I’m in re-entry mode after a week’s vacation in northern Michigan, which means I’m catching up on everything my colleagues published while I was away. Here’s a quick rundown of last week’s business and technology news from Xconomy San Francisco (including a couple of pieces I wrote before my trip):
—The IPO market may be bouncing back, but not enough to allay the anxieties of venture capitalists, according to a survey by the National Venture Capital Association and the Deloitte accounting and consulting firm. Partners say the current level of IPO activity in the U.S. can’t sustain the venture industry, as my colleague Bruce Bigelow reported.
—Doximity, a new startup from the founders of Epocrates, hopes to bring Facebook-style interactivity to the world of doctors—but with all of the security and encryption mechanisms needed to comply with federal patient privacy regulations. I got the full rundown on the company from founder and CEO Jeff Tangney (who’s also featured in a video that I just added to the story today; I couldn’t find a place last week with enough bandwidth to upload it).
—We also profiled Chirply, a Y Combinator-backed company that’s using a crowdsourcing model to come up with fun, edgy designs for paper goods such as greeting cards, notebooks, and wrapping paper. Chirply’s founders, brothers Gagan and Neel Palrecha, say they were inspired by the success of other crowdsourcing sites such as Threadless to help find a new money-making outlet for illustrators.
—Three Bay Area energy companies were among a group of 10 companies that won $63 million in funding through General Electric’s Ecomagination Challenge, as Bruce reported. San Francisc0-based SunRun, San Mateo-based Hara, and San Francisco-based Project Frog cashed in, receiving investments from a pool formed by GE, Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Rockport Capital.
—ScaleXtreme, a Palo Alto, CA-based maker of IT management software, raised $11 million in a Series B round led by Bellevue, WA-based Ignition Partners, as my colleague Curt Woodward reported.
—In a similar deal, Ignition and other investors put $10.5 million into a Series C round for StorSimple, a Santa Clara, CA-based maker of cloud-based data storage software, as my colleague Greg Huang reported.
—Bay Area venture funds Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures participated in a $50 million funding round for New York-based Foursquare, as Xconomy’s Big Apple editor Arlene Weintraub reported.
