Author: Mark Boslet

SRCH2 said it raised funding, but offered no detail. Investors include Data Collective, Redpoint’s Brad Jones, Horizen Ventures, and TenOneTen Ventures, the company said.

PRESS RELEASE

Enterprise Search Software Innovator, SRCH2 Attracts High Profile Investors

Sets New Playbook for eCommerce, Big Data, and Mobile Apps as Search Becomes a Key Differentiator and Linchpin for Profits

IRVINE, Calif., April 23, 2013 – In an age where everyone Googles to find answers, restaurants, definitions, goods and more, the expectations for enterprise search couldn’t be higher.  Trouble is, enterprise search happens outside the confines of general web searches and existing search software is failing to keep up with burgeoning data and its delivery on varied mobile and social platforms.

It’s a scene that is played out over and over again in the information technology field, where one set of technologies leads to great advances that inadvertently create a need for a new approach that begins with a question.  In this case, the question is:  How fast is your “instant” search?

Instant search is the type-forward or type-ahead search recommendation shown to you as you type.  Google is the model for instant search, but try it on any other search box and the results can often be slow or imprecise.

SRCH2, a new enterprise search software provider for mobile and Big Data, has raised funding from 10 industry-savvy veterans to make instant search faster. SRCH2 is a new kind of search software, developed by Stanford Ph.D.s and Google alums.  The company is poised to establish a new playbook for the C-suite and IT managers focused on data as an asset critical to their corporate success.

The most widely deployed search software today is built upon the Lucene platform.  According to Dev Bhatia, SRCH2 CEO, “SRCH2 has reimagined search as a profit center and value driver. Advanced search is not a commodity, but rather, a crucial differentiator for best-in-class players. We’re now rewriting the playbook for how search is done – and it’s blazing fast, tolerant of misspellings and never misses a record.”

Investors in the insider round include Data Collective, Redpoint’s Brad Jones, Horizen Ventures, and TenOneTen Ventures, a new Southern California venture firm created by Gil Elbaz and David Waxman, both high-profile tech entrepreneurs.

Elbaz was a co-founder of Applied Semantics, the pioneering company which was bought by an early Google and turned into Google AdSense. Waxman was a co-founder of Firefly Networks, PeoplePC and SpotRunner. “SRCH2 is among our first investments out of the new TenOneTenVentures portfolio,” said David Waxman, TenOneTen’s Managing Partner. “We see SRCH2 as a breakthrough technology– an advanced search tool that does what other search software just can’t.”

“Enterprise Search is a massive market still ripe for innovation,” said new SRCH2 investor Matt Ocko, Co-Managing Partner at Data Collective. “We have been active investors in this market, and we think SRCH2 can do something that is both disruptive enough to build a large and profitable business, while still supportive of and complementary to many other members of the ecosystem.”

SRCH2’s team includes Dev Bhatia, CEO, and Chen Li, Founder. Bhatia is an Internet and mobile startup veteran. Li is a Stanford Ph.D. and ex-Googler with years of search expertise. Li was recently awarded 10-year Best Awards by both the Association for Computing Machinery’s SIGMOD (Special Interest Group on Management of Data) and DASFAA (Database Systems for Advanced Applications) for his work in search and cloud technologies. Li will receive the 2013 DASFAA Award this week in Wuhan, China.
Other prominent SRCH2 investors include Dr. Jeffrey Ullman, a world-renowned data scientist at Stanford, who has served as an advisor to several startups including Google, Manyam Mallela, first employee at Kosmix (now Walmart Labs), Clark Landry, Co-Founder of Shift.com, David Beyer, Co-Founder of Chartio, Andy Rankin, angel investor, and Taher Haveliwala, Co-Founder of Kaltix, a personalized-search startup acquired by Google in 2003.

View SRCH2 demos at http://srch2.com/#demos  or download SRCH2’s latest release at http://srch2.com/#try.

About SRCH2
For data-driven sites, apps and devices in mobile, e-commerce, social, and emerging platforms who view search as a mission-critical differentiator, SRCH2 is search software reimagined. It gives them advanced search features with zero investment in development, reconfiguration, or modification, 31 times faster than what they might have otherwise. Unlike Lucene and search engines built on top of it, SRCH2 was built from the ground up to address the unmet needs of the data-driven world. SRCH2 is Search Forward. To learn more, please visit www.SRCH2.com.

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Infer Inc. said it raised $10 million in Series A funding in a deal led by Redpoint Ventures and joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Social+Capital Partnership, Sutter Hill Ventures, and angel investors. Infer helps businesses accurately predict and act on their highest potential customers. Infer is developing software that helps companies identify high potential customers.

PRESS RELEASE

Infer Raises $10 Million; Helps Companies Use Data to Win More Customers

Redpoint Ventures Leads Series A Funding Round

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA – April 23, 2013 – Infer Inc., a company that delivers data-powered business applications inspired by the consumer web, today announced it has closed $10 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with Andreessen Horowitz, Social+Capital Partnership, Sutter Hill Ventures, and influential angel investors also participating in the round. Infer helps businesses accurately predict and act on their highest potential customers.

Infer’s solutions mine the historical customer won/lost records sitting in companies’ sales and marketing databases, pull in hundreds of valuable signals from untapped web sources, and build statistical models that accurately identify customers with the highest propensity to buy. This approach leverages advanced information retrieval and machine learning algorithms to model customer data, along with company financials, social media presence, job listings, legal filings and other external information. As a result, Infer unearths actionable revenue-driving insights that businesses can leverage to prioritize their flow of leads, focus on their best prospects, and ultimately win more customers in less time.

“Infer’s predictive solution has helped our sales force deal with lead overload by prioritizing those with the highest likelihood to
engage and close,” said Jim Herbold, executive vice president of sales at Box. “The application integrates quickly, and delivers real lift – in our case, more than doubling the conversion rate from our highest volume lead sources.”

Infer has closed several multi-year customer agreements, attaining early profitability. Its models have consistently achieved significant lifts in conversion rates for customers across the board, including several Fortune 1000 companies and some of the hottest emerging technology companies in the market, like Box, Jive, Tableau, Yammer and Zendesk.

“While the sales and marketing automation markets have been strong over the last several years, automation is not enough,” said Satish Dharmaraj, partner at Redpoint Ventures. “The much larger opportunity is to bring enterprises deep data science wrapped up in simple application services that anyone can use. Infer’s world class team is bringing web search, machine learning and personalization smarts from places like Google, using it to harness enterprises’ untapped big data for the first time, and gleaning amazing topline value for its customers. This is a rocketship.”

Infer’s founding team is led by Vik Singh, who was listed in MIT’s Top 35 under 35 list for helping to create the popular open search platform Yahoo! BOSS. The company’s technology leadership includes co-founders Yang Zhang, an ex-Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and MIT researcher, and Chung Wu, who was formerly the front-end tech lead of Google’s Public Data project.

“When my co-founders and I set out to create Infer, we were shocked by how poorly even the biggest, most innovative companies manage and act on their own internal data – especially given the amazing advances we’ve seen in the data science used for the consumer web,” said Vik Singh, co-founder and CEO of Infer. “For example, there’s way more intelligence being applied in Facebook’s newsfeed telling you that your friends are getting drinks across the street than there is in helping companies make critical decisions that could have serious consequences like massive layoffs. It’s time for a change. We intend to bring the product thinking and data intelligence of the consumer space to the enterprise, and deliver data science applications that solve real problems and ‘just work’ seamlessly in existing workflows.”

Infer will use its Series A funding to grow its team of engineers and scientists, as well as to deliver and apply its solution to more companies and customer intelligence problems. In addition, Satish Dharmaraj of Redpoint Ventures will join the company’s board of directors.

About Infer
Founded in 2010, Infer delivers data-powered business applications that help companies win more customers.  Its cloud-based applications leverage proven data science to rapidly model the untapped data sitting in enterprises, along with hundreds of external signals from the web. Inspired by the simplicity of the consumer web, Infer delivers seamless, data-driven applications that anyone can  get up and running in just days.  Customers include several of the Fortune 1000 and numerous high growth companies.   Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Infer is funded by leading investors, including Redpoint Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Social+Capital Partnership and Sutter Hill Ventures. For more information, visit
www.infer.com.

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Private Equity International found that $69.3 billion was raised globally by 130 private equity funds in the first quarter of 2013. The figure is similar to 2012 when on average $73.7 billion was raised in each quarter. However, the total represents a significant upside vs. fund targets of $59.9 billion – a suggestion of rising LP confidence.

Below is the PEI press release. Unfortunately the included charts did not transfer well.

PRESS RELEASE

Private equity fundraising outstrips targets in Q1

·       Private equity funds collected $69.3bn in Q1 – $9.4bn in excess of fund targets
·       Buyout funds account for almost half all private equity closed funds
·       High targets of funds in market indicate returning confidence

Private Equity International, the leading information provider for the global private equity, asset class (www.privateequityinternational.com), today publishes its quarterly report on global fundraising data.

Funds raised

The data, compiled by PEI’s Research and Analytics team, shows a total of $69.3bn raised globally, by 130 funds, across all private equity strategies in the first quarter of 2013. The figure is roughly in line with fundraising totals for 2012 – on average $73.7bn was raised in each quarter in the year – but represents a significant surplus on fund targets, with firms having aimed for an aggregate of $59.9bn.

“The totals being raised are still no way near peaks of the pre-crisis period but closed funds are evidence of consistent returning confidence,” said Dan Gunner, Director of Research and Analytics, PEI. “What’s most striking about these Q1 figures is the capital raised in excess of what fund managers were targeting. It reinforces the belief that for those managers with strong track records and a good story to tell, there’s ample opportunity.”

Funds with a focus on investment in North America proved the most popular, securing $23.3bn – a figure marginally higher than quarterly averages in the previous four years. Those looking to deploy capital globally raised $18.8bn. In 2012, such funds averaged quarterly fundraisings of $31.8bn.

