Money pumped into San Diego’s regional economy by venture capital firms hit an eight-year low in 2011, with a total of $829 million invested in 104 startups throughout the year, according to the MoneyTree VC survey being released today. The 2011 deal count was the lowest seen in San Diego since 1997. The 2011 numbers … Continue reading “San Diego VC Activity at Ebb Tide in 2011 and Top 10 Local Deals”
Category: National
SD Life Sciences News: Auspex, BrainCells, and J&J’s Startup Center
Here’s our weekly roundup of San Diego’s life sciences news. —Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), briefed reporters in San Diego on his efforts to make the regulatory review of new medical devices more predictable, transparent, and efficient. Shuren is undertaking reforms at a time when eight out … Continue reading “SD Life Sciences News: Auspex, BrainCells, and J&J’s Startup Center”
Alnylam Cuts One-Third of Workforce, To Save Cash for RNAi Clinical Plans
Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is getting rid of about one-third of its workforce, as it looks to save cash for clinical trials that it hopes will prove the value of its RNA interference drug technology. Alnylam (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALNY]]) said today it’s cutting 33 percent of its staff, as it looks to concentrate its cash reserves … Continue reading “Alnylam Cuts One-Third of Workforce, To Save Cash for RNAi Clinical Plans”
Microsoft, Vulcan, RealNetworks Back Gay Marriage in WA
Microsoft is joining several other notable corporate names throwing their support behind full marriage rights for gay couples in Washington state, a move that could give a final push to gay-marriage efforts at that state Capitol this year. The companies—including RealNetworks, Concur, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan—announced their support for a possible state gay-marriage law on … Continue reading “Microsoft, Vulcan, RealNetworks Back Gay Marriage in WA”
Xconomist of the Week Chris Rizik: Who Says A VC Has No Soul?
Chris Rizik is one of Michigan’s most important and successful venture capitalists. He’s the CEO and fund manager of Renaissance Venture Capital, a fund of funds that is perhaps best known for its early backing of the medical device company HandyLab, a University of Michigan spinout that was later purchased by New Jersey’s Becton Dickinson … Continue reading “Xconomist of the Week Chris Rizik: Who Says A VC Has No Soul?”
Georgia Startups Have New York on Their Minds at Flashpoint Demo Day
A flotilla of fifteen startups from Atlanta presented their ideas in New York on Wednesday for a demo day at the offices of Union Square Ventures. Merrick Furst, director of the Flashpoint accelerator at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the program helps entrepreneurs develop their concepts beyond their startup phase. “They are trying to … Continue reading “Georgia Startups Have New York on Their Minds at Flashpoint Demo Day”
A Good News-Bad News Night for Bristol’s Diabetes and Hepatitis Drugs
After the stock market closed last night, New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: [[ticker:BMY]]) announced that a cocktail containing two of its experimental drugs to treat hepatitis C obliterated the virus in some patients in a Phase 2 study. The results were so compelling the company used the “C” word in a press release, declaring, “This … Continue reading “A Good News-Bad News Night for Bristol’s Diabetes and Hepatitis Drugs”
We’re No. 5! Seattle Outperforms in PayScale’s Wage Index
Hey Seattle, are you feeling above average? You should, at least in the paycheck department, according to the latest report tracking American wages from Seattle-based PayScale. The greater Seattle area came in as the fifth-best city for wage growth in 2011, one notch ahead of the San Francisco area. Yep, that’s right—we beat the Valley at something. … Continue reading “We’re No. 5! Seattle Outperforms in PayScale’s Wage Index”
Join Us on March 14 for Mobile Madness 2012: Total Mobility
Everyone knows mobile is everywhere, and everything is mobile. Smartphones, tablets, and mobile software are transforming how we all shop, connect, get around, and lead our daily lives. In the five years since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, the mobile industry—and the tech world, more broadly—has changed radically. So what are the emerging opportunities, … Continue reading “Join Us on March 14 for Mobile Madness 2012: Total Mobility”
Constant Contact Buys CardStar, Moves Into Mobile Loyalty Tech
The evolution of Constant Contact continues. The Waltham, MA-based online marketing firm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CTCT]]) said today it has acquired Boston-based CardStar, a maker of a mobile app that lets people consolidate their loyalty and rewards cards. Terms of the acquisition weren’t given. The deal represents Constant Contact’s first foray into mobile rewards technology aimed at … Continue reading “Constant Contact Buys CardStar, Moves Into Mobile Loyalty Tech”
Join Kevin Starr, Corey Goodman, Carl Weissman & More in Seattle April 3
Biotech companies once dreamed of building soup-to-nuts operations that put everything under one corporate flag. You’d have research, development, marketing, manufacturing all together in one big team of bright people taking big risks. Think first-generation companies like Amgen, Genentech, Genzyme. The days of starting companies like that are mostly in the past, thanks in part … Continue reading “Join Kevin Starr, Corey Goodman, Carl Weissman & More in Seattle April 3”
