Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz wrote:

The founders of Boston-based Ginkgo BioWorks think that assembling synthetic biological systems shouldn’t just be for experienced researchers. So they put together a kit that consists of the “scissors and glue for putting together pieces of DNA,” says co-founder Reshma Shetty.

Unlike the electronics industry, which sets standards to ensure compatibility and interoperability, the methods for putting together pieces of DNA are typically much more fragmented and ad hoc. Biologists build biological systems and organisms for functions such as producing everything from fuel to drugs to consumer products. The Ginkgo kit builds on a publicly available standard for connecting pieces of DNA, developed in 2003 by another Ginkgo co-founder, MIT senior research scientist Tom Knight. Called the BioBrick standard, it facilitates the assembly of multi-gene systems, and allows parts to be more easily shared within the synthetic biology community.

Ginkgo’s BioBrick Assembly Kit includes the reagents for constructing BioBrick parts, which are nucleic acid sequences that encode a specific biological function and adhere to the BioBrick assembly standard. The kit, which includes the instructions for putting those parts together, sells for $235 through the New England BioLabs, an Ipswich, MA-based supplier of reagents for the life sciences industry.

Shetty didn’t release any specific sales figures for the kit, but said its users include students, researchers, and industrial companies. The kit was also intended to be used in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM), in Cambridge, MA. The undergraduate contest, co-launched by Knight, challenges students teams to use the biological parts to build systems and operate them in living cells.

The assembly kit is the first product from Ginkgo, which was started in 2008 by Shetty, Knight, and three other MIT PhDs, but the company is also working on rolling out a consulting-style service for more elaborate DNA construction. They plan to work with companies on determining how they can design biological systems to fit their business functions, modeling what that system would look like, and testing it. “We’re focused on the tools and services for engineering biological systems,” says Shetty. “We think of ourselves as a biological design firm.”

Ginkgo (named after the tree) isn’t pursuing any venture capital funding, because it hasn’t needed it, Shetty says. In September 2009, the company received a $150,000 loan from LifeTech Boston, a city initiative aimed to grow the life sciences industry. Ginkgo was also selected that month to be part of an initiative in Scotland to improve synthetic DNA assembly. ITI Life Sciences, a unit formed by the Scottish government to strengthen the life sciences industry in the country, dedicated $4.1 million to the project.

While many established life sciences companies have in-house personnel dedicated to constructing biological systems, many other industries—from cosmetics to cleantech—can benefit from simple tools for the construction of synthetic DNA, Shetty says. A makeup manufacturer who uses a plant compound in its products could use the kit for constructing bacteria or yeast to create a synthetic form of that compound, for example. That way the company wouldn’t be affected by price increases from a bad crop of the plant. “It’s cheaper and more reliable manufacturing,” Shetty says.

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Erin Kutz wrote:

“Ship early, ship buggy,” was the advice San Francisco-based Web 2.0 investor Dave McClure gave to his audience at Cambridge, MA’s Dogpatch Labs last week.

“The world is filled with products that shipped too late,” he continued. One example? The online budget-tracking service, Mint.com, a company McClure invests in along with other sites such as online jobs portal Simply Hired and TeachStreet, a Seattle-based website that connects students and teachers. McClure said that Mint delayed in delivering its products because of concerns with security and its features, rather than focusing on the fact that no one else out there was providing what it did. (In the end this didn’t seem to hurt the company, which was acquired last fall by Intuit.)

But what if the product is messy and users hate it? That’s OK, said McClure, who runs the Founders Fund seed-stage investment program FF Angel and publishes the blog “Master of 500 Hats.” The worst–case scenario would be customers who don’t care at all. “Hate is a good discovery signal,” he says. “If people hate something you’ve done, guess what? You’ve found something that matters. Haters are good.”

