Sequoia Gains Stake in Service-Now.com, Analytics Startup Moves HQ, Transaction Wireless Gets $2M, & More San Diego BizTech News

Software analytics continues to be one of San Diego’s busier high-tech sectors, with ParAccel leading a new generation of technologies that combine data warehousing and analytics. Get ready for the week ahead with this overview from Xconomy:

—Sequoia Capital, the Menlo Park, CA, venture firm, is taking a big stake in Service-now.com, the Software-as-a-Service company based in suburban San Diego that helps companies track their corporate assets. After initially disclosing a $66.1 million investment by Sequoia, Service-now.com told Dow Jones that Sequoia is expected to make a $75 million investment to acquire the shares of Service-now.com’s founders and 133 employees. Roughly half of the total is designated for Fred Luddy, the CEO and co-founder and CEO, and Andy Chedrick, the chief financial officer, according to regulatory filings.

—ParAccel CEO Dave Ehrlich told me how the software developer, which specializes in column-oriented database management systems for massively parallel processor-based networks, is part of a wave of innovation that has been sweeping through the data warehousing industry. ParAccel, which is based in San Diego and Cupertino, CA, was founded in 2005 by Barry Zane, a co-founder and system architect of Framingham, MA-based Netezza.

—A five-year-old software analytics company that was founded in Austin, TX, as Xsprada, has moved its headquarters to San Diego and changed its name to Algebraix Data Corp. The move was part of a decision by chairman and lead investor Charlie Silver to take over as CEO. Silver was previously the CEO of San Diego-based RealAge.com, which sold to Hearst Magazines two years ago for a reported $100 million.

—Connect, the San Diego non-profit group for technology and entrepreneurship, announced its 22nd annual most innovative product awards on Friday. Check here for the full list of the winners.

—San Diego’s Mission Ventures and Laguna Beach, CA-based Okapi Ventures have invested about $2 million in a Series B round of venture funding for Transaction Wireless, a San Diego startup. Transaction Wireless has developed mobile payment processing technology that allows merchants to accept credit card payments using only a mobile phone. Founder Basil Abifaker was previously a co-founder of Tourmaline Networks.

—Denise profiled San Diego’s Anvita Health, which believes its software can reduce human error in medical prescriptions and fill the sort of information gaps that can lead tohorrible side effects or even death. Besides analyzing electronic medical records, the software is continually reloaded with the latest medical research and drug information to provide up-to-date advisories on how drugs interact with each other, and medical tests and procedures. Anvita sees a big opportunity in plans by the Obama administration to hasten the digitization of electronic medical records by providing incentive payments to doctors who adopt the technology.

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.