Frazier Healthcare Aims for First Biotech VC Fund After Financial Crisis
Alan Frazier has been on record for a long time saying that the traditional biotech venture model is broken, and in severe need of updating. He’s been working on a new strategy for the past seven years or so, but the approach is facing its biggest test ever as Frazier prepares to raise his first … Continue reading “Frazier Healthcare Aims for First Biotech VC Fund After Financial Crisis”
OpenView Labs Aims to Prime Portfolio Companies for Big Growth
“Money is money, anyone can do that,” says Brian Zimmerman, managing director of Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners. Go on. “We have this idea of providing real value to our portfolio companies. If we’re going to call ourselves partners, we really need to be partners.” he says. Plenty of venture capitalists say they like to take … Continue reading “OpenView Labs Aims to Prime Portfolio Companies for Big Growth”
FDA’s Shuren Makes West Coast Swing, Talks About Regulatory Reform
Since he set out last year to revamp the way the FDA reviews medical devices, Jeff Shuren of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has often met with industry leaders to hear their feedback and ideas for how to improve medical device regulation. Last week, he met with industry leaders in San … Continue reading “FDA’s Shuren Makes West Coast Swing, Talks About Regulatory Reform”
SOPA-PIPA Protests Blossom Across the Country
It’s not just Wikipedia that’s throwing its weight today behind the movement to stop the controversial anti-piracy bills moving through the U.S. Congress. While the English version of the world’s most-visited encyclopedia site has gone dark for the day to call attention to the perceived dangers of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect … Continue reading “SOPA-PIPA Protests Blossom Across the Country”
Five Questions on Tech in NYC for North Bridge VC Dayna Grayson
Dayna Grayson, principal at North Bridge Venture Partners in Waltham, MA, has been spending a lot of time in New York City of late. North Bridge wants to participate in the Big Apple’s technology renaissance, so Grayson has been spending one to two days a week scouting for investment opportunities. North Bridge’s New York investments … Continue reading “Five Questions on Tech in NYC for North Bridge VC Dayna Grayson”
Amazon Web Services Adds DynamoDB for Database Scaling
Amazon Web Services is unveiling a new service that it says will allow developers to adopt fast-scaling databases to handle the explosive growth that can squeeze digital companies. It’s called DynamoDB, and is designed to give customers a simple interface that will allow them to quickly dial up or down the performance they need from … Continue reading “Amazon Web Services Adds DynamoDB for Database Scaling”
Evernote Wants to Make Your Memories More Magical
Cloud-based notekeeping service Evernote found its first 20 million users through sheer geek appeal. Hardcore users (full disclosure: that includes me) love the ability to upload Web clips, documents, images, audio files, and other materials to Evernote’s online notebooks, then search and retrieve them at will, from virtually any device. They also like features such … Continue reading “Evernote Wants to Make Your Memories More Magical”
Inside Double Down: How a $500M Deal Started With a $1M Investment
In the spring of 2010, at a small startup in Seattle, some online gaming veterans were ready to send their latest creation into the world. It was a blackjack game for Facebook, fully legal because players couldn’t cash out their virtual chips. With much better production values and an ability to play with other users, … Continue reading “Inside Double Down: How a $500M Deal Started With a $1M Investment”
J&J Opens San Diego Biotech Startup Center, Says ‘No Strings Attached’
Johnson & Johnson’s West Coast research leader, Diego Miralles, has met with a lot of biotech entrepreneurs who are curious about what J&J is doing to foster more startups at its facility in San Diego. At some point, a skeptical question usually comes up. “What’s the catch?” Miralles says he’s sometimes asked. He insists there … Continue reading “J&J Opens San Diego Biotech Startup Center, Says ‘No Strings Attached’”
Flagship, Joule, Constellation, and More of The Week’s Boston Dealmakers
Web startups, venture firms, life sciences companies, and a biofuels developer rounded out the deals news this week. —Cambridge, MA-based Flagship Ventures announced it had closed a $270 million fund, surpassing the $250 million it had originally targeted for its fourth fund. —Extreme Reach, a Needham, MA-based startup developing cloud storage technology for delivering video … Continue reading “Flagship, Joule, Constellation, and More of The Week’s Boston Dealmakers”
What Should Students Study? Read the Xconomist Report on Education
Yesterday Bob told you about a special report we put together by canvassing the Xconomists—some of the world’s leading innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors—for their thoughts on what students should study to be prepared for the future. Well, the report is now live, here, with 22 thought-provoking responses. Computing, the scientific method, culture, Chinese, and how to start … Continue reading “What Should Students Study? Read the Xconomist Report on Education”