The single largest fund close in the quarter was that of Cinven, with The Fith Cinven Fund collecting $6.5bn for pan-European investment. Both EnCap Investments, a US firm focused on investment in oil and gas, and Highbridge Principal Strategies, also US-based, raised $5bn.

Buyout funds proved most popular, accounting for $28.5bn of the total capital raised in the quarter. That figure is roughly in line with capital raised for the investment strategy in 2012 – $137bn was raised in the year, a quarterly average of $34.25bn.

Venture capital and growth equity funds also demonstrated a strong quarter, collecting $17.9bn. Such funds had targeted capital of $14.5bn.

Both distressed and secondary funds showed a marked decline relative to fundraising performance in 2012. The former raised just $1.2bn compared to a total of $15.3bn in the preceding 12 months. Secondary fund managers raised $2.1bn – in 2012 they collected $20.8bn.

Funds in the market

In addition to funds outstripping targets in Q1 2013, a review of those in the market also suggests a returning confidence among private equity managers. Seven funds are currently each aiming to raise at least $10bn with three firms, Apollo Global Management, TPG, and Warburg Pincus, targeting $12bn to invest globally.

Funds aiming to invest in Asia-Pacific are notable for their growing confidence. In 2012, $34.6bn was closed by general partners (GPs) with funds targeting the region. Currently, however, there are 417 – almost a third of all funds in the market – aiming to collect $195bn.

“Fundraising activity since 2009 has shown a gradual, steady improvement and the number of funds in the market is high”, said Dan Gunner. “The example of Asia-Pacific demonstrates neatly the disparity between what funds have raised in recent years and what they are aiming for now. There’s clearly an improved confidence globally but it’s never been more competitive to close funds. LP investors are increasingly choosing established managers with good track records so some of these funds on the road may not raise what they hope.”

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Vidyo, Inc. said it raised $17.1 million in a deal led by Triangle Peak Partners. The company said other new investors were involved, but didn’t supply details. Vidyo has now raised $116 million since its founding in 2005.

PRESS RELEASE

Vidyo Raises $17.1 Million To Accelerate Sales Growth and Maximize Market Share

Hackensack, NJ – April 22, 2013 – Vidyo, Inc., today announced a $17.1 million round of financing, bringing the total amount of net capital raised by the company to $116 million since its founding in 2005. The financing was facilitated by strong support from inside investors and the addition of several new investors. Vidyo will use this funding and increased access to capital to accelerate its fast growing sales, expand global market share and broaden the adoption of its unique software based, VidyoWorks platform.

“Vidyo has proven itself as an innovator in the video conferencing market and has sparked the mass adoption of its technology, which is changing the landscape of visual communications,” said Dain DeGroff, co-founding Managing Director, Triangle Peak Partners, the lead new investor. “We are delighted to be a part of Vidyo’s successful growth.”

In 2012, Vidyo saw 68% year over year billings growth and unlocked several high-profile market segments including 77% year-over-year growth in healthcare and education  and 67% growth in the large enterprise business. Vidyo currently has 26 patents issued and 56 patents pending, for its award winning architecture.

“We are experiencing a hockey stick effect in the adoption of the personal video conferencing market that continues to drive significant growth for Vidyo,” said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo’s CEO and Co-Founder.  “Our customers are expanding their deployments with us at an amazing rate of 18% per quarter on an average dollar basis. We will use these funds to support this growth and accelerate new customer wins.”

Vidyo has been widely recognized for its success and has been honored with high profile awards such as Wall Street Journal’s ‘Next Big Thing’  annual list for a third year in a row, recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Tech Pioneer for 2013, and was cited on the MIT Technology Review’s 2013 “50 Most Disruptive Companies”.

About Vidyo, Inc.
Vidyo, Inc. pioneered Personal Telepresence enabling natural, HD multi-point videoconferences on tablets and smart phones, PCs and Macs, room systems, that interoperate with legacy H.323 and SIP endpoints, telepresence solutions and affordable cloud-based video conferencing as a service solution.  The VidyoWorks platform allows solution providers to integrate high quality visual communications into their applications, leveraging H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and Vidyo’s patented VidyoRouter technology. Learn more at www.vidyo.com, on the Blog or follow @vidyo on Twitter.

***

The VIDYO logo is a registered trademark of Vidyo, Inc., VIDYO and the trademarks of the VIDYO family of products are trademarks of Vidyo, Inc. and the other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Ionic Security Inc. said it raised a $9.4 million Series A investment in a deal led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, joined by TechOperators and including existing investors such as Ken Levine and Paul Judge. The company said that Kleiner Perkins General Partner Ted Schlein and TechOperators Partner Tom Noonan will join the board.

PRESS RELEASE

Ionic Security Closes Nearly $9.5M Series A-1 Investment

Funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with TechOperators, to expand the industry’s first unified cloud and mobility security platform; grow sales and engineering teams

ATLANTA, April 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Ionic Security Inc., delivering the first unified cloud and mobility security platform for the enterprise, today announced the close of $9.4m Series A-1 investment round. Led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), the round also included Atlanta-based TechOperators and increased participation by early investors such as famed security entrepreneurs Ken Levine and Dr. Paul Judge. The capital will be used to expand Ionic’s engineering team, accelerate enterprise sales and increase awareness of its Fusion platform. Ionic Security also announced that Ted Schlein, general partner at KPCB, and Tom Noonan, partner at TechOperators, will join the board of directors.

“Enterprises want to take advantage of the reduced costs and increased usability of cloud and mobile applications, but hesitate due to security concerns,” said Steve Abbott, Ionic Security CEO. “Our Fusion platform provides the security controls executives need to approve cloud migrations, especially in regulated environments. Customers see lower costs, higher employee satisfaction and increased security.”

Founded in 2011, Ionic Security (formerly Social Fortress) combines identity and access management, data-centric policy enforcement and comprehensive usage auditing to provide enterprises with an unprecedented level of control of their data without the need for, or use of, gateways. Administrating Ionic Security’s Fusion platform is done through simple dashboards, tablet-oriented UI and a powerful correlation and policy engine while end-users see no change to their workflows.

“Security needs to change with the times,” said Ted Schlein, general partner of KPCB. “Enterprises have historically secured their data through network security, endpoint protections and central identity management offerings that are no match for the complex security challenges inherent in the combination of cloud services and the rise of bring-your-own-device policies. Ionic Security addresses this challenge head-on by providing enablement, not restriction and is poised to become standard in next-generation enterprise IT infrastructure.”

Companies of different sizes are required to control and secure their data as well as their partners’ data. Currently piloting its “Fusion” enterprise data security platform, Ionic Security has seen tremendous interest in its unified approach to data security and is working with progressive industry leaders in the financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, insurance, aerospace and federal markets in North America and Europe.

“Ionic Security fits perfectly with TechOperators’ focus: investing in great teams solving hard problems at the intersection of cloud, mobility and analytics,” said Tom Noonan, former CEO of Internet Security Systems and partner at TechOperators. “The Fusion platform has the opportunity to massively disrupt the IT security market, as many incumbents continue to focus on outdated assumptions about enterprise infrastructures. Today’s new reality requires new thinking about data security – and that’s exactly what Ionic Security brings.”

“Ted and Tom bring unparalleled experience to our board,” said Adam Ghetti, Ionic Security founder, CTO and chairman. “Their advice and guidance will be invaluable as we scale quickly and broaden our reach to address the critical data security challenges facing enterprises today.”

About Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) has backed entrepreneurs in more than 700 ventures leading to nearly 200 IPOs, over 375,000 jobs and a deep strategic network. The firm has helped build pioneering companies like Align, Amazon, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Symantec, VeriSign and WebMD. KPCB partners serve on the boards of Amazon, Apple, Bloom Energy, Flipboard, Foundation Medicine, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nest, Square, Tesaro and Zynga, among others. KPCB accelerates the success of entrepreneurs with a team of partners delivering company-building services including strategy, operational scaling, recruiting, business development, product delivery and marketing communications. The firm invests in all stages from seed and incubation to growth companies. KPCB operates from offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Shanghai and Beijing.http://www.kpcb.com

About TechOperators

An early-stage venture capital firm, TechOperators was founded on the premise that proven operators make the best partners for technology entrepreneurs. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the firm is led by an expert team of partners with decades of hard-fought operating success and experience founding, building and running world-class venture backed software companies. Extending beyond mentoring, TechOperators applies market-proven strategic and operational experience to drive growth during all stages of company building. TechOperators seeks entrepreneurs with bold innovative software solutions in cloud computing, cyber security, mobile computing, and marketing. For more information visit www.techoperators.com.

About Ionic Security

Ionic Security (formerly Social Fortress) enables the use of cloud services by protecting sensitive data anywhere it travels and wherever it resides, whether on the corporate network, in the cloud or on mobile devices. The first unified data security platform of its kind, Ionic Security takes a comprehensive approach to securing data in today’s borderless enterprise by providing access control, intellectual property monitoring, data encryption and policy management, without proxies or gateways or changes in user behavior. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and is backed by leading venture firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TechOperators and ff VC as well as industry experts Christopher Klaus, Ken Levine, Phil Dunkelberger and Dr. Paul Judge. More information is located atwww.ionicsecurity.com.

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Fits.me said it raised almost $7.6 million in a Series A round from existing investor SmartCap and new investors Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited and The Entrepreneur’s Fund. The company in May 2009 and August 2010 received seed and early-stage investments of slightly less than $2.67 million from Smartcap and angel investors.

PRESS RELEASE

Virtual fitting room provider Fits.me takes £5m
in Series A funding

London, UK – April 18th 2013 – Fits.me today announced total Series A investment in the company of close to £5 million.  Series A investment has been subscribed by existing investor SmartCap, with new participation from Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited and The Entrepreneur’s Fund.
Previously, in May 2009 and August 2010, the company received total seed and early-stage investment of just under £1.75m from Smartcap and angel investors, and £0.5m in grants.

Fits.me develops, markets and operates virtual fitting room solutions on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis for online clothing retailers, helping them to overcome the problems of low online conversion rates and high garment returns rates caused by doubt over fit and poor fit respectively.

