Erin Kutz wrote:
Westwood, MA-based Brightleaf, a provider of software for assembling and managing legal documents, has pulled in $2.9 million of a planned $3 million round of equity funding, according to an SEC filing. Foundry Group, a returning investor, led the round, Brightleaf VP of strategy Luke O’Brien said. The company had already raised $3 million in a previous round, according to a January 2009 filing.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Looks like the region’s massive flooding didn’t get in the way of everything this week. We saw lots of headlines of partnerships for area drugmakers.
—Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a Watertown, MA, developer of drugs designed to silence disease-related genes using RNA interference, announced its second big partnership this year, this time with the French biotech Ipsen. The deal won’t pull in a ton of cash for Dicerna, but will give the company 50-50 ownership rights to drugs developed through combining Dicerna’s RNAi technology with Ipsen’s strategy of using peptides as delivery vehicles in cells, Luke wrote. In January, Dicerna announced a partnership with Japan-based Kyowa Hakko Kirin for developing cancer drugs, which could be worth up to $1.4 billion in milestone payments.
—Ryan wrote about how the impending healthcare reform could mean big payoffs for Burlington, MA-based Nuance Communications (NASDAQ:NUAN), a speech recognition software company that’s advocating for the government to make rules that would standardize its technology alongside electronic medical records. Nuance has products that allow doctors to dictate patient information directly into electronic records systems and enables radiologists to more efficiently order imaging tests, helping to make healthcare customers the company’s biggest market.
—Avila Therepeutics announced it will receive as much as $3.2 million from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for the development of a drug that treats B-cell related cancers. The Waltham, MA-based company’s AVL-292 drug aims to form covalent bonds that hit targets on the B-cells in the immune system, and is set to enter its first clinical trial this year.
—Cambridge, MA-based Ascent Therapeutics announced it had changed its name to Anchor Therapeutics to better …Next Page »
Erin Kutz wrote:
IO Semiconductor, a San Diego fabless chip design startup, has raised $1 million in debt and equity-based funding, out of a $14 million planned offering, according to an SEC filing. The money comes as part of a multi-stage funding agreement with a private investor, said business development VP Pete Fowler, who said that the funding is mostly equity based, but did not disclose any additional details about the deal. In September, IO was accepted to EvoNexus, the nonprofit incubator from the industry group CommNexus.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Windsor, CT’s SS&C Technologies Holdings, a financial services software provider, has priced its initial public offering of 10.725 million shares at $15 a share, the high end of the range it proposed earlier this month. The company, which will trade on the NASDAQ Global Select Market as SSNC, sold 8.225 million shares and certain stockholders sold 2.5 million shares in the deal, which is worth nearly $161 million in total, according to a regulatory filing. Underwriters of the deal, led by JP Morgan, have the option to purchase an additional 1.609 million shares to cover over-allotments.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Since June we’ve been tracking monthly figures in bigger venture deals for our two other coverage areas, Seattle and Boston, thanks to data provided to us by our New York-based partner CB Insights, a private company intelligence platform. The company also supplies us monthly with a list of smaller deals under $1 million—what we dub as “under the radar”—in Southern California, the Northwest, and New England, which we like to examine for trends in startup investing.
This was the first month that enough San Diego-area companies made the list to merit a story, which could signal that pint-sized deals are picking up for the region’s startups. There were four San Diego deals, ranging from $201,132 to $689,500. Three were equity-based offerings, and a fourth was debt-related. While these four deals were all relatively small, they definitely signal bigger things to come, as three of the four transactions reflected pieces of larger planned offerings.
The startups that nabbed the funding cover the energy, medical devices, pharmaceutical, and agriculture spaces. That’s right, agriculture. Yes, it’s not typically an industry that we’d cover, but I kept the $201,132 in equity, options, and warrants for San Diego-based Cibus Global on the list because of the way the company has been innovating in the area of crop trait development.
Rather than using traditional genetic engineering technologies of introducing foreign traits to crops, Cibus works within plants’ own genomes to introduce genetic traits through the natural process of gene repair. I’m interested to see where they go, particular because their February deal was just a piece of a planned $2.6 million offering, according to the SEC filing.
The biggest deal on the list was $689,500 of a planned $1 million equity offering for Carlsbad, CA-based Catadon Systems. They’re engineering towers that raise wind turbines higher into the air without the need for cranes or concrete, according to the company’s website. The higher a turbine can be placed off the ground, the more wind energy it can capture, making wind investments pay off faster, the website explains.
The sole debt deal went to San Diego-based Aethlon Medical, in a $600,000 transaction that included options and warrants. Aethlon is developing a diagnostic and therapeutic device for infectious diseases. Their Hemopurifier is a cartridge that removes viral pathogens from the blood and can be used with portable pumps or dialysis machines.
