Category: Boston

Mocospace Garners $4,000,000 Series B Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=be9acd10-a790-4546-bdab-031fd5aff884&Preview=1 Date 1/31/2008 Company Name Mocospace Mailing Address 186 South St Boston, MA 02111 Company Description JNJ Mobile develops and publishes innovative mobile entertainment applications, including the premier mobile social networking service under the MocoSpace™ brand. Website http://www.jnjmobile.com Transaction Type Venture Equity Transaction Amount $4,000,000 Transaction Round Series B Proceeds Purposes Proceeds … Continue reading “Mocospace Garners $4,000,000 Series B Round”

BioTrove Inc. Garners $23,000,000 New Financing

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=e7030485-06f5-4c38-ab66-2ec096817002&Preview=1 Date 1/31/2008 Company Name BioTrove Inc. Mailing Address 12 Gill Street Woburn, MA 01801 Company Description BioTrove, Inc. is a privately held biotechnology company focused on leveraging revolutionary micro- and nano-scale engineering solutions to overcome current bottlenecks in pharmaceutical drug discovery and biotechnology. Website http://www.biotrove.com Transaction Type Debt Transaction Amount $23,000,000 … Continue reading “BioTrove Inc. Garners $23,000,000 New Financing”

AutoVirt Inc. Obtains $4,000,000 Series A Funding

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=468c5636-3e6a-46df-8327-9b5a9540abb2&Preview=1 Date 1/31/2008 Company Name AutoVirt Inc. Mailing Address 76 Northeastern Boulevard Nashua, NH 03062 Company Description AutoVirt’s mission is to increase IT productivity by replacing manual labor with automation and virtualization. Virtualization separates the purpose and benefit of a service from its physical implementation and is often the key to greater … Continue reading “AutoVirt Inc. Obtains $4,000,000 Series A Funding”

EMC Shares Regaining Ground; VMware Falling Below Debut Levels

After plunging nearly 10 percent on news from a Monday night quarterly-earnings call that 2008 revenue growth for virtualization subsidiary VMware would be slightly less than expected, shares of EMC (NYSE: [[ticker:EMC]]) seem to be rebounding today, reaching $16.30 by noontime, only a dime or two below the pre-call levels. Apparently investors feel there’s little … Continue reading “EMC Shares Regaining Ground; VMware Falling Below Debut Levels”

Cash For Your Old Gadgets, Without The Hassle of Selling on eBay

There must have been a message in the fact that my cell phone cut out—as it has been wont to do throughout my entire relationship with the device—in the middle of my conversation yesterday with Israel Ganot. Perhaps it was a sign that it’s time for me and my Motorola to finally part ways? And … Continue reading “Cash For Your Old Gadgets, Without The Hassle of Selling on eBay”

Akamai Helps Patriots Gear Up for Super Bowl

For Cambridge, MA-based Akamai, the Super Bowl has already started. Among the customers of the networking and content-distribution giant are both the NFL and the undefeated New England Patriots—and the Patriots’ official website has been overflowing this week with press-conference video and other material from Phoenix, AZ, where the team arrived on January 27 and … Continue reading “Akamai Helps Patriots Gear Up for Super Bowl”

BEZ Systems Receives $2,000,000 New Financing

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=4cb48aba-293c-4e41-90fc-17d7f628a9df&Preview=1 Date 1/30/2008 Company Name BEZ Systems Mailing Address 345A Summer Street Boston, MA 02210 Company Description BEZ Systems is an emerging, venture-backed software company that offers innovative Predictive Performance Management (PPM) solutions that provide a line-of-business view of application resource utilization that allows the enterprise to accurately profile application performance, compare … Continue reading “BEZ Systems Receives $2,000,000 New Financing”