The company counts many well-known retailers among its clients, including Adidas, Avenue32, Barbour By Mail, Boden, Ermenegildo Zegna, Hawes & Curtis, Henri Lloyd, Hugo Boss, John Smedley, L.K.Bennett, Mexx, Nicole Farhi, Otto, Pretty Green, Superdry and Thomas Pink.

Fits.me will use the new funding to support accelerated Sales and Marketing programmes – including international expansion into the France, Germany, other EU countries and the USA – and to continue to scale up its Operations to meet predicted demand.

Conor Venture Partners’ Manu Mäkelä said: “While large swathes of retailing already takes place online, there are sectors for which the real online growth has yet to come.  Apparel is chief among those sectors, primarily because buying clothes is such a subjective process – most obviously when it comes to ‘fit’. Fits.me has a sophisticated solution that works, delivers provable results, is easy for retailers to deploy and has been signed up by a growing band of respected retailers and brands, on an international basis.  From an investor’s point of view, there is tremendous growth potential.”

In February 2013 the company launched Fit Advisor, a complementary version of the company’s flagship Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room solution which delivers fit information and recommendations without the need for photography.

Heikki Haldre, co-founder and chief executive at Fits.me, said: “We are in a market that has started to move very quickly as retailers look to overcome their high street difficulties by focusing on online performance.  It should be clear to everyone that we mean to do very good business by helping online clothing retailers to solve one of their most pressing problems.”
[ends]

About Fits.me
Fits.me’s virtual fitting room solutions helps boost the revenues and the profitability of online clothing retailers by enabling them to overcome the online fit problem, increasing conversions and reducing garment returns.

The subjective nature of “fit” as it applies to clothing and fashion has inhibited online apparel sales for years – in 2012 the overall proportion of garment sales from online channels was still only 14-15%.  The essential problem is the inability of shoppers to try on clothes to check the fit before they choose their size, while ‘fit’ is a matter of personal preference rather than mathematics.  According to Mintel, widespread inconsistencies in sizing between different brands and retailers make online clothes shopping a challenge for six in ten shoppers.

At the heart of Fits.me’s software-as-a-service solution are sophisticated robotic mannequins, both male and female, with artificial muscles that enable it to mimic any size or shape of body.  To populate the database of any given brand or retailer, these mannequins are dressed in representative items from the retailer’s range, in each available size.  Each permutation of garment/size is then photographed while the robotic mannequin morphs through thousands of body shapes, whether for a dress or a shirt.  The output of this process is a comprehensive image database – and, for each image, the precise dimensions of the mannequin are recorded.

On a retailer’s site, Fits.me displays the photograph from the database that shows exactly how the garment the shopper is looking at will fit their body size and shape, simply by asking that shopper for a few common measurements.

With further clicks, the shopper may check how they will look wearing other sizes, before choosing the size that fits them the way they like it.  The Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room will even alert the shopper to where the fit of the chosen garment may be wrong – for example, in arm length or collar size – just as a shop assistant would do in a bricks-and-mortar store.

Data from online clothing retailers using Fits.me shows an improvement in conversion rates of up to 62% compared to shoppers using a traditional size chart and a reduction in returns for reasons of fit of up to 77%.

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Reduxio Systems said it raised $9 million in a Series A round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures. Reduxio is developing a storage operating system.

PRESS RELEASE

REDUXIO, THE SCALE-OUT HYBRID STORAGE COMPANY, RAISES $9M IN A ROUND LED BY JERUSALEM VENTURE PARTNERS AND CARMEL VENTURES

The Israel-Based Company has Developed a New Storage Operating System that Leverages Flash to Bring Disruptive Functionality to the Enterprise

Apr. 17th, 2013, Tel Aviv, Israel – Reduxio Systems, a next generation hybrid innovator, announced today that it secured $9M in a Series A round led by two of Israel’s leading venture capitalist firms, Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and Carmel Ventures.

Storage industry veterans Mark Weiner, Nir Peleg and Amnon Strasser founded Reduxio in 2012 after recognizing the challenges of integrating new key functionality and hardware advances into legacy storage systems.

“Designing a system from the ground up allowed us to break free of all the limitations and to fully take advantage of new network, server and drive architectures,” said Mark Weiner, CEO of Reduxio. “In this way, we can deliver revolutionary functionality to match the particular needs in cloud, virtual machine and structured data environments.”

“We are seeing a paradigm shift in storage, as SSDs and 10GbE adoption rates increase. Reduxio’s novel approach is a game changer,” Said Ori Bendori, General Partner at Carmel Ventures.

“We’re excited by the hybrid space and how Reduxio’s technology accelerates flash adoption in the enterprise,” said Kobi Rozengarten, General Partner at JVP and a veteran of the flash memory industry, “We invested in Reduxio early and used our incubator to partner from their founding.”

Reduxio’s cost-effective hybrid provides an alternative to the expensive all flash arrays. Mainstream vendors have been struggling to integrate SSDs into their legacy architectures and to have different key features work together. The fast growing storage needs of cloud and corporate cloud environments that are virtualized and application dependent are demanding more innovative solutions.Reduxio’s disruptive storage technologies provide a much needed solution to these challenges.

“Reduxio was born from the idea that the only way to truly introduce new and innovative functionality in conjunction with the newest hardware required a completely new base-architecture designed from the ground up – taking advantage of the latest advances,” said Reduxio CEO Weiner. “For the past decade, spinning disks have not kept up with the performance advances in the rest of the storage architecture. New functionality added to older systems is not always compatible as one layer of complexity is added onto the next. Reduxio is providing answers to these challenges.”
About Reduxio Systems

Reduxio’s hybrid arrays are specifically designed for the particular needs of today’s storage environments focusing on cloud, virtual machines and structured data sets. The ReduxOS operating system and next generation smart placement algorithms will reset price/performance and functionality requirements moving forward.

About Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP)

Based in the JVP Media Quarter in Jerusalem, JVP (www.jvpvc.com) is one of Israel’s largest and most active venture capital funds with over $900 million raised to date. Founded in 1993, JVP has helped build over 90 companies and has orchestrated 25 of the largest exits in the region with 14 industry sales and 11 IPOs on NASDAQ. Established in 1993 by JVP Founder and Chairman Erel Margalit, JVP’s General Partners are Gadi Tirosh and Kobi Rozengarten.

About Carmel Ventures

With over $600 million currently under management, many successful exits, and a growing portfolio of promising start-ups, Carmel is among Israel’s top-tier venture capital funds. Founded in 2000 by pioneers and leaders of the Israeli high tech industry, Carmel provides significant capital and active, hands-on support through the growth cycle of its portfolio companies and is recognized as a true company-building fund in Israel. Carmel, headquartered in Herzliya, is a member of the Viola Group, Israel’s premier technology focused Private Equity group with $2B under management. For more information, please visit www.carmelventures.com.

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HAPILABS said it has begun a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the manufacture and distribution of its HAPIfork. The electronic fork, that vibrates when a user eats too quickly, was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and is still in prototype. The $100,000 Kickstarter campaign will allow up to 2,500 people to obtain the fork for $89 and offer it at $99 for everyone else.

PRESS RELEASE

HAPIfork To Release For Pre-Order on Kickstarter

Crowdfunding Campaign Kicks Off for HAPIfork, the World’s First Connected Fork; Monitors How Fast People Eat and Helps Them Slow Down

REDWOOD CITY, CA–(BUSINESS WIRE)– HAPILABS, a company whose mission is to help individuals in the 21st century take control of their HAPIness, health and fitness through applications and mobile connected devices, today announced the start of their Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the manufacturing and distribution of HAPIfork – the world’s first connected fork.

HAPIfork transforms people’s relationship with food as it monitors how fast the user is eating and helps them slow down. Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, HAPIfork was the recipient of the CES Innovations Award, Health & Wellness category. The word quickly spread in over 50 countries globally culminating in hundreds of articles, blog posts, tweets, television and radio appearances as well as a fun shout out fromThe Colbert Report and the Jay Leno Show.

“While our product is still a prototype, we’re thrilled by the global response so far,” says Fabrice Boutain, HAPILABS founder. “We believe this is affirmation of the growing consumer health awareness movement to gain better control of issues impacting weight and digestive issues as well as more serious issues such as diabetes and other chronic conditions.”

Keeping in line with Kickstarter rewards at various funding levels, the HAPIfork will be offered as a perk for up to 2,500 people funding $89, and at the $99 level for anyone else who would like to be in the first commercial batch. In addition, the opportunity to be part of the beta testing program, receiving the HAPIfork at the earliest possible availability date, is offered at the $300 level perk. The campaign, which starts today and runs until May 31, 2013, has a fundraising target of $100,000.

HAPIfork was designed by French entrepreneur and inventor Jacques Lépine whose idea was based on research which shows that by eating slower, people can improve the way they feel, improve their digestion and lose weight. HAPIfork aims to modify eating behavior by slowing down how fast people eat and being more present with when and how long it takes to eat, leading to an overall healthier state of being and living.

Unlike other health related tools, the HAPIfork is inconspicuous and appropriate for out of home use. The Bluetooth enabled smart fork also collects information for future analysis or monitoring in clinical settings. All data is transmitted to a ‘personalized online dashboard’ when the HAPIfork is connected to the users computer or mobile device making it easy to monitor eating habits and health improvement at home or on the road.

HAPIfork will be released in three colors (blue, green and pink) and will ship to Kickstarter funders first before the general public. HAPIfork comes with an color coordinated case making it easy to carry everywhere. The product will initially go on sale in the US and EU in the fourth quarter of this year.

About—HAPILABS aims to help individuals in the 21st century take control of their HAPIness, health and fitness through applications and mobile connected devices. HAPIfork is part of suite of devices, applications and services from HAPILABS aimed at improving overall health, well-being and happiness. Products in development include the HAPIwatch to help people sleep better and the HAPItrack to help people stay in great shape. Offering elegant and simple solutions, HAPILABS helps people achieve a healthier and happier lifestyle.