If you ask me, these under-the-radar lists can be nicknamed the stealth lists, due to the fact that they almost always include at least one company that’s too stealthy to have a website. La Jolla’s Ampla Pharmaceuticals took on that role for the February list. The only information I could gather on them was from the website of their investor, Integra Ventures of Seattle. Integra’s website describes Ampla as a “stealth mode biotechnology company,” and says that Advent International and Crabtree Ventures also back the company. Ampla pulled in $295,271 of a planned $1.2 million equity-based offering.
I’m interested to see when these companies will complete their offerings, or roar out of stealth mode. In the meantime, check out the consolidated list below of February under-the-radar deals.
| Catadon Systems | Carlsbad, CA | A maker of towers for elevating wind turbines | Equity | $689,500 |
| Aethlon Medical | San Diego, CA | A developer of a medical device to treat infectious diseases | Debt* | $600,000 |
| Ampla Pharmaceuticals | La Jolla, CA | A stealthy biotech company | Equity | $295,271 |
| Cibus Global | San Diego, CA | A developer of environmentally friendly technology for producing crop traits | Equity* | $201,132 |
*includes some options and warrants
Erin Kutz wrote:
Biocept, a San Diego biotech company working on cell separation technology, has raised $3.6 million of a planned $4.05 million equity offering, according to an SEC filing. Four investors participated in the round for Biocept, which is developing diagnostic assays for detecting and monitoring cancer.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Ascent Therapeutics, a Cambridge, MA-based pre-clinical stage drug development company, announced today that it has changed its name to Anchor Therapeutics to better reflect its technology. The company is developing drugs based on “pepducins,” which anchor in cell membranes to target molecules called G protein coupled receptors that are involved in ailments such as cancers, heart disease, inflammation, pain, and metabolic disorders. Anchor’s backers include HealthCare Ventures, Novartis Option Fund, and TVM Capital.
Erin Kutz wrote:
I’m a Boston University alum, so Saturday wasn’t the first time I’ve witnessed two teams battling it out on Agganis Arena’s court, shooting with finesse and aggressively blocking, as fans cheered loudly from the stands.
Well, it was a little different than what I had previously witnessed, to be completely honest. The members of said teams were actually robots, and I was checking out the FIRST Robotics Boston regional competition, not a basketball game. And they were shooting soccer balls.
For those of you who don’t know, FIRST Robotics (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a worldwide robotics-building competition for high school students. The nonprofit behind the event was established more than 20 years ago by Dean Kamen, the Segway inventor, as a way to encourage high schoolers to explore technology careers, and to provide a solid extracurricular outlet for students passionate about science. Saturday’s event was the fifth time the regional competition has been held in Boston, and it included 53 teams and at least 1,000 students.
In FIRST, teams from high schools across the country (and globe) get a robot-building kit and about six weeks to construct their gadget. The specific challenge the machines must face in the competition changes yearly, with a soccer-style game being this year’s format. The finished robots zoomed across a mock field, hurdling over speed bumps that my car would have trouble clearing. Teams got a point for every goal scored, and had the chance to earn bonus points in the last 20 seconds of the game by latching onto bars above the field and hanging in the air.
These displays were almost as impressive as the costumes worn by competitors, which included but were not limited to: red army fatigues, a neon green Afro wig, duct tape vests, satin capes, and Viking outfits. Marc Hodosh, the chairman of the Boston regionals (and an Xconomist), describes the competition as a fusion of a rock concert and a sporting event, thanks largely in part to its arena setting and the blaring Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Britney Spears music that accompanied the games.
In addition to fostering a fervor and excitement for engineering, FIRST looks to promote healthy competition and teamwork; what it dubs a “coopetition”. Teams from different high schools each build their own robots, but compete as randomly matched teams of three, at least initially. (The best eight teams from the seed rounds then get to choose the two teams they’d like to work with in the finals.) Regional winners get to advance to the championship games in Atlanta.
From what I could see, each robot is built differently, with some boasting strong offensive shooting skills, while others are killer blockers. These randomly determined matchups force the teams to take stock of each others’ strengths and quickly …Next Page »
Erin Kutz wrote:
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced today that the state will provide up to $25 million to further construction of the Holyoke High Performance Computing Center, a project designed to advance green computing and boost business in western Massachusetts. Patrick also designated the Holyoke area as an innovation district, and said that the computing center, which will foster research in life sciences, energy, and green computing, will get another $40 million from a consortium of universities.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Rocket Software, a Newton, MA-headquartered enterprise software maker, announced it will acquire data management company Computer Corporation of America. Financial details of the deal between Rocket and Waltham, MA-based CCA were not disclosed. Rocket pulled in $91.9 million in an equity offering in October and acquired Folio and NXT, two publishing products from Microsoft, in December.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Azigo, a Wellesley, MA-based maker of software that seeks to securely consolidate users’ various online account information, has pulled in a $1.8 million equity offering, an SEC filing reveals. Ten investors participated in the round for Azigo, which was originally named Parity Communications.
