The emerging mobile health industry made a stronger showing last week than it has in past years at its annual Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance Convergence Summit. Get the latest uptick in wireless health and other news now.
—San Diego’s Avalon Ventures founder Kevin Kinsella told me the firm’s investment in San Francisco-based Zynga, which develops multiplayer browser games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, might yield the best returns in Avalon’s 27-year history. Kinsella also told me Avalon Ventures has purchased the La Jolla office building that was previously the corporate headquarters for the Copley Press, the former longtime publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune and other newspapers.
—A venture financing report released by the Cooley law firm (previously known as Cooley, Godward, Kronish) says there were more “up rounds” than flat or “down rounds” in the first quarter of 2010. That’s the first time that’s happened since the summer of 2008. An up round reflects the increased valuation of a venture-backed company, while a down round means the company is worth less than it was in the previous financing round.
—After gaining experience with its Sorenson 360 online video platform (OVP) with small and medium businesses, Carlsbad, CA-based Sorenson Media introduced an upgraded version of its OVP for big media and enterprise customers. CEO Peter Csathy told me Sorenson is
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.
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