UpDown.com Secures $750,000 New Financing Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=f307d608-28a7-4508-a410-e553e89b9dd5&Preview=1 Date 1/30/2008 Company Name UpDown.com Mailing Address Undisclosed Cambridge, MA 02140 Company Description In addition to giving members $1,000,000 in virtual money to invest, UpDown.com provides a platform for investors to improve their skills through collaboration, competition and aggregated wisdom. Described by major media outlets as “fantasy football meets the trading … Continue reading “UpDown.com Secures $750,000 New Financing Round”

MocoSpace Passes 2 Million Users, Collects $4 Million

Boston-based MocoSpace is celebrating two milestones this week. For one, it collected $4 million in second-round funding from a group of investors including General Catalyst, Pilot Group, and former eBay executive Michael Dearing. And its mobile-phone-based social network recently passed the 2-million-user mark—making it perhaps busiest social-networking service you’ve never heard of. Founded by serial … Continue reading “MocoSpace Passes 2 Million Users, Collects $4 Million”

ImmunoGen’s Mitch Sayare on What Sustains a Company—and its CEO—Through Decades of Starting Up

Call it the 27-year-old startup: ImmunoGen, one of biotech’s oldest companies, has yet to get a drug on the market more than a quarter century after its formation in 1981. This year may mark a long-awaited turning point for the Cambridge, MA-based company, though. If all goes well, compelling efficacy data will emerge from ongoing … Continue reading “ImmunoGen’s Mitch Sayare on What Sustains a Company—and its CEO—Through Decades of Starting Up”

StyleFeeder—Facebook’s Leading Shopping Engine—Thinks Big with Small Series A Round

While Amazon and eBay may dominate shopping in most of the Web universe, things are still up for grabs on planet Facebook. There, the leading shopping application is from a two-year-old Cambridge, MA, startup called StyleFeeder. More than half a million people have made StyleFeeder’s shopping app part of their Facebook profiles—which is about 50 … Continue reading “StyleFeeder—Facebook’s Leading Shopping Engine—Thinks Big with Small Series A Round”

Myomo, Inc. Lands $3,000,000 Series B Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=914a79ba-df8a-4059-a929-0cd62dfe30f1&Preview=1 Date 1/29/2008 Company Name Myomo, Inc. Mailing Address 529 Main Street Boston, MA 02129 Company Description Myomo is pioneering NeuroRobotics, a new category of non-invasive medical device technology to help people relearn how to move severely weak or partially paralyzed limbs. Originally an acronym for “Muscle-Motion,” Myomo (pronounced MY-O-MO) was re-defined … Continue reading “Myomo, Inc. Lands $3,000,000 Series B Round”

Second Rotation Lands $4,400,000 Series A Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=df7b8f56-3d66-4cfb-b602-b8701c86aadd&Preview=1 Date 1/29/2008 Company Name Second Rotation Mailing Address 265 Winter Street Waltham, MA 02451 Company Description Second Rotation is the destination for simplified selling of consumer electronics and gadgets online. The process is easy: Second Rotation determines the value of the item online, arranges pickup and shipping, and pays the seller … Continue reading “Second Rotation Lands $4,400,000 Series A Round”

Virtual Iron Software Obtains $20,000,000 New Financing Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=4d44704a-23db-42de-a50e-bb1b9d31be2b&Preview=1 Date 1/29/2008 Company Name Virtual Iron Software Mailing Address 900 Chelmsford Street, Tower I, Floor 2 Lowell, MA 01851 Company Description Virtual Iron provides, Xen-based, enterprise-class software solutions for creating and managing virtual infrastructure. Organizations use Virtual Iron for consolidation, rapid provisioning, business continuity, workload management and policy-based automation. Website http://www.virtualiron.com … Continue reading “Virtual Iron Software Obtains $20,000,000 New Financing Round”

StyleFeeder Lands $2,000,000 Series A Financing

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=2ea1b70d-faec-4906-8e51-d4d0468c991d&Preview=1 Date 1/29/2008 Company Name StyleFeeder Mailing Address 678 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 Company Description StyleFeeder combines the best of Web 2.0’s social and personalization aspects in the Web’s only intelligent personal shopping recommendation engine. By learning about each person’s unique sense of style, StyleFeeder helps shoppers discover new products they’ll … Continue reading “StyleFeeder Lands $2,000,000 Series A Financing”

