its CFO. Goodman, who was most recently COO and CFO of New York-based Mercury Capital Advisors, replaces interim CFO Paul Ross.

PRESS RELEASE:

DecisionPoint(TM) Systems, Inc. DPSI +0.51% , a leading provider and integrator of Enterprise Mobility and Wireless Applications, announced the appointment of the veteran financial executive Dave Goodman, 62, as Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately. Mr Goodman replaces Interim CFO Paul Ross, who is pursuing other non-competing opportunities, and has relocated to a different state. Mr Ross will be available to assist in the transition of the position to the DecisionPoint Systems Edison, NJ, office from Irvine.

“Dave has more than 30 years of experience in financial management,” commented DecisionPoint Systems CEO Nic Toms. “He has been in charge of SEC and foreign regulatory reporting, SOX compliance, and financing activities, as well as handling shareholder and investor relations and treasury functions. His exposure to business is very broad, with experience in financial services, software, telecommunications, retail, entertainment, healthcare and consumer products. We are very pleased and privileged to have Dave joining our team; his deep expertise will help DecisionPoint to grow, and to strengthen its financial position.”

Mr Goodman was from 2010 to 2012 the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of New York-based Mercury Capital Advisors, a privately held, start-up private equity-backed financial advisory firm and broker-dealer operating in the US, the UK and Japan. Prior to his tenure at Mercury, Mr Goodman was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 2008 to 2010 of privately held New York-based Golden Source Holdings, a leading independent provider of enterprise data management solutions for financial services companies. From 2006 to 2008, he was Chief Financial Officer of a publicly traded developer and publisher of mobile games, Superscape Group PLC, based in San Clemente, CA. Superscape was purchased by Glu Mobile at a premium of 50% above the market price in 2008. From 2002 through 2006, Mr Goodman was International Finance Director and Senior Vice President Finance, for Christie’s International PLC, one of the world’s largest auction houses. Previous senior financial positions were with Saddle River NJ-based Franklin Health/Personal Path Systems, SONY Music Entertainment in New York, and Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy. He began his career in 1978 with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, rising to Senior Audit Manager.

Mr Goodman holds a BA from Cornell University and an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the NYU Stern School of Business. He is a CPA, and a member of AICPA and the NY State Society of CPAs. He resides in Westchester County, New York, and will be officed in the DecisionPoint office in Edison, NJ.

About DecisionPoint(TM) Systems, Inc.DecisionPoint Systems, Inc. delivers improved productivity and operational advantages to its clients by helping them move their business decision points closer to their customers. They do this by making enterprise software applications accessible to the front-line worker anytime, anywhere. DecisionPoint utilizes the latest wireless, mobility, and RFID technologies.

For more information on DecisionPoint Systems visit www.decisionpt.com

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London-based Braveheart Investment Group, through its wholly owned subsidiary Envestors Limited, has closed funding from private investors in Monaco as part of a £1.2m funding round for Cipher Surgical, maker of a laparoscopic accessory called OpClear. (It keeps a laparascope’s lens clear during surgery.)

PRESS RELEASE:

Braveheart Investment Group plc (‘Braveheart’, the ‘Group’ or the ‘Company’) (BRH), the AIM-listed investment management group, announces that Envestors Limited, its wholly owned subsidiary, has closed funding from private investors in Monaco as part of a £1.2m funding round for Cipher Surgical.

Cipher Surgical presented at an event hosted by the Monaco Venture Capital Association (MVCA) at which Envestors was invited to participate. Donald Anderson, a resident of Monaco who works with Envestors, invested into Cipher Surgical alongside other Monaco-based private investors.

The OpClear product developed by Cipher Surgical is a novel solution to one of the key challenges facing surgeons in laparoscopy (minimally invasive surgery through the abdomen) – how to maintain soil free optics throughout an operation and ensure continuous operative surgical vision.

During laparoscopy, the lens of the laparoscope acts as the surgeon’s eyes. But it can become covered in fluid, blood, tissue, fat or condensation any of which will impair the surgeon’s view as projected on the external screen. To clean the lens the laparoscope needs to be removed from the patient’s abdomen causing an unwelcome break in the surgeon’s workflow and concentration.

The OpClear is a laparoscopic accessory comprising a single use device that fits to a laparoscope and uses fluidics in a novel way to clear the laparoscope lens. It is easy to use and has received endorsement from a number of leading laparoscopic surgeons.

Oliver Woolley, Founder Director of Envestors, said: “We have worked with Andrew Newell, CEO of Cipher Surgical, and the team for a couple of years and have watched the progress made by the company in developing this ground-breaking solution. We are most encouraged to see that Cipher Surgical has made good progress with its CE mark application and has agreed terms with a UK distributor. The product was also very well received at Medica in November 2012 and, more recently, at Arab Health.”

Andrew Newell, CEO Cipher Surgical Limited, added: “This additional funding will enable us to obtain our CE mark and launch into the UK. The fundraising ability and responsiveness of the Envestors team has been a great help to us.”

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Fouriertransform AB, a state-owned venture capital company based in Stockholm, Sweden, is investing a total of SEK 25 million in the eye-tracking technology company Smart Eye AB in Gothenburg, the country’s second largest city. The financing comes through a combination of a directed new share issue and a loan. Following the transaction, Fouriertransform`s shareholding will be 15 percent.

PRESS RELEASE:

Fouriertransform AB is investing a total of SEK 25 million in Smart Eye AB in Gothenburg, through a combination of a directed new share issue and a loan. Following the transaction Fouriertransform`s shareholding will be 15 percent.

Smart Eye is a leading supplier of so-called “eye tracking” technology to the automotive industry. The company also develops and sells “eye sensor” software and systems to a variety of customer segments for example to test facilities in the aerospace industry and for medical applications. More than 90 percent of sales are to countries outside Sweden.

“Smart Eye has built up unique expertise in camera systems, eye tracking and image processing. Following on from successes involving a number of different applications, Smart Eye products will become important modules in the safety and comfort systems of the vehicles of the future. Our investment will provide a basis for the important product development and market expansion on which Smart Eye will now be focusing,” says Per Nordberg, CEO of Fouriertransform AB.

Smart Eye`s main product Smart Eye Pro, which can be equipped with up to eight cameras, is a high quality system aimed at users with high requirements of measurement accuracy and flexibility. Its second product range, Smart Eye Anti
Sleep, is based on the same technology, and has been developed further to meet requirements within the automotive industry.

“The company management saw the need for a financial partner in order to meet the strong growing international demand and to allow the company to make the strategic investments that are now required. For Smart Eye, Fouriertransform is
an ideal shareholder. Its focus on the automotive industry and long-term approach were crucial factors in our choice of investor. We are looking forward to our future partnership,” says Martin Krantz, CEO of Smart Eye AB.

Fouriertransform is a state-owned venture capital company tasked with supporting, on a commercial basis, innovative companies and entrepreneurs who can help revitalize the Swedish automotive industry. The company has a total
investment framework of SEK 3 Billion and, in addition to capital, provides expertise through its highly qualified employees and a network of experts.

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