Mission Ventures’ Leo Spiegel Senses an Uptick in VC Activity, SAIC Plays Crucial Role in Cyber Security, DivX Buys AnySource, & More San Diego BizTech News

While there was a bit of a lull among San Diego’s hardware and software companies last week, Mission Ventures’ Leo Spiegel told me venture activity in the sector seems to be picking up. Our news summary begins now.

—Mission Ventures managing partner Leo Spiegel told me he’s “cautiously optimistic” about a resumption in venture investment activity. Spiegel says one encouraging sign for VCs is that one of Mission Venture’s portfolio companies is looking to go public through an IPO, although he declined to say which one.

—Alan Paller, a founder and director of research at the SANS Institute outside Washington , DC, said San Diego’s SAIC is ahead of other defense contractors when it comes to meeting the federal requirements for computer security contracts. (SANS, which stands for SysAdmin, Audit, Network Security, is a research and training organization for professionals.) According to Paller, SAIC (NYSE: [[ticker:SAI]]) “is the only major defense contractor that is able to deliver large numbers of people with advanced technical security skills.” SAIC said it recently won a $388 million contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide cyber security for the National Communications System.

—In a quest to expand its digital video codec technology, San Diego’s DivX (NASDAQ: [[ticker:DIVX]]) said it is acquiring AnySource Media of Malvern, PA, in a deal that could be worth as much as $15 million, if certain milestones are met over the next three years. AnySource’s Internet television streaming technology enables users to connect their TVs to Internet-based content and services.

—San Diego-based BrightScope, a startup that analyzes and rates the performance of 401k plans, said it has raised $2 million in a secondary round of angel funding that includes Jim Caccavo of Steelpoint Capital Partners. Caccavo, a former CEO of Tickets.com, will join BrightScope’s board. The company has developed its Web-based software to help corporate customers analyze the performance and costs of various 401k retirement plans.

http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2009/09/02/brightscope-raises-2m/

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.