The World is Your Campus: Study with Rigor, Be Entrepreneurial
Two trends are driving the current job market: globalization, where everybody is becoming part of the economy, and innovation, which increases productivity and allows fewer people to do the same jobs. These two trends will not slow down during the next few decades. How should students train in college to build careers under these conditions? … Continue reading “The World is Your Campus: Study with Rigor, Be Entrepreneurial”
Merging Hand and Mind
My pat answer is mathematics (the universal language), biology (in order to master non-linear, dynamic thinking especially related to complex systems and ecosystemic issues) and Chinese (since in 10 years Chinese will be even more important than it is today in both the commercial and scientific domains). But let’s peek around the corner. Both design … Continue reading “Merging Hand and Mind”
Critical Thinking and the Scientific Process First—Humanities Later
If luck favors the prepared mind, as Louis Pasteur is credited with saying, we’re in danger of becoming a very unlucky nation. Little of the material taught in schools today is relevant to the future. Consider all the science and economics that has been updated, the shifting theories of psychology, the programming languages, political theories, … Continue reading “Critical Thinking and the Scientific Process First—Humanities Later”
Turning Data into Meaning
More than anything, they should be studying math, including statistics and probability, and programming. No matter what the subject, we will have huge amounts of data about it, and will need these tools to get meaning from the data. The areas I’m thinking of include medicine, genetics, nutrition, and neuroscience; human behavior; energy management and … Continue reading “Turning Data into Meaning”
Not All Tech Companies Are Alike
From cloudy Seattle to the vast suburbs of Silicon Valley, we covered a lot of ground on MIT Sloan’s recent technology trek, which concluded with a leg in Boston. The first stop was Seattle where it was predictably raining. Visiting Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe, we came away with an appreciation for how much tech activity … Continue reading “Not All Tech Companies Are Alike”
Learning Across Disciplines and Cultures
The world is only going to become more technological and more global in the next decade. Students should be getting a solid enough grounding in mathematics, probabilistic thinking, physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering that they understand these ways of thinking and the values of these fields. They also need a liberal arts grounding and, particularly, … Continue reading “Learning Across Disciplines and Cultures”
CS + X, for all X
The impact of information-based technologies will continue to grow—probably at an accelerating rate. In nearly every segment of society, we see both quality and productivity improvements because of increased use of automation and digital communication. The impact is obviously huge in some sectors such as finance and publishing. And it will only grow in the … Continue reading “CS + X, for all X”
From AI to Bioengineering
First of all, students should be studying what they are passionate about. Clearly, computer science will continue to spread into all aspects of human life. Within computer science, I believe machine learning and AI are perhaps the biggest study opportunity today. Biology and medicine are also undergoing vast changes. Personalized medicine will become a big … Continue reading “From AI to Bioengineering”
Study the Boomers!
The Who once sang, “I hope I die before I get old.” Despite their best efforts to exit the planet early, most of them didn’t. They and their fellow Baby Boomers represent the greatest technology and business opportunity of the 21st Century. It is typical for each of us to be drawn to areas for … Continue reading “Study the Boomers!”
The Convergence of Biology, Medicine, and Engineering
I think learning the fundamentals of a discipline is the most important thing that students can do to prepare themselves for jobs both today and tomorrow. That discipline may be biology, bioengineering, chemistry, chemical engineering or others. I also think doing research is great preparatory experience. Furthermore, I believe the opportunities offered by the convergence … Continue reading “The Convergence of Biology, Medicine, and Engineering”
Computing and-Chinese
My initial response to this question was, “Chinese!” I was only half joking. English is the most popular second language in the world and in our increasingly connected world, the people who have an understanding of other languages—particularly Chinese—will be better equipped. As far as computers go, I studied computer languages in school and even … Continue reading “Computing and-Chinese”
Writing, Literature, and Computer Science
Whether you major in it or not, a fairly non-trivial amount of computer science would be helpful. The other thing is communication. One of the main things we look for when we are hiring people is their ability to write. It’s something that the average person is pretty poor at, but so much of every … Continue reading “Writing, Literature, and Computer Science”
Anything They’re Passionate About
Anything that interests them and they are passionate about today. What they will need to know in 10 years does not exist now, given the exponential growth of knowledge.