Lijit Networks, Inc. Acquires BigSwerve for Undisclosed Sum

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=0357123f-cabd-4cec-8bc9-5cc24a4c8755&Preview=1 Date 1/29/2008 Company Name BigSwerve Mailing Address Undisclosed Boston, MA 02140 Company Description We’re tackling some interesting problems in the social networking space using Semantic web technologies at the core. Website http://www.bigswerve.com Transaction Type M&A Transaction Amount Undisclosed Transaction Round Proceeds Purposes M&A Terms Financial terms of the transaction were not … Continue reading “Lijit Networks, Inc. Acquires BigSwerve for Undisclosed Sum”

$13.5 Million for Online Video Analytics Startup Visible Measures; Seeing What Happens After Viewers Press the Play Button

Advertising dollars are fleeing print media and flocking to the Web partly because Web technology makes it so much easier to measure whether audiences see or interact with individual ads. But this isn’t so true for Internet video. Publishers generally “have no idea what’s happening after the play button is pressed,” says Brian Shin, CEO … Continue reading “$13.5 Million for Online Video Analytics Startup Visible Measures; Seeing What Happens After Viewers Press the Play Button”

Icahn to Nominate Three, Including Two Harvard Bigwigs, to Biogen Idec Board

Two prominent local academics are among a group of three people to be nominated to Biogen Idec’s board of directors at the company’s upcoming annual meeting, the Cambridge, MA-based biotech giant announced today. Biogen (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]) received notice of the planned nomination came from entities affiliated with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who as of January … Continue reading “Icahn to Nominate Three, Including Two Harvard Bigwigs, to Biogen Idec Board”

GreenFuel Powers Through First Steps of Recovery Plan; Algae Thriving

GreenFuel Technologies “completed, and in cases blew away” the first five steps of its seven-part recovery plan, interim CEO Bob Metcalfe reports. After successfully raising revenues while simultaneously lowering expenses, the Cambridge, MA-based renewable energy firm has pushed the end date for its so-called interim period, by which it needs to complete a new round … Continue reading “GreenFuel Powers Through First Steps of Recovery Plan; Algae Thriving”

Nicholas Negroponte: The Interview

On January 16, Bob and I had the opportunity to interview Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, at the organization’s Kendall Square headquarters. Negroponte is on leave from MIT, where he joined the faculty in 1966 and co-founded the MIT Media Lab in 1980. We had a wide-ranging conversation … Continue reading “Nicholas Negroponte: The Interview”

Endeca Scores Some Intel Dollars, MIT Teams with ABB, Another IPO Off the List, & More

We last rounded up last Wednesday, so this installment represents only a few business days’ worth of New England tech deal-making—and yet there’s still much to discuss. —Burlington, MA-based AptSoft was acquired by IBM for an undisclosed sum. Wade explains how the software firm’s technology fits into IBM’s strategy—and how you can tell when the … Continue reading “Endeca Scores Some Intel Dollars, MIT Teams with ABB, Another IPO Off the List, & More”

Visible Measures Corp. Secures $13,500,000 Series B Funding Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=a6491461-f7b8-4922-bcc7-5127cd71803c&Preview=1 Date 1/28/2008 Company Name Visible Measures Corp. Mailing Address 25 Kingston St, 5th Fl Boston, MA 02111 Company Description Visible Measures Corp. (VMC) is helping to revolutionize the way publishers, advertisers, and audiences engage with Internet delivered video. Our Video Experience Measurement (VXM) suite of products provides objective 3rd party audience … Continue reading “Visible Measures Corp. Secures $13,500,000 Series B Funding Round”