HAPIfork – the world’s first connected fork. The personal technology tool monitors how fast people eat and helps them slow down. The Bluetoothenabled smart fork is slated to retail for $99 and start shipping in blue, pink and green to the general public in the US and EU in the fourth quarter of this year

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SocialFlow said it raised a $10 million Series B round in a deal led by Fairhaven Capital and joined by existing investors SoftBank Capital, RRE Ventures, AOL Ventures and Betaworks. Also in the round were new investors kbs+ Ventures and Rand Capital Corporation. SocialFlow is developing social media marketing products.

PRESS RELEASE

SocialFlow Secures $10 Million Series B to Grow Market Share As Advertising Spend Goes Social

Company leading the charge to explain the who, what, when and where of intelligent social media marketing and engagement

NEW YORK—April 16, 2013—SocialFlow, the leading social media marketing company, today announced a $10 million round in Series B funding. Fairhaven Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors SoftBank Capital, RRE Ventures, AOL Ventures and Betaworks, as well as new investors kbs+ Ventures and Rand Capital Corporation (NASDAQ:RAND). SocialFlow will use these funds to accelerate its range and reach, expand its product portfolio and further develop its partner base as the market for intelligent social network engagement and analytics platforms expands.

This market expansion is being driven by the need of brands and publishers to identify optimal points of engagement – in real-time and with context relevance – among the millions of conversations being held every minute within the social networks. According to recent analyst reports:

·         Corporate investment in interactive marketing programs will exceed $76B in the US alone by 2016, with social media marketing program spending growing to 26% of all advertising spend, according to Forrester Research;
·         Advertising is, and will continue to be, the largest contributor to overall social media revenue and is projected to have totaled $8.8 billion in 2012, according to Gartner.

SocialFlow co-founder and Chief Product Officer Frank Speiser developed the company’s proprietary technology to enable brands, agencies and publishers to actively follow conversation flows across social networks, selecting the right points of engagement with key audiences for when they are most likely to be motivated to action. More than 70 enterprise customers across publishing, consumer products, retail, automotive, hospitality and more use SocialFlow’s Cadence and Crescendo platforms as a central part of their social media publishing and digital marketing engagement strategies. Today, six of the ten largest media companies are actively using Cadence and brands such as Walmart, Pepsi, and Burberry are leveraging Crescendo to connect with customers when and where they want to be engaged.

“In the past year, we have seen a significant change as companies integrate social media marketing into their overarching business goals and make it a lynchpin of their ongoing customer acquisition, engagement and loyalty programs,” said SocialFlow CEO Missy Godfrey. “With the support and partnership of Fairhaven Capital and our existing investors, SocialFlow has the resources to take full advantage of the tremendous market opportunity to help companies develop meaningful relationships across all social networking platforms.”

Rudina Seseri, Partner at Fairhaven Capital said, “As social media becomes the de facto mechanism for brands to communicate, the ability to analyze and act upon this information in real time will be critical. SocialFlow’s innovative approach, established mindshare with brands and publishers, and clear technological leadership has enabled it to rapidly move this market forward and to create real value for its customers and partners.”

About SocialFlow
SocialFlow is the premier social marketing optimization technology company that enables the world’s most powerful brands to drive superior results connecting their earned, owned and paid media strategies. For further information, please visit www.socialflow.com and follow us on Twitter @socialflow

About Fairhaven Capital Partners
Based in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, Fairhaven Capital is a venture capital firm dedicated to a thesis-based approach to investing in North American technology companies. This approach focuses investment efforts on markets where emerging companies and technologies can create significant value. The Fairhaven team is focused on themes in the enterprise, physical technologies, media infrastructure and security markets. For more information, visit www.fairhavencapital.com.

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Booker, formerly GramercyOne, said it raised $27.5 million in Series B funding in a deal led by Bain Capital Ventures and joined by existing investors Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, TDF Ventures, and Vital Financial. The company will use this money to scale its product and sales staffs.

PRESS RELEASE

BOOKER RAISES $27.5 MILLION LED BY BAIN CAPITAL VENTURES

Growth Funding to Help Accelerate the Enablement of SMBs and Multi-Location Enterprises With Leading Cloud-Based Service Management Platform

NEW YORK—April 16th, 2013—Booker (formerly GramercyOne), the leading service management platform (SMP) that helps small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and multi-location enterprises unify operations and automate marketing on a single cloud-based system, has secured $27.5 million in Series B financing led by Bain Capital Ventures. Booker’s Series A investors, Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, TDF Ventures, and Vital Financial, also participated in the financing round. Booker will use this funding to aggressively scale its product and sales teams focused on developing and delivering enterprise-class technology to multiple vertical markets in an affordable and intuitive system.

“We give local service businesses the technology they need to succeed,” said Josh McCarter, CEO of Booker. “Our technology helps these businesses connect consumers with services as seamlessly as Amazon connects buyers to products. And this round of financing, along with adding Bain Capital Ventures to our team, will ensure we continue empowering our clients to grow in ways they never could before.”

Unlike the many disconnected point solutions on the market today, Booker’s unified platform is the system of record, providing all the tools necessary to run a successful service business, including: scheduling, point of sale, CRM, employee management, marketing and loyalty programs, and comprehensive reporting.  Over 60,000 service professionals use Booker’s products across multiple verticals, including: health, wellness, beauty, home improvement, and professional services.

“We’ve been closely tracking the adoption of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) by SMBs.  Service businesses are the backbone of our economy, and Booker’s platform revolutionizes the way that these businesses operate on a daily basis by providing tools that directly grow revenues, increase productivity, better manage data, and lower costs,” said Deepak Sindwani, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures and the newest member of the Booker board of directors. “Booker’s impressive growth trajectory, team, and multi-vertical strategy were key drivers for our investment.”

Booker’s platform facilitates and captures the entire purchase cycle and customer history from promotion to sale. As a result, owners get detailed, unique insights into their businesses’ performance, which they leverage to make informed business decisions.  Booker also generates new customers by distributing real-time appointment availability online and automating specials at optimal price points, bringing yield management technology to SMBs.

Booker recently announced the launch of its mobile and tablet apps on Apple iOS and Android devices, empowering business owners and their staff to manage operations anytime, from anywhere.

Booker is coming off of an impressive 2012, achieving triple-digit revenue growth for the fourth consecutive year and doubling its annual transaction volume to nearly $1 billion.  The company has also expanded its team substantially, growing from 65 to 200 employees to support the growing demand for its SaaS product.

Solidifying its position as New York City’s breakout startup, Booker recently won the first annual Take the H.E.L.M. Competition in the “Expanding in Lower Manhattan” category. In addition to the recognition, the company also received a cash prize of $260,000, which Booker is giving back to its local community by providing a one-year license of its software (a $2,000 value) to over 100 beauty and wellness-related small businesses in Lower Manhattan.

Connect with Booker
Booker company video: booker.com/b
Booker blog: booker.com/company/blog
Company website: booker.com
Twitter: @getbooker
——————-
About Booker

Booker helps small and multi-location businesses run and grow successfully by replacing everything from manual methods to disconnected software with a unified web-based platform, accessible from any device. Booker also enables service businesses to sell their services online, through their website and a network of partner sites and apps, creating a seamless online booking experience for consumers. Booker processes over one million appointments each month across 73 countries in 11 languages. Headquartered in New York City, Booker’s customers include thousands of local service businesses as well as Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit www.booker.com.

About Bain Capital Ventures

Bain Capital Ventures is the venture arm within Bain Capital, which has approximately $70 billion of assets under management worldwide. The firm’s history of investing in early stage companies dates back to 1984 with over 125 venture investments since inception. Bain Capital Ventures manages over $2 billion of assets, has over 70 active portfolio companies, and has offices in Boston, New York, and Palo Alto. The firm has helped steer many ideas to success by working in partnership with management teams, pairing talented and passionate entrepreneurs with industry experts, opening doors to customers, and collaborating on long-term strategies. For more information, please visit www.baincapitalventures.com.

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Ottawa-based BTI Systems Inc. has named software industry veteran Tod Nielsen to the company’s board of directors. Nielsen recently helped establish the EMC/VMware spin-off Pivotal Initiative. Prior to that he was with VMware, Borland and Microsoft. BTI, a provider of intelligent networking software and systems, has been venture-backed since 2000. Its investors include Bain Capital Ventures, BDC Venture Capital, Covington Funds, Export Development Canada, GrowthWorks and Kodiak Venture Partners.

PRESS RELEASE

BTI Systems Adds Former VMware Executive Tod Nielsen to Board of Directors

Internationally Respected Industry Leader and Former VMware Co-President of Applications Platform Group Brings Significant Software, Cloud Computing and Big Data Market Expertise

OTTAWA and BOSTON, April 16, 2013 – Following closely on BTI Systems’ introduction ofIntelligent Cloud Connect – an open, software-rich platform designed to significantly improve cloud networking performance by combining network intelligence and application awareness with significantly expanded capacity and scale – the company today announced that software industry visionary Tod Nielsen is joining its board of directors.

Based in Silicon Valley and globally recognized for his combination of strategic vision and operational capabilities, Nielsen most recently helped establish the Pivotal Initiative, the highly anticipated and closely watched EMC/VMware spin-off focusing on cloud computing and Big Data. Prior to that he was with VMware, where he served as co-president of applications platform group and, earlier, as chief operating officer.

With cloud network traffic expected to increase 6-fold by 2016, Nielsen brings world-class applications and software industry leadership to BTI’s board. In February, the company expanded its portfolio with a first-of-its-kind platform, Intelligent Cloud Connect, which empowers content and service providers to capitalize more fully on opportunities in cloud services delivery. Combining software intelligence with the flexibility of routing and the capacity and scale of optical, BTI’s new platform unlocks the bottleneck between and among data centers, peering points and users. Notably, it quadruples capacity and scale, reduces latency by half, and increases network applications performance by as much as 10 times. It does so while significantly improving operational efficiencies, network control and service innovation compared to legacy solutions.