Too many startups get trapped in the linear cycle of developing a feature, shipping it out, and starting the process all over again without ever stopping to measure or reflect on the customer experience and conversion metrics around the first feature. Companies should continually be examining whether an existing feature improves user experience, rather than focusing on getting the next one out, says McClure, who launched Simply Hired and ran marketing at PayPal from 2001 to 2004. Dogpatch, created by Polaris Venture Partners, and David Cancel, CEO of web marketing startup Performable, hosted McClure’s lunchtime presentation. Polaris principal Jon Lim said after the event that the firm is working to further cross-fertilization of ideas between its bi-coastal communities, which also include San Francisco and New York.

McClure, who spoke later the same night at an MIT Enterprise Forum event on early-stage funding, counseled his audience of more than 100 to go home and immediately kill a feature (most Web startups have too many anyway, he says). Once users start complaining about the removal of a feature, that’s the one companies should really focus on improving and bringing …Next Page »

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Erin Kutz wrote:

Fluidnet, a Portsmouth, NH, maker of electronic infusion pumps for administering IV fluids, raised $9.1 million of a planned $9.9 million equity offering, according to an SEC filing. Partners from existing Fluidnet investors, Cardinal Partners and Rockport Venture Partners, are listed as directors on the filing. The round included 12 investors, according to the filing, but the company did not return calls to indicate which round of financing it represents.

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Erin Kutz wrote:

So the iPhone may be the prettiest, the Blackberry may boast the biggest smartphone market share, and the Windows Mobile platform is, um, around, but it’s Android that’s best for developing apps. Or at least it was the Android developers who best defended their platform at the smartphone smackdown during our Mobile Madness event on Tuesday.

The event was a big success, featuring a look at the future of the mobile industry both locally and globally, a panel of executives dishing on what we can look forward to in the next year, and keynote speakers touching on voice recognition, data storage, and Windows’ share in the smartphone world. More than 200 people crammed into Microsoft’s New England Research & Development Center for the forum. (Check out our slide show here.)

I think the purpose of the smackdown was best summed up in the words of referee John Landry, founder and managing director of Lead Dog Ventures: “The objective here is really to dump on the other platforms.”

To achieve that, we invited developers and others passionate about app creation to step up and represent the iPhone, Google’s Android, BlackBerry, and Windows. The audience decided by a raising of hands that the Android guys did the best job representing their platform. The congratulations goes to Henry Cipolla, chief technology officer of mobile app analysis startup Localytics, and Carter Jernigan, founder of two forty four a.m., makers of the app Locale, which enables phones to automatically change their settings based on locations.

The duo lauded Android’s ability to work with multiple carriers, the openness of the platform’s market, and its ability to run background apps, allowing an app to remain active even when it’s not the primary app being run. Jernigan spoke about how his product could only work with the Android platform because of that unique capability. “If you’re trying to create a business and have a lot of different avenues for success, the Android makes the most sense,” Cipolla said.

This gave the iPhone guys an opportunity to jump in. “Don’t you want to be where the people are?” said Raizlabs‘ Craig Spitzkoff, pointing out the fact that Apple has the highest share of customers downloading and paying for mobile apps.

Cimarron Buser, VP of products and marketing for Apperian, pointed out that when it comes to apps, in the beginning there was the iPhone. “You can already see that every other vendor is looking at the iPhone in terms of technology and business model,” he said.

Other smackdown contenders, and even audience members, pointed out the sense of entitlement this has given the iPhone. They criticized Apple’s tendency to suddenly shelve a mobile app (which it did last month with apps it deemed too sexy) and in turn tank a developer’s business.

Zachariah Hofer-Shall, representing development on the Windows Mobile side, lashed out at what he called the “communist regulations of the App Store.” He and others also brought up …Next Page »

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Erin Kutz wrote:

Stories of drugmakers, deals, health IT companies, and even some nonprofits made it a busy life sciences news week for us.

