VentureBeat

iRise has raised $20 million to help companies model their software before a line of code gets written.

iRise, like competitors Blueprint and Serena Software, is trying to reshape the standard model of software development. Traditionally, the business analysts and other decision makers outline what they want using Microsoft PowerPoint or Visio, or perhaps something as low-tech as pen and paper. Then, the tech crew takes the outline and builds a mockup or the product itself.

Unfortunately, there’s a big risk of miscommunication or misunderstanding when you’re working with relatively simplistic tools, and businesses can waste money building a product that isn’t actually what they wanted. iRise, on the other hand, says businesspeople without any programming knowledge can use its software to create interactive demos that make their needs clear.

Asked by Startup City TV how iRise stands out, chief executive Emmett Keeffe III touted the software’s ease-of-use. One of iRise’s best features also seems to be its real-time collaboration, which allows team members across the country to contribute to the design remotely. (You can read a comparison of El Segundo, Calif.-based iRise and its competitors here.)

In his Startup City interview, Keeffe also notes that iRise’s software is available to a wide range of customers, with prices ranging from the tens of thousands to the millions of dollars. Last year, iRise helped cut development time in half for the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s new electronic medical records.

The new round, iRise’s third, brings the company’s total funding to $46.8 million, according to Tech Confidential. First-timers Gold Hill Capital, SVB Silicon Valley Bank and Deutsche Bank join previous investor Morgan Stanley Venture Partners.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Opera’s mobile web browser picks Google for search
2) Web-born show ‘Quarterlife’ bombs on NBC
3) Zoho updates its online writer
4) Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope is revealed
5) Panther Express, a NY start-up, gets funding
6) AngryJournalist.com lets writers vent
7) Drama amid the DivX shutdown of Stage 6

Opera’s mobile web browser picks Google for search - Starting next month, Opera’s mobile browser will begin using Google as its default search engine. Opera’s mobile variety is very popular (it works on both Symbian and Windows Mobile) and this is not good news for Yahoo, which is still trying to convince everyone — including its shareholders that it can soldier ahead without being taken over by Microsoft. ReadWriteWeb wonders how much money Google is sending Opera’s way to make this deal happen.

Web-born show ‘Quarterlife’ bombs on NBC - The popular web-based show that was purchased by NBC made its debut last night and flopped. It drew just 3.1 million viewers, which was less than half of its competition on both CBS and ABC. Silicon Alley Insider has more on the bad news for the show.

Zoho updates its online writer - The web-based word processor Zoho now supports Docx (the new Word file format), has a thesaurus, allows for emailing to groups and has enhanced support for endnotes/footnotes, headers/footers. Zoho has over 600,000 users but trails Google Docs, and of course Microsoft Word in usage. TechCrunch has more.

Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope is revealed - Well, now we know why blogger Robert Scoble was crying after he left a presentation at Microsoft’s labs a few weeks ago (our coverage). Microsoft Research officially announced their WorldWide Telescope software today. It is software that brings together images from some of the biggest telescopes on the Earth and in space to create an expansive visual map of the Universe. According to Scoble the software is currently in the private alpha stage and is set to launch in Spring 2008.

Panther Express, a NY start-up gets funding - From the PE wire: “Panther Express Inc., the content delivery network founded by the former chief executive and chief technical officer of DoubleClick Inc., has landed a $15.75 million Series B round of funding. Index Ventures led the round with participation from Gold Hill Capital and previous investor Greylock Partners. Index Partner Ben Holmes will join the board of directors. Panther Express previously raised $6 million.”

AngryJournalist.com lets writers vent - From the site: “Tell us what’s making you upset at your journalism job. Anonymity guaranteed. One rule: no real names.”

Drama amid the DivX shutdown of Stage6 - Everything seemed set for DivX to spin-off Stage6 last year and get it a $27 million round of funding in the process. However, when it came time to vote in November, the DivX board nixed the deal. A massive battle of egos killed the deal according to Mike Arrington. Relationships within the company badly strained, DivX simply decided to shut down Stage6, throwing out millions of dollars in revenue in the process. Naturally, investors are not happy.