Luminus Devices, Inc. Obtains $47,000,000 Series E Financing Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=ffcdf5fc-33eb-4776-abf4-9ae3f481e5ca&Preview=1 Date 1/28/2008 Company Name Luminus Devices, Inc. Mailing Address 1100 Technology Park Drive, Unit 2 Billerica, MA 01821 Company Description Luminus Devices develops and manufactures innovative, high-power, solid state lighting solutions for high-definition televisions and other display products. Its patented PhlatLight™ (Photonic Lattice) technology and manufacturing processes deliver a new level … Continue reading “Luminus Devices, Inc. Obtains $47,000,000 Series E Financing Round”

Deadbeat Darling, McAlister Drive Dominate Xconomy’s Battle of the Tech Bands 2008

It’s a good thing I’m a writer and not much of a talker, because I’m still hoarse after my big stage debut as emcee for Xconomy’s Battle of the Tech Bands at the Middle East Tuesday night. It was a fantastic night of jamming from some of the local technology community’s most talented musicians, and … Continue reading “Deadbeat Darling, McAlister Drive Dominate Xconomy’s Battle of the Tech Bands 2008”

Inform Technologies Ingests $15 Million from Spark Capital

Boston-based Spark Capital has invested $15 million in Inform Technologies, a New York-based startup whose software powers the content-aggregation features of major news websites such as CNN.com, the two organizations announced Wednesday. Privately held Inform was founded in 2004 and announced its first publishing customers, including the Washington Post, in 2006. The company’s software organizes … Continue reading “Inform Technologies Ingests $15 Million from Spark Capital”

MIT Energy Conference

A real, excuse the pun, powerhouse set of speakers is lined up for this year’s MIT Energy Conference, which examines Solutions that Scale to Meet the Energy Challenge. Among them: MIT president Susan Hockfield, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr, and Jim Rogers, chairman, president, and CEO of Duke Energy. The conference will also include sessions … Continue reading “MIT Energy Conference”

MEMO TO ANDY GROVE: BIG COMPANIES AREN’T DISRUPTORS

Intel’s Andy Grove is a Silicon Valley legend, Time‘s Man of the Year (1997), and the subject of a magisterial biography by Harvard Business School historian Richard Tedlow. He’s also one of the world’s toughest-minded thinkers about competition and innovation, the kind of boss who writes books with titles like Only the Paranoid Survive. Which … Continue reading “MEMO TO ANDY GROVE: BIG COMPANIES AREN’T DISRUPTORS”

“School is Boring”: Nicholas Negroponte on Education, the XO Laptop, and Life After Intel

One day in early November, the first batch of mass-produced XO laptops—the little green-and-white machines designed by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC) to revolutionize education in the IT-starved developing world—rolled off an assembly line in Changshu, China. Coming less than three years after the launch of the so-called “$100 laptop” effort by former … Continue reading ““School is Boring”: Nicholas Negroponte on Education, the XO Laptop, and Life After Intel”

Polaris Leads Two Big Digital Media Investments: Beats Out Sand Hill VCs for Quantcast Deal

In case you hadn’t noticed it, blogging and online advertising are growing fast—and they’re converging. And the digital media folks over at Polaris Venture Partners seem happy to bring that convergence about. Tuesday brought news that the Waltham, MA-based firm had taken the lead in a $20 million Series B round investment in online audience … Continue reading “Polaris Leads Two Big Digital Media Investments: Beats Out Sand Hill VCs for Quantcast Deal”

The A123 Story: How a Battery Company Jumpstarted its Business

If there’s one Boston-area energy company atop everybody’s list to become the next great New England success story, it’s got to be A123 Systems. The six-year-old Watertown, MA, maker of high-power lithium-ion batteries for applications like GM’s planned Volt electric vehicles and Black & Decker power tools has quickly established itself as a real powerhouse. … Continue reading “The A123 Story: How a Battery Company Jumpstarted its Business”

What’s Ailing Personalized Medicine? Mark Levin Calls for Leadership at the Highest Level