“The rapid adoption of cloud computing represents one of the most important and promising shifts for customers and vendors alike,” said Nielsen. “With this comes the demand for new and better architectures to greatly improve the performance of the underlying network and to fuel current and new service offerings. I’m excited to join the board at a time when BTI’s vision, strategy, technology and partnerships are enabling the company to establish its role as a key player in this new ecosystem.”

Nielsen has held a series of high-profile positions during the past two decades. Prior to the Pivotal Initiative and VMware, he served as the CEO of Borland Corporation. Earlier, he held the positions of senior vice president of marketing and global sales support for Oracle and executive vice president and chief marketing officer for BEA Systems. He is a member of the board of directors at CyrusOne Inc, MyEdu and Club Holdings LLC.

“BTI is making cloud computing a reality for our content and service provider customers – fueled by the vision, strategy and next-generation innovations required to fundamentally transform their businesses and the services they offer,” said BTI President and CEO Steve Waszak. “We’re thrilled to have a proven thought leader of Tod’s caliber and expertise join us at a time when BTI is entering our next phase of substantial expansion. It comes on the heels of announcing a new round of growth capital, an innovative SDN-enabled platform that represents a new market category for our industry, and expanding our established presence in Silicon Valley. Gaining Tod’s contribution to our vision and direction is a significant competitive advantage.”

About BTI Systems
BTI delivers solutions that transform the economics, performance and innovation of global networks through intelligent networking software and systems. Leading content, cloud and service providers choose BTI to drive improved operational efficiencies and profitably deliver high-value services to businesses and consumers around the globe. With more than 350 customers, BTI is headquartered in North America, and operates regional sales, marketing, and R&D centers of excellence throughout the world. For more information, visitwww.btisystems.com.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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LearnZillion said it raised $7 million of Series A funding in a deal led by DCM and joined by O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, Calvert Social Investment Fund, and D.C. Community Ventures. The new round brings total funding to date to $9.4 million. The company raised a $2.4 million seed round.

PRESS RELEASE

LearnZillion Secures $7 Million in Series A Funding Led by DCM

Digital curriculum and professional development platform enables K-12 educators to align with Common Core State Standards

Washington D.C., April 15, 2013 – LearnZillion, the first digital curriculum and professional development platform that provides teachers with the tools they need to implement the Common Core State Standards, today announced it has raised $7 million in Series A funding. This brings total funding raised to date to $9.4 million, which includes a $2.4 million seed round. The Series A was led by DCM, with O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, Calvert Social Investment Fund, and D.C. Community Ventures also participating in the equity round. LearnZillion will use the funding to hire key talent to fuel technology development, scale more quickly, and enrich its platform to reach more educators.

LearnZillion is creating a national community of teachers dedicated to high quality instruction of the Common Core State Standards. The company’s web-based platform offers a digital curriculum and professional development platform for teachers, schools and districts implementing the Common Core State Standards. Developed by and for teachers, LearnZillion offers Common Core lessons, assessments, and activities created by top teachers from around the country.  The platform helps teachers understand the new standards, plan effective lessons, and assign content directly to students. The company currently has over 120,000 registered teachers, reaching approximately 1.4 million students, and is adding about 5,000 new teachers every week.

The Common Core State Standards define what students in grades K-12 need to know in language arts and mathematics, to be prepared for post-secondary education and the workforce. Adopted at the individual state level, the initiative will lead to new standardized tests that will measure and compare educational performance nationwide. To date, 46 states have announced their plans to adopt the initiative.

“The Common Core is the biggest shift in education in decades,” said Eric Westendorf, CEO of LearnZillion. “It creates a major pain point for teachers, school administrators, parents and even students. Teachers need new materials and professional development to get up-to-speed. We’re creating a national community of teachers that are embracing the challenge head on. Our platform provides a digital curriculum that’s been created ‘By Teachers, For Teachers’ and is built directly from the Common Core State Standards.”

To develop high quality Common Core-aligned curriculum, the company chooses top teachers from around the country through a rigorous submission and selection process – this year’s team is comprised of 200 teachers from 41 states. LearnZillion’s “Dream Team” of teachers works together over the summer to develop highly effective lessons and resources for the LearnZillion platform and provides educators with practical tools for teaching a Common Core-aligned curriculum. Teachers and parents access lessons and resources on LearnZillion for free. Schools and districts can subscribe to enterprise-level features such as access to premium professional development content, personalized teaching insights, and data analytics.

“Unlike most education technology platforms, where a handful of individuals create niche content and curriculums, LearnZillion offers Common Core-aligned lessons developed by leveraging the experience and skillset of its Dream Team. This produces professional development content that is truly accessible, flexible, and effective,” said Pete Moran, general partner at DCM. “LearnZillion’s management team has that rare combination of time spent in the classroom and expertise in technology to create unique solutions that have huge upside in both an educational and business context. The LearnZillion platform has the potential to become the go-to resource for teachers nationwide on core instructional content, as well help elevate student outcomes in the U.S. in a highly effective way.”

“LearnZillion might be more impactful and cost-effective than doubling the number of instructional coaches we have,” said Jason Kamras, chief of human capital for Washington D.C. Public Schools, in a recent interview about D.C. public school initiatives.

“LearnZillion’s unique approach is definitely a game changer for teachers, parents and students,” said Maura Marino from NewSchools Venture Fund.

The company hosts TeachFest, a three-day event that brings together teachers from LearnZillion’s nationwide Dream Team to develop lessons and resources. Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, TeachFest will take place on May 2-5, 2013 in San Francisco, California.

About LearnZillion
LearnZillion helps teachers and parents meet the needs of every student.  It is the only online professional development platform that builds teachers’ content knowledge of the Common Core State Standards. Built by and for teachers, LearnZillion offers a practical solution to teachers, schools and districts implementing the new Common Core State Standards—a digital curriculum with lessons developed by top teachers from across the country. Teachers and parents access lessons and resources for free. Schools and districts pay to get premium content and advanced features.
Based in Washington D.C., LearnZillion was founded in 2011 by Eric Westendorf, most recently a principal and the Chief Academic Officer of E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington DC., and Alix Guerrier, also a former classroom teacher. For more information, visit http://learnzillion.com/.

About DCM
DCM is an early stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Tokyo with more than $2 billion under management.  DCM has investments in more than 200 technology companies across the United States and Asia and provides hands-on operational guidance and a global network of business and financial resources.  DCM has backed industry-leading companies such as 51job, About.com, Clearwire, eDreams, Foundry Networks, Kabu.com, Sling Media, SMIC, and VanceInfo as well as upcoming startups such as 58.com, Bill.com, Bridgelux, Kakao, Happy Elements, and Trion Worlds.  Recent successes (IPOs and M&As) include China-based Renren, BitAuto, Dangdang, Luxin and Vipshop; Japan-based Pokelabo (GREE) and StarFlyer and U.S.-based Fortinet, PGP (Symantec) and SandForce (LSI.) For more information, visit http://www.dcm.com/.

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Eyevensys said it received an equity investment from the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund. Further details were not available. The company raised about $2.1 million in its first round of funding in January 2012. It said early investors – Innobio, managed by CDC Entreprises; Inserm Transfert Initiative; and CapDecisif Management – plan to participate in the second round.

PRESS RELEASE

Eyevensys announces an equity investment by Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund

Dr Michel Pairet, Boehringer Ingelheim’s head of non-clinical research and development, joins Eyevensys’ board of directors

Paris, 11 April 2013 – Eyevensys, a developer of a new process for non-viral gene therapy using electrotransfer that enables prolonged production of therapeutic proteins for the treatment of ocular disease, today announces an equity investment by the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF). It also announces that Dr Michel Pairet, Boehringer Ingelheim’s head of non-clinical research and development, has been appointed to its board of directors.

This equity investment by BIVF marks the start of Eyevensys’ next round of funding, which is planned to take place before the end of the second quarter of 2013 and aims to fund the business through to completion of Phase IIa clinical trials. The Eyevensys investment is BIVF’s sixth since its launch in 2010 and its first investment in a French company. BIVF had previously taken a stake in Inserm Transfert Initiative, an investment company specializing in seed capital for start-ups coming out of academic research and a past investor in Eyevensys.

The company’s past investors (Innobio, managed by CDC Entreprises, Inserm Transfert Initiative and CapDecisif Management) also intend to participate in this second round of funding. Eyevensys raised EUR 1.6 million from its first round of funding in January 2012.

“Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund’s equity investment brings us credibility, further raises our profile and gives us access to their wealth of experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D. This sends a strong signal to our target market,” said Dr Ivan Cohen-Tanugi, chairman of Eyevensys. “Dr Michel Pairet is well known in our industry. His experience, combined with the experience of the BIVF team, will undoubtedly help us to strengthen our development. We plan to complete a new round of funding between now and June. Discussions are already underway with potential new investors.”

The aim of this second round is to allow the company to finalize its preclinical trials, proceed to clinical trials within 18 months and complete Phase IIa. Eyevensys is currently focusing on two ophthalmological indications with significant unmet medical needs. These are: uveitis, a rare disease, and age-related macular degeneration, a pathology which occurs more frequently than uveitis and is becoming more prevalent as a result of population aging.

Eyevensys is the only company to have reached this advanced stage of investigation of novel treatment approaches for non-viral gene therapy. The technology developed by Eyevensys involves the electrotransfer of plasmids into the ciliary muscle resulting in a stable, sustained expression of therapeutic proteins. This new therapeutic approach will be less invasive than current therapies, as the frequency of injections can be greatly reduced from fortnightly or monthly to every six months potentially improving the quality of life of patients. Alongside higher efficacy it is hoped that the reduced doses of medication and proteins could also reduce side-effects. The first preclinical results in animal models have shown the expression of therapeutic proteins for up to nine months.

“Eyevensys’ novel approach, which targets pathologies where few therapies are available and offers potential advantages in terms of effectiveness, administration and tolerability, makes it a perfect fit with the Boehringer Ingelheim fund’s criteria for investment,” explains Dr Michel Pairet, head of non-clinical research and development at Boehringer Ingelheim. “In the future, medicine will increasingly rely on a combination of technologies, as we see here with the combination of gene therapy with a medical device.”