Erin Kutz wrote:
For startups, it seems no amount of funding is too small. At least that’s what we like to keep in mind when analyzing monthly financings for area companies.
February’s list of under-the-radar deals for Northwest startups was half as long as January’s, at just five deals. On the bright side, all five of the February under-the-radar transactions were equity offerings, while the 10 deals in January involved two debt-based financings. We define “under-the-radar deals” as startup transactions under $1 million (even if only by a few dollars), a distinction that separates them from the list of bigger venture deals sent to us earlier in the month by our partner CB Insights, a New York-based private company intelligence platform.
To be fair, though, we left a few deals off the list originally provided to us by CB Insights, as the companies came from industries that didn’t quite fall into our coverage area. To make the cut, we look for companies that are doing something new and innovative in the industries we report on, such as technology, life sciences, Internet, and energy. (Of course, this can be somewhat subjective.) New businesses in more traditional spaces such as oil and gas or straightforward consumer goods typically get left off the list.
Last month’s under-the-radar-deals ranged in value from $165,000 to $500,000. Three of the financings went to Washington-based companies, and two to startups working out of Oregon. None of these transactions were big enough that we reported on the deals when they first broke, but we still look to the list as an indication of trends in early-stage investing, or as bellwethers of which stealthy companies might be on the rise. February’s list included companies in software, energy, and biotech.
The biggest deal was the $500,000 in equity-based funding that went to Eden Rock Communications, a Bothell, WA-based developer of 4G wireless self-organizing networks; this company seeks to more successfully automate the deployment of wireless data services. Iverson Genetic Diagnostics, also of Bothell, WA, came in second with a $341,000 equity offering. We touched on this startup briefly before when it presented at the Angel Capital Expo put on by the Keiretsu Forum Northwest in October. This was the only company on our list that we had heard of before.
The third-biggest deal went to Home Comfort Zones, a Beaverton, OR-based maker of room-by-room home temperature control systems. It pulled in $300,000 in an equity and preferred stock offering, according to a regulatory filing. We might not typically report on a traditional thermostat maker, but it looks like Home Comfort is innovating in the area by crafting a device that varies heating and cooling by room, and tells consumers how much energy they are using for the task, as a way to help them change their habits.
At this point, it’s hard to tell what the shorter list means. It could indicate that investors are less inclined to put cash into smaller startups, or it could be a positive sign that startups would rather pursue larger venture rounds. Startup funding in February remained steady, as far as the bigger venture deals go. Earlier this month, Greg wrote about how in February, Washington startups pulled in $53.5 million across 10 deals, keeping that month’s venture funding stats relatively in line with the $57 million that went to eight companies in January.
We’ll have to wait and see how the startup investing landscape for March turns out. Meanwhile, check out our list of February under-the-radar deals in the Northwest:
| Eden Rock Communications | Bothell, WA | A developer of 4G wireless self organizing networks | Equity | $500,000 |
| Iverson Genetic Diagnostics | Bothell, WA | A developer of advanced genetic testing | Equity | $341,000 |
| Home Comfort Zones | Beaverton, OR | A maker of room-by-room home temperature control systems | Equity | $300,000 |
| Etelos | Maple Valley, WA | A software platform for delivering Web-based applications | Equity* | $250,000 |
| HM3 Energy | Gresham, OR | A developer of clean fuel produced from biomass waste | Equity | $165,000 |
*includes some debt, options, and warrants
Erin Kutz wrote:
Deborah Besemer has stepped down as CEO of the Lexington, MA-based jewelry customization business Gemvara, Boston Globe blogger Scott Kirsner first reported earlier this week. The company renamed itself last month from Paragon Lake, and shifted its virtual jewelry customization business model from being centered around in-store computer screens to a website that targets consumers more directly, a move the requires someone with that experience at the top of the company, Mass High Tech reported. The company’s founder, Matt Lauzon, will take the reins while the company searches for a new chief executive, a process that Besemer will advise part-time. Besemer, who spoke to Bob of her plans to shift the company to e-commerce when she joined last year, will also remain on the company’s board.
Erin Kutz wrote:
When it came to raking in venture dollars, things slowed down in Massachusetts in the month of February. Maybe it was the shorter calendar month, the typically frigid and dreary weather, or the fact New Englanders are just antsy for spring. In February Bay State startups pulled in $203 million across 26 financings in the $1 million-plus range, down from the sizeable $355.2 million raised in 28 deals in the first month of 2010.