It started out business as usual at the Personalized Medicine Coalition’s East Coast reception at The Broad Institute last week. People were touting the big steps that have been taken to advance the vision of personalized medicine, in which the best treatments are chosen for each patient based on molecular tests, imaging tools, software, and … Continue reading “What’s Ailing Personalized Medicine? Mark Levin Calls for Leadership at the Highest Level”

GSI Commerce Acquires e-Dialog for $157,000,000

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=257b0821-372f-483e-b6d9-88b3fdc7095f&Preview=1 Date 1/24/2008 Company Name e-Dialog Mailing Address 131 Hartwell Avenue Lexington, MA 02421 Company Description e-Dialog is the proven provider of advanced e-mail marketing and database technologies, products, strategies, and services for permission-based e-mail marketers. Whether clients are looking for a full-service, self-service or collaborative relationship, we have the solutions to … Continue reading “GSI Commerce Acquires e-Dialog for $157,000,000”

Endeca Pulls in $15 Million from Intel and SAP—Search Firm’s Reliance on Multicore Processing Key to Investment

After Microsoft acquired Norway’s Fast Search & Transfer a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a conversation with a Microsoft exec who told me the company had looked at other enterprise search firms, including local firm Endeca, before choosing Fast. Well, it turns out Endeca is having no trouble attracting the interest of other … Continue reading “Endeca Pulls in $15 Million from Intel and SAP—Search Firm’s Reliance on Multicore Processing Key to Investment”

IBM Acquires Business Event Processing Startup AptSoft

For Boston-area software firms with a focus on business applications, it’s become a classic strategy: build a technologically advanced platform, prove that it works on a handful of customers, grow for five to 10 years, then sell the company to IBM. The latest company to go this route is AptSoft, a Burlington, MA, firm that … Continue reading “IBM Acquires Business Event Processing Startup AptSoft”

Artificial Heart Finally Ready for Market? Abiomed’s Potential “Billion-Dollar Monopoly”

A piece of news went out over the wires yesterday that I think deserves a little more explanation: Danvers, MA-based Abiomed announced that it had received a new FDA approval for its AbioCor artificial heart. The item caught my eye because I’ve been loosely following this technology—a fully implantable mechanical heart replacement—since 1999, when I … Continue reading “Artificial Heart Finally Ready for Market? Abiomed’s Potential “Billion-Dollar Monopoly””

MIT Teams With Italian Energy Giant, Elixir Postpones Its IPO, Biogen Idec Will Buy or Be Bought, & More

It’s a little bit of an odd week, with the Monday holiday and all the last-minute preparations for last night’s AWESOME battle of the bands (more on that soon), so I’m rounding up last week’s deals a little later than usual. The bonus is you get the first part of this week’s action as well. … Continue reading “MIT Teams With Italian Energy Giant, Elixir Postpones Its IPO, Biogen Idec Will Buy or Be Bought, & More”

Endeca Technologies Inc. Lands New Funding

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=26cc3a19-95cf-4ac5-a6c5-a23be6e2ecf9&Preview=1 Date 1/23/2008 Company Name Endeca Technologies Inc. Mailing Address 101 Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142 Company Description The Endeca Information Access Platform aids information-based problem solving across a wide variety of business processes, including eCommerce, marketing campaign analysis, product design and parts reuse, knowledge management, customer service, and more. To meet … Continue reading “Endeca Technologies Inc. Lands New Funding”

Aveksa Inc. Secures $12,000,000 Series B Funding

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=a24c4fcf-6746-491d-bf56-cc9156b5593d&Preview=1 Date 1/23/2008 Company Name Aveksa Inc. Mailing Address 265 Winter Street Waltham, MA 02451 Company Description Aveksa was founded in late 2004 by Deepak Taneja, former CTO and vice president of engineering at Netegrity. Since that time, he has focused on R&D and has built an executive team with more than … Continue reading “Aveksa Inc. Secures $12,000,000 Series B Funding”