Michel Pairet has been with Boehringer Ingelheim since 1992. Before heading up the German company’s worldwide non-clinical research and development division, he was responsible for its worldwide research, and its corporate investment fund. Michel Pairet is a doctor of veterinary medicine and has a PhD in physiology and pharmacology.

About Eyevensys – http//:www.eyevensys.com

Eyevensys is a developer of a new non-viral gene therapy process to treat ocular illnesses that enables prolonged production of all therapeutic proteins through electrotransfer. On the basis of work conducted by professor Francine Behar-Cohen (Inserm Unit, U872, Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers), Eyevensys has filed 11 patents, of which they retain exclusivity. The single-use device is designed to treat various ocular illnesses.

The scientific team intends to make this technology a first-line treatment for uveitis, an orphan illness and for AMD. In stage two, Eyevensys will focus on much more common conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, for which repeated intraocular protein injections remain very restrictive. It is based on proofs of concept, backed by laboratory testing on animal subjects.

Eyevensys, founded in 2009, is based in Paris and employs five people. It raised EUR 1.6 million in January 2012 from Cap Decisif Management, InnoBio, managed by CDC Entreprises and Inserm-Transfert. Eyevensys was founded by Francine Behar-Cohen, professor of medicine at Paris Descartes University, head of ophthalmology at l’Hotel Dieu and director of team 17 at Inserm UMRS872.

About Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund – http://www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com

The Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund was formed in March 2010 to invest in biotechnology and start-up companies to help drive innovation in medical science. These may include – but are not limited to – novel technologies to address so far undruggable targets, new generation vaccines and new biological entities, such as antibody-dependent oncolysis. Additional focuses are novel therapeutic targets and disease-related biomarkers, as well as new approaches in regenerative medicine,.

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Relay Foods said it raised $8.25 million. Few details were provided. The online foods market place said its investors were “market, tech, and social impact investors and investment funds.” Relay Foods added that it remains a Battery Ventures and TomorrowVentures portfolio company.

PRESS RELEASE

Relay Foods, a Rapidly Growing Online Food Marketplace, Raises $8.25 Million

Common Stock Sale Spurs Growth of Sustainable Online Food Company in the Mid-Atlantic

Charlottesville, VA – – Relay Foods, a leading online grocer in the Mid-Atlantic, has raised $8.25 million to expand its service and make other key operational improvements. RelayFoods.com is an online food marketplace featuring an unmatched selection of high-quality sustainable and artisanal foods from hundreds of local producers, combined with a comprehensive grocery offering from leading national brands.

The capital infusion – raised through a common stock-only sale – will enable the company to expand market share in the Washington, DC and Baltimore metro area markets and drive a planned expansion into Williamsburg, Virginia. The company is also using the funds to launch its first dedicated mobile platform, redesign its online marketplace, and make key executive team and development hires. These changes will further enhance Relay’s position as a national leader in the rapidly-growing e-commerce segment of grocery retail.

“We are extremely pleased to work with so many top-quality investors to bring our products and service to more customers,” said Relay Foods founder and CEO Zach Buckner. “With our rapid expansion in the Mid-Atlantic region, our shift to next-day delivery across all markets, and our aggressive move into mobile, we believe Relay Foods will achieve huge growth throughout 2013 and make a strong positive impact in each of the communities we serve.”

Relay’s enhanced online platforms for web and mobile will incorporate the company’s improved ability to tailor user experience utilizing individual consumer preferences. In an effort to move towards the company’s stated goal of 100% food system transparency, the new website and mobile application will also incorporate more robust information about Relay’s producer-partners, including detailed product sourcing data and expanded nutritional data. In-depth vendor profiles, one-click recipes, and an innovative browsing experience will all further improve the user interface, giving customers informative and interactive ways to shop and connect with the local food community.

Further, Arnie Katz, Co-Founder and President, noted the impact that additional behind-the-scenes operational changes will have: “Adding over 15 new vehicles to our fleet, dramatically increasing our freezer and cooler capacity, and launching a commercial kitchen operation are all investments that customers cannot see immediately but that will dramatically enhance the overall Relay customer experience. These changes will enable the rollout of new pickup locations, the development of an in-house prepared foods line, and the addition of even more product offerings from local vendors.”

Investors who contributed to the $8.25 million round include a mix of forward-thinking market, tech, and social impact investors and investment funds. Relay Foods remains a portfolio company of Battery Ventures and TomorrowVentures.

About Relay Foods
Relay Foods (www.relayfoods.com) is a leading online food retailer in the Mid-Atlantic, currently serving the Washington, DC metro area, Baltimore, MD, and Charlottesville and Richmond, VA. Relay offers a full selection of local and sustainable foods, national brands, and grocery staples from a range of producers, including local farms, food artisans, and national retailers. The company is a certified B-Corp, offering a service that strengthens local food economies and improves the quality of life of each family and individual they serve. Learn more at www.relayfoods.com.

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Avago Technologies Limited said it will acquire CyOptics, Inc. for about $400 million in cash. The company makes a indium phosphide optical chip for data communications and counts Jerusalem Venture Partners as an investor.

PRESS RELEASE

Avago Technologies to Acquire CyOptics, a Leading Optical Chip and Component Supplier to the Datacom and Telecom Markets

•    Single-mode InP laser and receiver capability will strengthen Avago’s portfolio for next-generation 40G and 100G Enterprise and Data Center markets
•    Conference call to discuss the transaction is scheduled for Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 5pm EDT

SAN JOSE, Calif., SINGAPORE, and LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 11, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Avago Technologies Limited (Nasdaq:AVGO), a leading supplier of analog interface components for communications, industrial and consumer applications, today announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire CyOptics, Inc., a leader in Indium Phosphide (InP) optical chip and component technologies for the data communications and telecommunications markets, for an aggregate acquisition price of approximately US$400 million in cash.

Avago believes the acquisition of CyOptics will strengthen Avago’s fiber optics product portfolio for emerging 40G and 100G enterprise and data center applications. CyOptics’ single-mode InP laser, receiver and photonics integration capability will help extend Avago’s technology leadership position in these applications. Avago’s optical transceiver products primarily leverage VCSEL-based technology today. In addition, the acquisition of CyOptics will facilitate Avago’s establishment of a complementary optical components business, not only to serve growing segments of the access, metro and long-haul markets, but also for enterprise and data center segments.

CyOptics designs, fabricates and packages a broad portfolio of optical component products across enterprise, data center, access, metro and long-haul market segments. CyOptics’ optical components are integrated into optical transceivers, transponders and line cards. Leveraging its Bell Labs and Lucent heritage, CyOptics has built a broad product portfolio and a customer base that includes the leading module and system OEMs. CyOptics revenue has more than tripled over the past three years. During calendar year 2012, CyOptics net sales were approximately $210 million, up 21% from 2011.

“We believe CyOptics’ leading InP technology and optical manufacturing capability will strengthen Avago’s fiber optics portfolio and accelerate our ability to capture next generation 40G and 100G enterprise and data center sockets,” stated Hock Tan, President and CEO of Avago. “With CyOptics, we also see interesting revenue growth opportunities in delivering a broad range of proprietary components to the market.”

“We are delighted to join Avago Technologies, a company with a long history of innovation and a strong position in the wired infrastructure market. We believe this transaction presents tremendous opportunities for our customers and our employees,” said Ed Coringrato, President and CEO of CyOptics. “I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our long standing investors, JVP and especially their founder, Dr. Erel Margalit, for their support and guidance over the past decade in building CyOptics into the significant industry participant it is today. My gratitude as well to our recent partners, TA Associates, for their vote of confidence and support.”

Avago intends to fund the transaction with cash on-hand. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals in the United States, and is expected to close during Avago’s third fiscal quarter of 2013.

Cowen and Company LLC provided a fairness opinion to Avago Technologies and Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as the company’s legal counsel. Raymond James & Associates, Inc. is serving as CyOptics’ financial advisor and Goodwin Procter LLP is serving as the company’s legal counsel.

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Azure Capital Partners said it opened a Canadian office in Calgary, Alberta. The San Francisco firm said it would use the office to evaluate not only local deal flow, but companies in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Azure’s current fund, Azure Capital Partners III, L.P., has investments from Alberta Enterprise and B.C. Renaissance Capital Fund, a Crown corporation that is wholly owned by the B.C. Immigrant Investment Fund.

PRESS RELEASE

Silicon Valley’s Azure Capital Partners Opens its Canadian Office in Alberta to Actively Seek Investments across Canada

CALGARY, Alberta, April 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Azure Capital Partners, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage information technology and internet companies, announced today the opening of its Canadian office in Calgary, Alberta. Headquartered in San Francisco, Azure has extensive relationships in Silicon Valley, which it has leveraged by investing almost half of its funds outside of the Bay Area across North America over the past thirteen years.

“Canada has an impressive community of talented entrepreneurs, which reflects the high quality of a number of its technology companies. In addition, Canada’s economic policies and commitment to innovation offer a compelling competitive advantage for its startups,” said Cameron Lester, General Partner at Azure. ”We believe that the country warrants a local presence with strong ties back to our team in the Bay Area.  This would be the first time that Azure has established an office in a new geography and is an indicator of our strong belief in the investment opportunities across Canada.  We also believe that Calgary represents a central and convenient location for this office, where we can evaluate not only local deal flow, but also companies based in and around Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.  Our Calgary office will work closely with our team in the Bay Area, since a critical value that we bring to companies is our knowledge and contacts in Silicon Valley.”

Azure Vice President, Dan Park, will lead Canadian investment activities out of the Calgary office.  Prior to joining Azure, Dan was a Vice President and a founding member of Foros Group, a technology-focused investment banking advisory firm based in New York.  While at Foros, he helped launch the firm and was responsible for business development and transaction execution.  Prior to Foros, Dan worked in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York focusing on technology, media & telecommunications, and healthcare.  Before joining Deutsche Bank, Dan worked at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.  Dan earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Azure’s current fund, Azure Capital Partners III, L.P., has received investments from Alberta Enterprise and B.C. Renaissance Capital Fund, a Crown corporation that is wholly owned by the B.C. Immigrant Investment Fund.