Data Analysis and Sensing
How to sense and make sense of subtler factors that govern our behaviors, the choices we make as individuals and as part of groups. The point here is that there are some obvious physically measurable; things like body weight, miles driven, CO2 let out, around which we can develop diagnostics and policies. But these measurables … Continue reading “Data Analysis and Sensing”
Learn to Learn, and Embrace Serendipity
Here is my advice to students considering pursuing science: —Learn how to learn (science is progressing so rapidly that whatever field you are focused on today will inevitably be different 10 years from now) —Learn how to develop focused attention (i.e. avoid modern day distractions like Twitter) —Master multiple science disciplines—If you can bridge disciplines … Continue reading “Learn to Learn, and Embrace Serendipity”
Learn By Starting Things
Students should be studying how to start things-how to create and grow new products, initiatives, ventures, and enterprises-a skill set that never goes out of style and that is fundamental to our nation’s future well-being and prosperity. And the best way to learn how to start things is to actually try to start things-whether it … Continue reading “Learn By Starting Things”
Marrying the Humanities and the Sciences
Liberal science and technology. We need a new major that prepares the future workforce for constant change by teaching broad-based knowledge in many disciplines. This major would consist of, among other disciplines, the basics of engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, law, business, humanities and communications. This curriculum should be group-based, where students teach each other, which … Continue reading “Marrying the Humanities and the Sciences”
RaNA Raises $20.7M From Atlas, SR One, Monsanto, for RNA-Based Tech
Generations of high school kids have been taught that only about 3 percent of the human genome is actually useful—meaning it contains genes that code proteins—and the rest is “junk DNA.” Cambridge, MA-based RaNA Therapeutics was founded on the idea that the so-called junk is actually gold, because it contains a type of RNA that … Continue reading “RaNA Raises $20.7M From Atlas, SR One, Monsanto, for RNA-Based Tech”
Engaging “Productive Stupidity”
I recently came across an article in Cell Science that intrigued me and gets to the core of this question. The title—“The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research”—was reason alone to pique my curiosity. What I didn’t expect was to find a powerful insight into student learning in today’s highly uncertain world. Martin A. Schwartz, … Continue reading “Engaging “Productive Stupidity””
Be Students of Life
Themselves. Technology, markets, financial vehicles, business methodology, government regulations, entertainment, media, and so on, all aspects of our professions and our entire lives will change at a continuously increasing rate in perpetuity. Which technology, market, industry should I commit to? I don’t believe this is the most relevant question for a student. More relevant questions … Continue reading “Be Students of Life”
Biology 101
Biology 101 and beyond. I would take as much biology as possible, it’s exploding and changing faster than anyone could have expected. Especially our understanding of the “central dogma” itself, where RNA is playing a more critical role than ever thought before. WOW!
Culture, Science, and Problem Solving
As a father of two girls, I have actually been thinking about this quite a bit. In general, I want my kids to be prepared for a world that is going to be very, very different from the world I grew up in, largely due to the travel, communications, and the Internet. I would recommend … Continue reading “Culture, Science, and Problem Solving”
Meta-Processing
Both what we are teaching and learning, and how we are teaching and learning, are changing, very, very rapidly. The notion that there is a gold standard—a favored text or tome, a single subject-matter expert, or a single corporation with the single best practice, in any discipline—is really outdated. The ‘new normal’ is generation of … Continue reading “Meta-Processing”
Global Healthcare
College undergraduates today are faced with many choices of where to concentrate their studies. It is important to look down the road to determine where the major unmet needs of society will be. The healthcare industry offers many opportunities and challenges over the coming decades. As I look to the future of healthcare, there are … Continue reading “Global Healthcare”
Onyx, Bayer’s Next Cancer Drug Shows Slim Survival Edge
Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals looked like they hit gold last fall, when a study of 760 patients showed that one of their new cancer drugs was able to help patients with colorectal cancer live longer. Today, researchers got the first glimpse at the detailed results, and while it’s encouraging news for the companies and for … Continue reading “Onyx, Bayer’s Next Cancer Drug Shows Slim Survival Edge”
Notes From the Detroit Auto Show: Connectivity is King
Though the North American International Auto Show just opened to the public Saturday, I was able to preview it last week with other reporters from around the world. Unlike the past few years, which were dominated by austerity and green tech, the feeling I got this year is that the car companies are seeking to … Continue reading “Notes From the Detroit Auto Show: Connectivity is King”
ShopKeep.com Raises $2.2M in Series A Round, Plans New Hires
New York’s ShopKeep.com says it raised $2.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Tribeca Venture Partners and TTV Capital. Contour Venture Partners also participated in the round. ShopKeep developed a point-of-sale platform that retailers can use on the Apple iPad as well as with Mac-powered registers. The company also provides Web-based software, which … Continue reading “ShopKeep.com Raises $2.2M in Series A Round, Plans New Hires”
Xconomists Peer into the Future, Suggest How Students Should Prepare
[Updated, Jan. 18, 2012—The Xconomist Report on the Future of Education is live—click here.] As the presidential race picks up steam, you know that we will be hearing a lot—a lot more, that is—about the need to create jobs. But where will those jobs come from, and what fields are really likely to spur growth … Continue reading “Xconomists Peer into the Future, Suggest How Students Should Prepare”