It was another fairly quiet week for deals in the Northwest. But there were a couple of first-round venture financings for established software startups, and one notable acquisition.
—Portland, OR-based software startup JanRain closed $3.25 million in Series A financing led by DFJ Frontier, with participation from Anthem Venture Partners and RPM Ventures. JanRain’s software helps website operators register visitors more easily using universal logins. It also helps consumers port their Web identities and share their experiences on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
—Seattle-based Appature, a healthcare marketing startup, raised $3.5 million in first-round funding from Ignition Partners and Madrona Venture Group. Seattle seed-stage fund Founder’s Co-op also participated. Appature was founded in 2007 and is already profitable, with big customers like Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft Health Solutions Group. Its software helps companies in the broader healthcare industry deliver and track marketing campaigns and understand their customers better online.
—Lala, an online music service based in Palo Alto, CA, and backed by Bellevue, WA-based Ignition Partners and Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures, is being acquired by Apple (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AAPL]]) in a deal of undisclosed size. The deal was first reported by Bloomberg and CNET, and has since been confirmed by Reuters and other outlets. Lala lets users store music on Internet servers rather than download songs to their computer as with iTunes.
—Seattle-based Free & Clear, the developer of a proprietary smoking cessation program, won “Deal of the Year” from the Evergreen Venture Capital Association, as Luke reported. Free & Clear, which was backed by $17 million in capital from Polaris Venture Partners, Three Arch Partners, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures, was acquired by Waltham, MA-based Inverness Medical Innovations (NYSE: [[ticker:IMA]]) for $130 million in September.
—Redmond, WA-based Microvision (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MVIS]]), a developer of light display technologies, raised $9.3 million in a stock offering, as Luke reported. The company sold 3.33 million shares, at $3 apiece, to a single existing institutional investor. Oppenheimer & Co. was the book-running manager of the offering, and Craig Hallum Capital served as co-manager.