“Azure’s experience and expertise connects Alberta technology startups and entrepreneurs to the world’s technology epicentre, Silicon Valley,” said Barry Heck, Vice Chairman and CEO of Alberta Enterprise. “This investment is consistent with our strategy of linking Alberta entrepreneurs to major markets and technology communities – which supports the successful commercialization of Alberta technologies and products.”

“Azure’s full-time presence in Canada is consistent with our strategy of attracting successful venture capital managers to develop promising, innovative technology companies in British Columbia”, said Jeff Lindsay, Senior Portfolio Manager of  B.C. Renaissance Capital Fund.

About Azure: http://www.azurecap.com 
Founded in 2000,

Azure is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with over $750 million under management.  Azure invests in early stage technology companies that are at the forefront of a transformative opportunity for growth.  Azure’s partners have served as trusted advisors to some of the most successful and important technology companies created in the last decade, including VMware, Bill Me Later (acquired by eBay), Calix, Top Tier (acquired by SAP), World Wide Packets (acquired by Ciena) and TripIt (acquired by Concur), and have helped to generate billions of dollars of value in these companies for their entrepreneurs and investors.  The Azure team is recognized for industry thought leadership, a broad network of powerful industry relationships, and a unique professional investment approach to venture investing. The team passionately supports its portfolio companies with active guidance in all key aspects of team building, strategy, operations, and governance.

About Alberta Enterprise: www.alberta-enterprise.ca

Alberta Enterprise promotes the development of Alberta’s venture capital industry by investing in venture capital funds that finance early stage technology companies. Launched with a $100 million investment from the Government of Alberta, Alberta Enterprise focuses on funds that have a strong commitment to Alberta – including a full-time presence in the province. The organization also supports Alberta’s venture capital ecosystem by connecting investors, entrepreneurs, and experienced technology executives who share our passion for building a bright, innovative Alberta. Visit www.alberta-enterprise.ca for more information.

About B.C. Renaissance Capital Fund: www.bcrcf.ca/BCRCF

The B.C. Renaissance Capital Fund Ltd. is a Crown corporation that is wholly owned by the B.C. Immigrant Investment Fund. The Renaissance Fund attracts successful venture capital managers and their capital to British Columbia to develop promising, innovative technology companies in the province. The fund was created to pursue investment in four key technology sectors: digital media, information technology, life sciences, and clean technology. To date, the Renaissance Fund has committed capital to eight venture capital fund managers based in the United States and Canada that have over $2 billion in capital under management for investment.

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Quantance Inc. said it has raised $12 million in Series D funding from TD Fund, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and DoCoMo Capital. The company manufactures 4G/LTE power supplies.

PRESS RELEASE

Quantance Raises $12 Million Series D Funding to Ramp Up Mass Market Production and Expand Fast Power Supply Technology

Key Wins for Quantance Envelope Tracking Set Stage for Volume Production of Q845, Roadmap Enhancements and Better Integration with a Wide Range of PAs

SAN MATEO, Calif., April 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Quantance Inc., manufacturer of ultra-fast, 4G/LTE envelope tracking (ET) power supplies, today announced it has raised $12 million in Series D funding. Investors include TD Fund, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and DoCoMo Capital.

The funding will be used to support production of the company’s flagship product, the Q845 qBoost™ ET Power Supply, and planned product innovations and enhancements. The Q845 has been selected for several baseband/transceiver reference designs, and is being ramped to mass market production to support the market shift toward ET as a definitive requirement in 4G/LTE smartphones, tablets, mobile hotspots and other mobile devices. Additionally, Quantance has continued filing core ET patents along with product enhancements, and plans next-generation ET products and tighter power amplifier (PA) integration later this year, including both GaAs and CMOS PAs.

“The high traction our Q845 has gained with chipset and handset providers since mid-2012 is driving our plans to scale for mass market production,” said Vikas Vinayak, Quantance’s CEO and co-founder.  “So many big players have firm plans for deploying ET solutions that we expect ET to be ‘table stakes’ by the end of next year. To maintain our leadership role in this fast-moving market, we are planning several performance enhancements and seamless operation with all 4G PAs, ranging from legacy PAs designed primarily for older Average Power Tracking (APT) technology to the latest trends in CMOS PAs.”

Quantance’s patented qBoost ET technology is a unique boosting ET architecture that enables PA efficiency to reach theoretical limits, and at the same time, dramatically increases PA transmit power. This architecture delivers the response time equivalent of a 400MHz switcher for ET systems – making the Q845 more than 100 times faster than any other mobile ET power supply solution available today. This ultra-fast performance, along with a standards-based interface and tiny application footprint, sets the industry standard for performance, size and integration simplicity.

“Quantance is well positioned to win a large portion of this explosive ET market, and will be at the leading edge of ET innovations as it is adopted in LTE platforms starting later this year,” said Eric Zimits, managing director at Granite Ventures.  “But what excites me most about the company is the potential that Quantance’s fast power supply technology has in a number of markets, such as enabling 4G CMOS PAs, applying ET to audio amplifiers and improving the performance of application processors.  Quantance will make major announcements in some of these areas within the next year.”

About Quantance

Quantance, a venture-backed semiconductor startup based in Silicon Valley, was founded to build the industry’s fastest power supplies. Investors include TD Fund, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and DoCoMo Capital.  For more information, please visitwww.quantance.com.

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MarkLogic Corp. said it raised a $25 million round of growth capital in a deal led by Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, and joined by Northgate Capital. MarkLogic CEO Gary Bloom also invested in the round. The company, which is developing the NoSQL database, has raised a total of $71.2 million.

PRESS RELEASE

MarkLogic Secures $25 Million to Further Challenge Incumbent Relational Databases

Growth Capital to Meet Rising Demand for Enterprise-grade NoSQL Solutions

San Carlos, Calif. — April 10, 2013 — MarkLogic Corporation, the provider of the only enterprise NoSQL database platform, today announced that it has closed a $25 million round of growth capital led by Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, with participation from Northgate Capital. MarkLogic CEO and former Oracle executive, Gary Bloom, also made a personal investment in this financing round. The company will use the capital to increase go-to-market capacity to meet the growing demand for enterprise NoSQL (Not Only SQL) technology from Fortune 500 companies, other large enterprises and government agencies.

“Enterprise customers are discovering that the relational databases they have relied on for years are not flexible and agile enough to manage complex and varied data formats that are required for modern applications. They also recognize that they cannot lower their standards for enterprise capabilities like transactional consistency, security, backup, recovery, high availability and alerting,” said Gary Bloom, CEO of MarkLogic Corporation. “Today, MarkLogic® Server is the only NoSQL database with the enterprise features that CIOs require. For organizations that want to build, deploy and manage applications for dynamically changing enterprise data, MarkLogic is faster and more affordable than traditional relational databases while maintaining the same standard of trust in performance.”

MarkLogic Server can ingest, manage and search structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data allowing organizations to provide holistic access to all data through information applications and analytics tools. MarkLogic can run directly on the Apache* Hadoop Distributed File System, and this week demonstrated new innovative functionality for dynamic provisioning, rebalancing, tiered storage and semantics at its annual MarkLogic World User Conference in Las Vegas. Presentations from MarkLogic World will be available on demand.

MarkLogic is widely deployed for mission-critical applications in financial services, healthcare, media, publishing, aviation, government, and education. In recent weeks, applications built on MarkLogic Server have gone live at Dow Jones, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which implemented the first phase of the Healthcare Information Exchange, and one of the world’s leading commercial banks.

“Organizations increasingly need a database optimally designed to handle semi-structured data, content-rich applications, and advanced analytics. While NoSQL databases were designed to address these requirements, most fail the test of meeting enterprise-grade capabilities in areas like security and availability,” said Evan Quinn, Sr. Analyst at ESG. “MarkLogic provides the schema-agnostic and scale out architecture of NoSQL with the same proven and trusted enterprise capabilities that CIOs and CTOs require in enterprise software.”

Additional highlights:
– Investors include Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, Northgate Capital, Gary Bloom and other members of the MarkLogic executive team.
– $25 Million in new capital brings the total raised to $71.2 Million.
– A recent whitepaper developed by ESG analyst Evan Quinn that explores how organizations are realizing that the relational databases of yesterday are not the right tool to solve today’s complex data challenges can be accessed here.

About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is the trusted business partner of founders who would like to turn imaginative ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs,” the Sequoia Capital team has worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner of Cisco, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Max Levchin, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel of PayPal, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley of YouTube, and Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn.

About Tenaya Capital
Tenaya Capital is a leading venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management. The firm invests in high-growth technology companies in the enterprise software, consumer Internet, IT infrastructure, communications and electronics sectors. Tenaya Capital is currently investing out of Tenaya Capital VI. The firm has offices in Woodside, California, and Wellesley, Massachusetts. For more information, visithttp://www.tenayacapital.com

About Northgate Capital
Northgate Capital was formed in the late 1990’s with one goal: to provide institutional and family investors with superior identification of and unsurpassed global access to a very select group of alternative investment opportunities. Today, with a strong and growing group of top institutional and family investors, and a global footprint with offices in the United States, Hong Kong, India, Mexico City and the United Kingdom, Northgate is delivering on this aspiration.

About MarkLogic
For more than a decade, MarkLogic has delivered a powerful and trusted next-generation Enterprise NoSQL database that enables organizations to turn all data into valuable and actionable information. Organizations around the world rely on MarkLogic’s enterprise-grade technology to make better decisions faster. MarkLogic is headquartered in Silicon Valley with field offices in Washington D.C., New York, Austin, London, Frankfurt, Utrecht, and Tokyo. For more information, please visit http://www.marklogic.com.

MarkLogic is a registered trademark of MarkLogic Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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WellTok, Inc. said it closed an $18.7 million Series B funding with  Emergence Capital Partners and InterWest Partners co-leading the round and New Enterprise Associates joining the funding. The company also appointed Executive Chairman Jeff Margolis to chief executive officer. Margolis founded TriZetto.

