Software Company Valuations Are Rising, Michael Robertson Launches DAR.fm, & More San Diego BizTech News

What started as a quiet week for San Diego technology news got busy at the end. We wrapped it all up for you here.

—San Diego’s Software Equity Group released its annual software industry equity report, showing the annual median valuation of 161 companies in its main index at the highest valuation since 2007—2.3 times trailing 12-months revenue. The report says software mergers and acquisitions are expected to ramp up significantly in 2011.

—Like other venture investors, Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels said its deals were up, but dollars were down in 2010. The angel investment group said its members provided funding for 31 startups last year, a 30 percent increase over 2009, but the group said the total amount invested by TCA and others dropped by more than a third, to $40.2 million over the same period.

—San Francisco-based Ecotality (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ECTY]]) has begun installing its Blink Level 2 residential charging stations at homes in Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, and Chandler, AZ.

—Michael Robertson, San Diego’s provocative Internet entrepreneur, launched his newest startup, DAR.fm. The company’s website provides a Web-based digital audio recorder that enables users to search through a catalog of 600 music and talk-radio programs and schedule the site to record up to four hours of any streaming audio broadcast.

—San Diego’s Zementis, which has developed a predictive analytics decision management system called ADAPA, formed a strategic partnership with Palo Alto, CA-based Revolution Analytics, the leading commercial provider of the open source programming language known as “R.” Financial terms were not disclosed.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.