New England’s under-$1 million deals—which like the larger deals we track with the help of data from our partner, CB Insights, a New York-based private company intelligence platform—chugged along at about the same pace in February as in January. In February, the region saw nine of these “under-the-radar” financings, each worth from $125,0000 to $850,000, with funding based in equity, debt, and other types of securities. January saw 10 sub-$1 million deals (though to confuse matters we included a couple of additional, $1 million financings on the month’s list).
February’s list shows that equity-based funding is still outweighing debt deals in the under-the-radar transactions. Five of the financings were based in equity, three were debt-related, and one involved a security to be acquired through the exercise of options and warrants. Investors went after a diverse array of companies, too. The February under-the-radar pack included startups working on hybrid technology, medical devices, health IT, industrial products, the semantic Web, audio transcription software, and e-commerce.
Companies based in Massachusetts took in all but one of the deals on the list; the exception being the $150,000 in equity-based funding that went to Norwalk, CT’s HealthPrize Technologies, another company crafting technology for reminding patients to take their meds. (Ryan wrote about this trend …Next Page »
Erin Kutz wrote:
Akorri Networks, a Littleton, MA, maker of IT infrastructure management software, has wrapped up a $10.1 million round of equity-based funding, according to an SEC filing. The round included 13 investors. In September, Akorri pulled in $5 million in an equity offering. Akorri’s website lists Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Globespan Capital Partners, BlueStream Ventures, and Montagu Newhall Associates as investors, but the company was not available for comment on the details of the latest funding.
Erin Kutz wrote:
IntelligentMDx, a Cambridge, MA-based maker of molecular diagnostic tests, has garnered FDA emergency use authorization for its product for detecting the H1N1 virus, the company announced today. No test has been approved for identifying H1N1, but the emergency use authorization allows the IntelligentMDx diagnostic assay to be used while the flu outbreak is still in emergency status, a state that is set to expire on April 26 of this year, the company said.
Erin Kutz wrote:
It was a lighter deals week for us, but we still saw headlines of funding rounds, partnerships, and stock offerings for companies in Internet, software, and life sciences.
—Boston-based Swaptree, an online marketplace for trading books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, grabbed $4.8 million of a planned $6 million offering based in equity, options, and warrants. The company didn’t reveal the investors in the financing.
—Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL), a network software maker, rejected a $2 billion buyout offer from private equity firm Elliott Associates. The Waltham, MA-based company’s board said the $5.75-per-share bid undervalued Novell’s growth prospects, and said that it would pursue other possible strategies for enhancing shareholder value, such as cash dividends or stock repurchases.
—Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY), the Cambridge, MA-based drugmaker, received a $20 million payment from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, as part of a partnership deal established between the two companies in 2008 that could ultimately be worth more than $1 billion. This week’s payment was related to Alnylam sharing its RNA interference material and information, but the company stands to pull in more milestone payments and royalties if Japan-based Takeda uses the technology to create RNAi products.
—Another developer of RNA interference-based treatments, RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII) of Worcester, MA, announced it had raised $16.2 million through a stock offering. Investors agreed to pay $6 per share for 2.7 million shares, a 26 percent discount over the stock’s $8.11 closing share price on Monday. They’ll also purchase warrants for another 540,000 shares.
—SmartCells, a developer of a once-a-day, self-regulating, injectable treatment for diabetes, has pulled in $1.75 million in an equity-based offering, a regulatory filing revealed. The Beverly, MA-based company did not indicate what round of financing the planned $4 million round represents.
Erin Kutz wrote:
SmartCells, a Beverly, MA-based company developing a daily, self-regulating injection for treating diabetes, has raised $1.75 million of a planned $4 million equity offering, according to an SEC filing. The company, whose SmartInsulin product is in pre-clinical testing, declined to comment at this time on what round the funding represents. In July, SmartCells completed the sale of $1.15 million in convertible debt, according to the company website.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Novell, a Waltham, MA-based network software maker, announced that its board rejected a $2 billion buyout bid from private equity firm Elliott Associates, saying that the $5.75-per-share offer undervalues the company’s growth prospects. Novell said that the board would examine alternatives for increasing stockholder value through methods such as stock repurchases, cash dividends, partnerships, or a sale of the company.
Erin Kutz wrote:
Bill Aulet, an Xconomist and active innovation advocate, has been appointed managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, which seeks to work with MIT students, faculty, and others outside the school to foster entrepreneurship. Aulet is an MIT Sloan School of Management senior lecturer who began his career at IBM, ran two private companies, and helped turn around biometrics company Viisage Technology as its CFO. He has served as acting director of the Entrepreneurship Center since August. “With his depth of experience and dedication to entrepreneurship, Bill Aulet will be a great asset to the Center as it continues to develop and support MIT’s many entrepreneurial programs and activities,” said Sloan dean David Schmittlein in the university announcement of Aulet’s appointment.
