VentureBeat

Boom! Studios is an online marketplace for original comic books and graphic novels that uses social networks like MySpace to promote its artists’ works. The company’s big plan is to be an alternate way for the most promising graphic storytellers to create hits that eventually make it to lucrative mediums like movies and video games.

It wants to give independent creators a chance to see a larger upside than they might with traditionally dominant comic book companies like Marvel, through negotiating so that creators get a share of proceeds from all sales. It lets artists upload their own comics to display to readers, and includes an option where comics can be bought and sold for a fee.

We’ve covered a number of online video companies that are trying to make similar propositions to video creators.

The Los Angeles company, officially known as Boom Entertainment, has just taken a $600,000 investment from DFJ Frontier and the Gideon Hixon Fund, following a particularly successful January. At the beginning of the month, it featured the first printing of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy novel called North Wind, on MySpace. The comic, a five-part mini-series that takes place in a futuristic, frozen-over LA, sold out in ten days at brick-and-mortar retailers and has since gone through a second printing. Note: North Wind was available for free online, through the MySpace promotion — people were willing to go out and buy the print version, anyway.

The company credits its success to the tens of thousands of fans who found out about the release on MySpace, and its inside understanding of the comic book industry. North Wind, for example, is written by veteran scriptwriter David DiGilio, who wrote feature film Eight Below and the ABC show Traveler. The site also hired an editor-in-chief to focus on the best content: Mark Waid, a veteran of the comic book industry.

Budding artists tend to swamp the company’s booth at comic book trade shows, DFJ investor Scott Lenet told me — something he expects to happen at the Wondercon conference in San Francisco that starts later this week.

Pluggd, a Seattle company that lets you search audio and video files for words or themes, has raised just under $6 million in financing.

Pluggd is a hot company because it does something well that few others have been able to match. You can search for “iPhone,” and Pluggd will give you a heat map showing all the places in the video file where iPhone is mentioned or even themes related to the iPhone. Click on image below for a demo.

See our previous coverage of the company.

Intel Capital, the venture arm of chip company Intel, led the round. Intel had earlier invested in the company’s seed round. Other investors include DFJ Frontier, Labrador Ventures and the Band of Angels. We’re hearing the company received an acquisition offer, but turned it down after receiving multiple favorable offers from venture capital firms.

The company is moving quickly. Last time we covered the company, it searched only audio files. Now it searches video.

It also offers a widget to search audio and video on third-party sites.

Other companies offer competing technology, but none distribute the same heat-map precision features. One is YuMe, of Redwood City, Calif., which also uses speech-recognition technology to allow advertisers to decide which videos to advertise on. That company employs people in India to make sure that videos are about what they say they are. It has received more than $7 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, and BV Capital and others. Another is EveryZing, which raised $10 million in June.

Pluggd and YuMe were both voted “best in show” at July’s Under the Radar event.

Although I try to stay on top of events in the life sciences, announcements do sometimes manage to slip through the cracks. Some days, in fact, I end up triaging. Because the roots of this site — not to mention many of its readers — are in Silicon Valley, Bay Area events are a priority. Then come announcements from the rest of the U.S., then Asia, then Europe. Also, smaller or partial fundings tend to take a backseat.

Looking back over my notes — it’s the only way I keep anything straight — I see quite a few of these orphans have piled up. So for the sake of completeness, I’m inaugurating this occasional feature to recap the fundings, mergers and IPOs that got away from me. I’ll put all the details below the fold, so only forge ahead if you’re really interested. RSS subscribers, unfortunately, are going to get the whole thing anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lipomics, a West Sacramento, Calif., biotech, raised $2.8 million in a fourth funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Among the investors was DFJ Frontier.

Lipomics is developing diagnostic tests for important measures of metabolic function that may be useful in managing and treating conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

Updated

Tioga Energy, a Sunnyvale, Calif. company that wants to makes solar power financing easier for mid-sized businesses, has raised $10 million in a first round of venture financing.

It is just the latest of several players entering the hot solar market to make it easier for companies to buy solar power. Chief executive Paul Detering says the market is so robust that new players focusing on a niche should have no problem attracting customers. Tioga’s niche is solar installations of 50 to 500 kilowatts — which are mid-sized projects. Tioga seeks to partner with solar installation companies.

Leading the investments were venture capital groups NGEN Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Rockport Capital, DFJ Frontier and Kirlan Ventures.

A typical customer of Tioga’s, Detering said, might be a food processing company located in California central valley where there is a lot of sun. These companies may have to spend about $5 million to ensure a proper solar power system, research complex tax laws for incentives, and hope that they are getting state-of-the-art technology that lasts. However, Tioga hopes to handle most of these worries itself, even retaining ownership of the solar systems — so that a customer can always shift way from solar if it wants. Tioga offers so-called “Energy Power Purchase Agreements,” where it essentially charges the company a monthly bill just like a normal utility.

Here is the company’s statement.

Competitors include SunEdison, which focuses on larger installations, MMA Renewable Ventures and Recurrent Energy

Update: Turns out, Tioga is a restart of a failed company CerOx, something the company — understandably — didn’t disclose to us. Lazy VentureBeat! Anyway, CerOx had raised $17 million from the same investors for a “waste remediation” technology business, but that didn’t go anywhere, so investors changed models, and decided to go after solar. Hat-tip to VentureWire for unearthing this (sub required).