will start in late 2018 and end about a year from now. The company said some employees who work from its Madison facility will be offered the opportunity to relocate to one of its other offices.
—We dug into details surrounding a putative $127.4 million investment that Janesville-based Shine Medical Technologies received in 2014, which a company executive says was misreported in subsequent years by groups that track venture capital investment. It now appears that the deal, which had been reported as the largest VC investment in a Wisconsin-based company since 2009, never happened.
—Greg St. Fort, who has led the coworking and community space 100state in Madison since 2015, says he’s left the organization and will focus on a new education-related project at his company LetsKeepBuilding. Claudia Seidenberg is the new boss at 100state, which claims to be Wisconsin’s largest coworking community. Seidenberg was previously the head of operations at 100state.
—Meghan Sharkus, a 20-year-old Wisconsin native who runs a St. Paul, MN-based medical supplies business, was named a 2018 Thiel Fellow. She’ll receive $100,000 over the next two years to devote her full energies to her company, ExpressionMed, rather than continuing her studies at the University of St. Thomas. ExpressionMed makes medical tape designed to hold in place electronic devices, such as the blood glucose monitors worn by many diabetes patients. The Thiel Fellowship program provides funding, mentorship, and other services to students who drop out of school to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.
—Isthmus, Madison’s alt-weekly newspaper, profiled Exact Sciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EXAS]]) president and CEO Kevin Conroy. Madison-based Exact Sciences is developing DNA-based screening tests for a variety of diseases, including colorectal, lung, and liver cancer.
—Digital Measures, which is based in the Milwaukee area and develops digital tools for rating higher education faculty based on their skills, published research, teaching awards, and other metrics, was acquired by Watermark, a New York-based software company. Watermark also works with colleges and universities to help them rate their faculty members and track their accomplishments. A news release announcing the acquisition did not contain any specific financial terms.
—We profiled Tcare, a startup developing software designed to help support family caregivers as they work to keep their elderly loved ones out of nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities. Madison-based Tcare recently captured one of the two top spots—and a $75,000 investment—as a result of its participation in the VC firm Village Capital and Kaiser Permanente’s Health: US 2018 program.