—Waltham’s Avila Therapeutics is on a quest to outdo well-known Boston drugmaker Vertex Pharmaceuticals when it comes to treating hepatitis C, Luke wrote last week. The company’s drugs rely on forming covalent bonds to shut down targets on virus-infected cells, preventing the virus from mutating and escaping, which could give it an edge on the Vertex drug that has varying degrees of effectiveness on different mutations of hepatitis C, Avila’s CEO said.

—Dossia, a Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit electronic health records provider, rolled out its system to another two of its founding companies. Computer chip maker Intel and mail system provider Pitney Bowes will offer some of their workers the Dossia system, which is sustained by subscription fees and is designed to lower overall healthcare costs for corporate clients.

—Speaking of electronic health records, Athenahealth is looking for some opinions on the matter and announced a partnership with Cambridge’s doctors-only social networking site Sermo to get just that. Financial terms of the partnership between Sermo and Watertown, MA-based Athena (NASDAQ:ATHN), a maker of Internet healthcare software, weren’t revealed.

— Millipore shook things up this week when it announced plans to accept a bid from Germany’s Merck KGaA, which offered to buy the company for $107 a share, or $7.2 billion. Thermo Fisher had previously made an unsolicited $6 billion bid for the Billerica, MA-based life sciences equipment supplier, according to media reports.

—Stealthy Guilford, CT and San Francisco-based startup Ion Torrent Systems opened up a bit to discuss its digital DNA readout technology, leaving plenty of genomic science bloggers buzzing. And the machine from Ion Torrent, which is advised by a Harvard genomics pioneer and supported by a Seattle partner, costs …Next Page »

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Erin Kutz wrote:

TransMedics, an Andover, MA, developer of systems for transporting organs for transplant, has pulled in $35.4 million in an equity offering that includes about $9 million from convertible debt, according to an SEC filing. Partners of Flagship Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are listed as directors on the filing, which the company declined to comment on further at this time. In 2008, TransMedics withdrew its plans for an initial public offering worth up to $86 million, due to unfavorable market conditions.

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Erin Kutz wrote:

Monster.com and Eons.com founder Jeff Taylor thinks entrepreneurs are bluffing when they cite Boston’s harsh winter weather as the reason for fleeing the city for operations elsewhere, such as California’s Silicon Valley.

“The real objection is that it’s hard to get discovered in Boston, and that our resource-rich community feels like it’s locked behind closed doors,” he says. In January, to help open more of those doors, Taylor quietly launched a startup incubator out of his Charlestown Navy Yard offices. He named the incubator Deep Snow. “I thought to go right in the face of that objection,” he says, explaining the name.

Taylor charges entrepreneurs $200 a month for their own designated desks at his open workspace, and between $250 and $350 a desk in closed-door offices. The incubator, which Taylor refers to as “scrappy entrepreneurial space,” also features a conference room seating 16 that entrepreneurs can rent for $75 an hour. Internet access and shared kitchen space are also included in the price.

“I call it a bare bones incubator,” he says of Deep Snow, which lives on the fourth floor of the updated warehouse-style building that houses two of Taylor’s other businesses, online community site Eons and dating site Meetcha.com, both targeted at the baby boomer age group. His third company, an online obituary database called Tributes.com, is located in another neighborhood of Boston.

Taylor, who works out of the first floor, said he plans to swing by the Deep Snow space every few days for casual consulting with the startups, and will help introduce founders to venture capitalists and other members of the community with resources. He’s also using his connections at area business schools to match Deep Snow startups with interns.

“I wanted to do my part to help keep local IP in this town and create some jobs,” Taylor says. Deep Snow currently houses two companies, RetireLife, a web directory targeting those taking care of elderly parents, and a PR firm that Taylor couldn’t yet reveal the name of.

“I moved into this incubator to surround myself with other startups and to get a new set of blood to bounce ideas off of,” said RetireLife founder Megan Shea, who previously worked out of Babson College’s incubator space. Shea’s website, which launched to a Massachusetts audience last May and opened last month as a national elderly care directory, targets the same baby boomer group as Taylor’s businesses.