IBM, Inc. Acquires AptSoft Corporation for Undisclosed Sum

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=437de072-e5ef-4fa1-9a55-a94264c30afc&Preview=1 Date 1/23/2008 Company Name AptSoft Corporation Mailing Address 20 Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803 Company Description The AptSoft Corporation, based in Burlington, Mass., is an enterprise software company focused on aligning existing IT systems with business processes to help companies become more agile in response to market opportunities. Website http://www.aptsoft.com/ Transaction … Continue reading “IBM, Inc. Acquires AptSoft Corporation for Undisclosed Sum”

IRobot Strikes “Transformational” Deal to Enable Next Generation Laser-Guided Bots

In an era of irregular warfare, where troops must contend with roadside bombs and HAZMAT teams might confront bioweapons, one long-standing vision is for warfighters and first responders to be able to deploy autonomous robots to handle terrain-clearing and reconnaissance chores while the humans wait out of harm’s way. For several years now, iRobot’s Packbot … Continue reading “IRobot Strikes “Transformational” Deal to Enable Next Generation Laser-Guided Bots”

ATG Shells Out $10M for CleverSet

Cambridge, MA-based e-commerce firm Art Technology Group (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARTG]]) will acquire Seattle’s CleverSet for some $10 million in cash, not counting closing adjustments. CleverSet’s technology for automated personalization recommendations can be used for retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, financial services, travel and hospitality, and other applications, according to the announcement.

Cleantech, Life Sciences, and Web Plays Lead the Way as Venture Investments Hit Six-Year High; New England VCs Step Up the Pace

That skidding sound you heard all through the fourth quarter of 2007 might have been the U.S. economy, but the screech of brakes apparently didn’t reach the ears of venture capitalists. Venture investments in U.S. companies stayed strong through the fourth quarter, capping off a solid year, according to the latest data from Dow Jones … Continue reading “Cleantech, Life Sciences, and Web Plays Lead the Way as Venture Investments Hit Six-Year High; New England VCs Step Up the Pace”

EMC Gets Serious About Software-as-a-Service—Forms New Business Unit and Launches Enterprise Version of Mozy Online Backup

For the last few months, EMC (NYSE: [[ticker:EMC]]), the Hopkinton, MA, storage giant famous for selling big, expensive storage and backup servers to large corporations, has made no bones about its interest in a totally different model of doing business: Software-as-a-Service. Going with “SaaS”, as it’s called, is a major switch if you’re a hardware … Continue reading “EMC Gets Serious About Software-as-a-Service—Forms New Business Unit and Launches Enterprise Version of Mozy Online Backup”

EdNets, Inc. Lands $1,000,000 Series A Funding Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=5b8c128a-ec98-409d-830f-45592bb0d5b1&Preview=1 Date 1/22/2008 Company Name EdNets, Inc. Mailing Address 107 Audubon Road, Building Two 109, MA 01880 Company Description The company’s mission is to improve education through web technology and increasing school funding. Website http://www.ednets.com Transaction Type Venture Equity Transaction Amount $1,000,000 Transaction Round Series A Proceeds Purposes Proceeds purposes were not … Continue reading “EdNets, Inc. Lands $1,000,000 Series A Funding Round”

EdNets, Inc. Secures $1,000,000 Series A Round

Feed Type Link http://www.venturedeal.com/Search/SearchResultTransactionDetail.aspx?TransactionId=b624cc7a-3868-43eb-a74f-531948b5e532&Preview=1 Date 1/22/2008 Company Name EdNets, Inc. Mailing Address 107 Audubon Road, Building Two 109, MA 01880 Company Description The company’s mission is to improve education through web technology and increasing school funding. Website http://www.ednets.com Transaction Type Venture Equity Transaction Amount $1,000,000 Transaction Round Series A Proceeds Purposes New capital will be … Continue reading “EdNets, Inc. Secures $1,000,000 Series A Round”