Featured companies: Aryx Therapeutics, FlowCardia, Graftcath

FlowCardia raises $30M for artery roto-rooters — Sunnyvale, Calif.-based FlowCardia, a medical-device maker building catheter systems that bore holes in blood clots, raised $30 million in a third funding round. Investors included Gilde Healthcare Partners, Life Sciences Partners, Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management, New Science Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, JP Morgan Partners, Pappas Ventures, Rockport Venture Partners and Gold Hill Capital. The funding is intended to speed commercialization of the company’s “recanalization” device, which essentially busts through clots that totally block arteries.

Aryx aims to raise $86M in IPO for rejiggered drugs — Aryx Therapeutics, a Fremont, Calif., biotech company that derives ostensibly safer versions of existing drugs, filed to raise up to $85.3 million in an initial offering. The company uses a technology that reengineers these current drugs so they aren’t broken down by the same metabolic pathway in the liver, which is subject to “traffic jams” that can boost drug levels in the blood and lead to side effects.

Aryx’s first candidate is a reengineered form of cisapride, an acid-reflux (read: heartburn) drug better known by the brand name Propulsid, which was withdrawn from the U.S. market after it was linked to heartbeat irregularities. Aryx is also at work on a redone version of warfarin, a blood thinner usually administered to people at risk of blood clots. (See our recent coverage of FDA’s decision to include pharmacogenomic information on the warfarin label that might alleviate side effects here.)

GraftCath aims for $10M to develop better dialysis catheter — Eden Prairie, Minn.-based GraftCath, a medical-device company working on alternative to central venous catheters for kidney-dialysis patients, aims to raise $10 million in a fourth financing round by October, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The news service didn’t name any investors in the round.

From VentureWire:

To initiate dialysis, doctors must create an entranceway into the bloodstream. This can be done by joining an artery to a vein to create a fistula, or by using a graft to connect the artery and vein. Both methods provide adequate blood flow for dialysis, but fistulas are preferred because they use a patient’s own vessels and are less susceptible to infection and to becoming narrowed or occluded.

[When] patients aren’t eligible for fistulas or grafts… [they typically receive a] central venous catheter over the long term for their access point. These catheters put patients at a higher risk for blood-borne infection than either fistulas or grafts. These blood-borne infections, or bacteremias, are dangerous to patients and costly to hospitals. According to a study published in May in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the mean cost of catheter-related bacteremia is estimated to be $23,451 per hospitalization.

GraftCath claims its device reduces the risk of bacteremia, although VentureWire’s explanation isn’t terribly clear. Supposedly the device is safer because it’s implanted under the skin, although it clearly has to exit somewhere, since otherwise there’s no way to hook up the patient to a dialysis machine, which clears the blood of toxins in people whose kidneys are failing. The company doesn’t have a Web site that might explicate things, either.

updated

Dash, the start-up offering the first car navigation device designed to be permanently linked to the Internet, has raised $25 million in a second round of funding.

The Mountain View Dash will launch its device in the Bay Area in late April, and nationally this fall, goes up against a host of other market incumbents, none aspiring to be as continuously connected to the Internet.

These other players are Garmin, TomTom and Magellan. Last week, Garmin released its own bluetooth gadget that turns your cellphone or PC into a naviation device.

Here’s our earlier coverage of Dash.

The round was led by Crescendo Ventures with new investors Artis Capital, ZenShin Capital Partners and Gold Hill Capital. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital and Skymoon Ventures also participated. Artis is the hedge fund with family connections with Sequoia Capital, and continues to benefit from that relationship. It is one of the few hedge funds that invests alongside venture firms in Silicon Valley start-ups. It won a coveted position as the only other investor beside Sequoia in hot video-sharing company, YouTube.

Back to Dash. The company won awards at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
last month. It is uses Yahoo for local search, so drivers can find things like bars, restaurants and movie times, along with maps. It uses Tele Atlas for maps, and Inrix for traffic pattern data, which can used to help drivers steer clear of traffic jams.

The GPS navigation market has been on fire this year, with the market tripling in 2006 compared to 2005, said chief executive Paul Lego. He expects the device to price within the $500 to $800 range, along with the existing leading devices.