PRESS RELEASE 

WellTok Closes $18.7M Series B Funding:

Appoints Jeff Margolis as CEO

Emergence Capital Partners and InterWest Partners co-lead round

Denver – April 10, 2013 – WellTok®, Inc., developer of CaféWell®, the leading Social Health Management® platform that drives increased consumer engagement in health activities sponsored by their health plans, today announced that it has closed a Series B funding with investments from Emergence Capital Partners, InterWest Partners and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development and strategic partnership efforts, expand into new markets, and build account teams to support the rapidly growing base of clients.

In conjunction with the financing, Jeff Margolis, who served as the company’s executive chairman for the past eighteen months, was appointed chief executive officer. Margolis is one of the healthcare information technology industry’s most successful leaders, having founded and led TriZetto® as CEO from start-up, through IPO, to a $1.4 billion LBO. In addition to pioneering the first commercially successful SaaS enterprise in healthcare, he brings strategic healthcare industry knowledge and the expertise to quickly monetize and scale the business.

“I am particularly pleased to be working with this incredibly strong consortium of visionary investors who have highly relevant portfolio expertise that can be leveraged to grow WellTok and the CaféWell platform,” said Jeff Margolis. “We are addressing the significant challenges consumers face as they try to optimize their own health in partnership with their plans and providers, and have built new support structures that combine the best in purpose-driven social, community, personalization and gaming technologies.“

Since its commercial launch in late 2011, WellTok’s CaféWell social health network has become the leading platform for health plans and other population managers, with two of the nation’s five largest health plan organizations among its customers. The company is currently contracted to serve nearly 10 million consumers on its flagship CaféWell platform, and is looking to sign its tenth customer in the coming months. Privacy, anonymity and security are fundamental to CaféWell and WellTok is HITRUST CSF Certified.

Through its personalized tools, compelling content, gaming/incentive platform and vibrant community, CaféWell’s ability to provide a fun and rewarding health experience for consumers has resulted in engagement rates above 400% of industry average. Health plan members in these programs average 50 minutes per month on the site with a third participating in over 30 CaféWell engagement activities. Return on investment is rapid, as consumer brand affinity toward the population manager increases along with healthy activities. For example, members of two pedometer-based CaféWell programs have walked 5 billion steps in the last 18 months.

One of the innovative health plans to roll out the CaféWell platform is Coventry HealthAmerica, where David Fields is the chief executive officer. Fields commented, “Based on the health improvements and member engagement in our Race to the Moon™ wellness challenge, we are looking to expand the use of CaféWell for chronic conditions, care management and quality improvement, furthering Coventry HealthAmerica’s leadership in serving its employers and members.”

WellTok’s Social Health Management® platform-as-a-service strategy combines healthcare system knowledge and many significant advancements in consumer-empowering technologies to give healthcare population managers, such as health plans and accountable care organizations, a comprehensive solution that makes health more fun and more rewarding for everyone – while allowing consumers to control anonymity.

“Welltok’s CaféWell platform has quickly become the platform of choice for health care population managers who recognize the importance of engaging with consumers,” said Kevin Spain, general partner at Emergence Capital. “We have a great deal of confidence in Jeff Margolis and believe the company is well-positioned to build on its leadership position.”

“Jeff is one of the very few proven entrepreneurs who really understands the big picture in healthcare and why previous efforts to engage consumers in health management programs have failed,” said Nina Kjellson from InterWest Partners. “He has built a half-billion dollar healthcare I.T. business before, and with the talented team at WellTok, we are excited to help him do it again.”

About CaféWell® and WellTok®, Inc.
CaféWell is a social health network that makes getting better connected to your health and fitness more fun and more rewarding. CaféWell provides one stop for consumers’ health, wellness and fitness across an array of proprietary and third-party engagement activities, including fun health challenges with other users; compelling economic and social rewards; social networking; advice from experts, peers and veteran professional athletes; and reliable health and fitness information.

Healthcare population managers such as health plans and employer groups, sponsor their members into CaféWell. In return, those population managers gain the use of a neutral, trusted consumer communications channel; build consumers’ affinity with their brand; positively engage consumers with their health; and increase members’ healthy behaviors. CaféWell can be used to power base participatory wellness programs, device-integrated wellness programs and chronic condition programs that drive high value at a significantly lower cost than traditional disease management and wellness programs.

Institutional and strategic investors with continuing investment in the company include Miramar Venture Partners, Okapi Venture Capital and TriZetto Corporation. WellTok, Inc. is headquartered in Denver, Colo. To learn more about CaféWell’s ability to engage members and consumers, visit www.cafewell.com and www.welltok.com. To learn more about social health management, visit Jeff Margolis explains Social Health Management.

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Pasteurization Technology Group said it raised $5 million in Series A financing in a deal led by existing investor EIC Ventures and was joined by Kennington. The company is generating a system for wastewater disinfection that generates renewable energy.

PRESS RELEASE

Pasteurization Technology Group (PTG) Raises $5 Million Series A Round to Accelerate Sales Growth and Expansion

Growth capital enables pioneer of wastewater disinfection with renewable energy to expand team to service customers and manage growing sales backlog in commercial and industrial sectors

SAN LEANDRO, Calif., March 28, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Pasteurization Technology Group (PTG), innovator of the only wastewater disinfection process that creates renewable energy, announced it closed $5 million in Series A financing. EIC Ventures, a previous investor in PTG, led the round and was joined by Kennington. EIC Ventures is led by David Dubé, CEO of Canada-based Concorde Group and current board member of PTG. Lance Tendler , CEO of Kennington, will join PTG’s board of directors.

The growth capital will be used to expand PTG’s sales and field engineering operations to address the substantial and growing customer demand for its technology with customers in the agricultural, food, and beverage sectors.

“This additional investment enables us to accelerate our plans for market expansion,” said Greg Ryan , co-founder and CEO of Pasteurization Technology Group. “In an era of increasing water and energy costs, our technology is in high demand from customers who want to significantly reduce their water and energy costs while meeting their goals for sustainability.”

“We are excited by PTG’s strong development over the last 15 months and impressed by the traction they have gained in the marketplace for their patented IP,” said David Dube , managing director of EIC Ventures and CEO of Concorde Group. “We believe that PTG’s technology offers the most efficient and cost-effective solution to industrial and municipal customers globally.  As experienced VC investors across many industries, we continue to be impressed by PTG’s proven, capital-efficient business model.”

“Kennington is eager to invest in Pasteurization Technology Group because of its critical role in providing sustainable wastewater treatment while generating renewable energy,” said Lance Tendler , CEO of Kennington. “As experienced water industry investors, we see PTG’s accelerating business momentum is a direct result of the significant market opportunity that PTG addresses.”

PTG’s robust technology is a timely wastewater treatment solution for cities and businesses, many of which are wrestling with aging infrastructure that is operating at, or even above, capacity. Wastewater treatment is facing increasingly stringent water-quality regulations and rising energy costs, driving demand for cost-effective and sustainable solutions that enable the recycling of water.

After emerging from stealth mode at the beginning of 2012, PTG experienced a year of noteworthy successes. Highlights of the year included:

•    Securing a contract with the California town of Graton to replace its chlorine-based wastewater treatment system with PTG’s patented wastewater disinfection system. The new system can process more than 500,000 gallons per day while reducing the plant’s energy costs by over 50 percent. The PTG system is planned for delivery in the first half of 2013.
•    Completing a successful evaluation phase with Ventura Water. Located in Southern California, Ventura Water is the City of Ventura’s water department. Ventura Water plans to transition its existing wastewater treatment plant to PTG’s safe, non-toxic, sustainable technology, replacing the chlorine-based disinfection process currently in use at the Ventura Water Reclamation Facility.
•    Receiving technical validation at the highest level by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its influential Guidelines for Water Reuse.
•    Being recognized by leading water technology and sustainability organizations: Katerva Award winner (the “Nobel Prize of Sustainability”), Artemis Top 50 Water Company, and American Water Intelligence Technology Project of The Year Finalist, among others.
•    Expanded capacity and headcount. PTG moved to larger headquarters space in San Leandro in the San Francisco Bay Area, and hired key staff in engineering and sales to service increasing customer orders.

About PTG’s eco-friendly system for wastewater disinfection and renewable energy

PTG’s patented technology is the first and only technology to combine wastewater disinfection with the generation of renewable energy. PTG’s integrated systems can use available waste by-products (such as biogas or biomass), or natural gas, to power a turbine or engine that generates electricity. The turbine’s hot exhaust air (which is typically wasted) is passed through a waste-heat recovery unit that increases the temperature to disinfect the wastewater. PTG’s intelligent software efficiently optimizes energy and water flow throughout the integrated system. PTG’s systems are significantly more cost-effective and energy-efficient than other disinfection methods. And, unlike other wastewater disinfection approaches, PTG’s technology is sustainable since it does not require toxic chemicals such as chlorine, or costly electrical power and expensive UV lamps. As a result, PTG’s systems fit a broad range of applications in both the municipal and industrial market sectors.

About Pasteurization Technology Group

California-based Pasteurization Technology Group (PTG) is a rapidly growing, venture capital-backed company that is revolutionizing the disinfection of wastewater. PTG’s systems feature its patented “two-for-one” technology that combines eco-friendly wastewater disinfection with the generation of renewable energy. PTG’s process is one of only a handful of technologies to pass the stringent standards of Title 22 in the state of California for the disinfection of water for reuse. PTG’s technology has also been officially recognized in the EPA’s influential Guidelines for Water Reuse. By channeling the typically wasted exhaust heat from a turbine or engine to disinfect wastewater, PTG’s process is able to deliver the most energy-efficient and lowest-cost solution on the market. PTG has won numerous awards including the Katerva Award, the Artemis Top 50 Water Tech award, and the Popular Science “Best of What’s New” award. For more information, see http://www.pastechgroup.com, and follow @PastechGroup on Twitter and Facebook facebook.com/PasteurizationTechnologyGroup.

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