“He gives you a couple of ideas in a few minutes and leaves you chewing on them for a few hours,” she says of Taylor’s on-the-fly consulting approach at the incubator. Taylor does not have an equity stake in RetireLife, though, Shea said.

Taylor is working on getting a few new high-tech startups at Deep Snow and is slated to have about six companies in the space by the end of March. He isn’t involved in investment discussions with any of the tenants, though, he said. The goal is to get 20 startups this year into the incubator, which has about 10,000 square feet, he says. Space at Deep Snow will be doled out on a first-come, first-serve basis, and interested companies can contact Eons CFO Matt Fuller.

We’ve also updated our X Lists list of technology coworking spaces to include to include Deep Snow.

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Erin Kutz wrote:

Sensata Technologies, a maker of sensors and switches headquartered in Attleboro, MA, has set its initial public offering of 31.6 million shares at $18 to $20 a share, according to a filing with the SEC. Sensata Technologies Holding, a public limited liability company incorporated in the Netherlands, is offering 26.3 million shares, and selling shareholders are offering another 5.3 million shares, the filing reveals. Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital are representing the underwriters, who will have a 30-day option to purchase an additional 4.74 million shares from the selling shareholders.  Sensata, formerly a Texas Instruments unit that became a stand-alone company owned by Bain Capital in 2006, cut its staff by 150 last year through layoffs and buyouts.

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Erin Kutz wrote:

For most entrepreneurs, a beta stage or beta product is a crucial way to flesh out new ideas, and find out what works and what doesn’t for their business. And it’s no different for a new endeavor meant to create community and dialog between entrepreneurs and investors in the Boston area.

That endeavor would be The Venture Café, a planned Kendall Square restaurant centered on fostering innovation and connecting members of the startup community with each other and potential investors. The restaurant is in its planning stages, and is supported by Cambridge Innovation Center founder and CEO Tim Rowe, a host of leading area investors and entrepreneurs, and (in the interest of full disclosure) members of the Xconomy team.

The café’s beta phase will start this Thursday and run for 12 weeks. The New England Venture Capital Association is sponsoring office-hour sessions at the Cambridge Innovation Center for entrepreneurs seeking advice and perspective from investors. Flybridge Capital Partners, Charles River Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Polaris Venture Partners are some of the firms that will be sending representatives. Highland Capital Partners ran a preview version of these hours last week, the day the Cambridge Innovation Center officially broke ground on its expanded space.

“It’s a good way to engage with the community, not through the traditional method of networking and one-on-one introductions,” says Nancy Saucier, executive director of the New England Venture Capital Association. “We need to support the innovation ecosystem in a much more open fashion.”

The environment surrounding the office hours will help preview what Venture Café creators hope will be part of the atmosphere of the actual restaurant, which they are currently looking for the real estate to house. “We can’t do a lot until we have a space,” says MIT graduate student Carrie Stalder, who serves as the Venture Café’s manager. “Now we have a space, even if it’s only a temporary one.”

Entrepreneurs rarely have the opportunity to meet with investors before they actually pitch their businesses to them, a pitfall both the CIC office hours and the Venture Café seek to fix, Saucier says. Those interested in the venture capital office hours can sign up online, for half-hour slots that run between 2 pm and 5 pm on Thursdays through May 20. The Venture Café creators are encouraging members of the startup community to arrive early and stay after their office hour sessions to socialize and mingle in the surrounding café area at the CIC, to get a sense of what the actual Venture Café could look like once it’s operational.

The Venture Café beta will also be experimenting with technology to enhance the dialogue between the people who show up, Stalder says. One idea is setting up a website where café goers can exchange their contact information online instead of using actual business cards. She’s also hoping to create an automatic detection feature, where the website can tell when members have showed up at the café, via their mobile devices. Technology that works well will be used in the final version of The Venture Café.

“We’re trying things and seeing what sticks. It’s a reason to come back week after week,” Stalder says of the beta phase.

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