Paragon Lake will let you customize jewelry online
If you’re the stylish type and want to customize your clothing orders, there are lots of options for you on the web. Now it’s time to take that bring that approach to jewelry, says Matt Lauzon, founder and president of a company called Paragon Lake.
The Lexington, Mass. company has created a product it calls a “virtual display case,” an online service accessed by jewelry stores as they’re trying to make a sale, which allows customers… Continue Reading
iPierian snags $3.7M grant from NIH for cell reprogramming
iPierian, a South San Francisco-based company that’s researching the use of cellular reprogramming for drug discovery applications, has been selected by the National Institutes of Health for a $3.7 million grant to continue work on these topics in tandem with Johns Hopkins University.
The two-year “Great Opportunities” grant is actually part of the federal stimulus package to help fuel neurological and stroke-related research. Its work could eventually be used to treat ALS, Parkinson’s and spinal muscular… Continue Reading
Live event ticket search engine FanSnap lands $5M
FanSnap, one of the more visible startups competing with Ticketmaster as a live event ticket destination (even though it doesn’t sell tickets itself, it just aggregates them), has raised $5 million in a new round of funding from Highland Capital Partners. The site says it currently has more than 12 million tickets to upwards of 30,000 sports, theater and concert events on offer. It plans to use the new financing to fuel further product development.
To… Continue Reading
iZumi Bio merges with Pierian to fuel stem cell technology
iZumi Bio, a research firm specializing in stem-cell research used to create a range of treatments, has merged with a similar company, Pierian, to advance development of regenerative medical therapies. At the same time, the new entity — iPierian — has taken in $11.5 million in new capital, including $10 million from MPM Capital.
The new company is taking up iZumi’s objective: to focus on pluripotent stem cells — skin cells that can be endowed with… Continue Reading
Hyperion raises $60M to battle urea cycle disorders
Hyperion Therapeutics, developer of treatments for urea cycle disorders and illnesses, has brought in $60 million in a third round of financing from Bay City Capital, Panorama Capital, Highland Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Sofinnova Ventures.
Based in South San Francisco, the company recently completed phase-two clinical trials for its lead drug candidate and says the new capital will be used to push it through phase three. This therapy is targeted at patients who are… Continue Reading
MokaFive snags $5M for virtualization software
MokaFive, maker of computer virtualization software, says it brought in $5 million of an expected $7.5 million round of debt financing. Based in Redwood City, Calif., the company has not disclosed its recent investors. However, it previously raised a $15 million second round of funding in 2007 from Khosla Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.
Hyperion brings in $13M for gastrointestinal relief
Hyperion Therapeutics, maker of pharmaceuticals to treat hepatology and gastrointenstinal conditions, has raised $13 million of an anticipated $15 million round of debt, according to VentureWire. Contributors have not been disclosed, but the South San Francisco, Calif. company had previously raked in $40 million in a second round of funding from Sofinnova Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Washington Research Foundation Capital.
Hyperion is one of the companies that has reported fundraising activity due… Continue Reading
Redbrick gets a $15M boost for incentive-based health insurance
Redbrick Health, provider of employer insurance that bases employee premiums on their behavior, has scored $15 million in a third round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The Minneapolis, Minn.-based firm says the system is designed to encourage insurance recipients to adopt healthier habits, and to reward those that already practice them.
This individualized approach to healthcare allows every employee to map their health status according to standardized measures, and view specific steps… Continue Reading
Quigo founder launches new ad network with Doclix
The bumper crop of ad networks divvying up the digital landscape just got a new addition: Doclix, provide of a pay-per-click network called AdSide that says its technology will drive more traffic and ensure better ad quality and placement. While this isn’t a terribly original claim, the New York-based company may get a boost from the fact that its founder, Oded Itzhak, also started ad-targeting platform Quigo and is therefore a known quantity in the… Continue Reading
Ocarina Networks lands $20M for content compression
Ocarina Networks, maker of software that compresses content to reduce online storage demands, announced today that it has brought in $20 million in a second round of funding to beef up its sales force, refine its technology and forge more partnerships with storage providers like Hewlett-Packard and BlueArc.
The San Jose, Calif. company claims its technology can compress data by up to 90 percent. Essentially, it can shrink 10 terabytes of data to between 1 and… Continue Reading
VC-backed Cash4Gold attracts complaints (updated)
[Updated: Cash4Gold representative Weronika Cwir has responded, and vehemently denied many of the allegations made in this article. She said the main source VentureBeat quoted was a short-term employee terminated by the company who has malicious intent. Below is her response in italics:]
Virtually every point made by the author of the posting is false or misleading. Following is a list of some of those statements:
1) It is false to claim there is a Cash4Gold “scam.”… Continue Reading
Domain marketplace NameMedia cancels IPO
NameMedia, a popular domain name marketplace, has abandoned its plans to go public. It first filed for the anticipated $172.5 million sale in November 2007, but says current market conditions are too poor to go forward at this time. Formerly called YesDirect, it was going to use the proceeds to pay down its debt and fund product development.
Based in Waltham, Mass., it received funding from Highland Capital Partners (which owns more than half of the… Continue Reading
Why hasn’t Digg made any progress? It’s worth only $164M now
Has the news site Digg really made no progress in two years?
That’s what you’d have to conclude from the value investors are placing on Digg after their most recent investment: $164 million.
You’ll remember the hyped BusinessWeek article from more than two years ago that reported “people in the know” said the company’s value was “easily worth $200 million.” The reference suggested Digg and its investors were hoping to steer perceptions that it was worth at… Continue Reading
BAROnova pulls in funds for weight-loss tech
Medical technology company BAROnova announced today that it brought in $7.5 million in a second round of funding led by pharmaceutical firm Allergan. It plans to use the money to continue developing a weight loss device called the TransPyloric Shuttle.
Basically, the shuttle is installed at the pylorus, the opening of the small intestine located at the bottom of the stomach (it’s inserted endoscopically). The goal of the mechanism is to cause users to feel full… Continue Reading
Turbine picks up $40 million, keeps mum about its next steps
Jim Crowley, the CEO of Turbine, isn’t an easy man to get a straight answer from. I heard that his company, which makes “massively multiplayer online” games such as “The Lord of the Rings Online,” was raising a new round of venture capital about a month ago. That’s a big deal, since Turbine is one of the big success stories in this industry and raising a new round could mean big new projects are in… Continue Reading
MMO game publisher Turbine raising $40M; former CEO launches Play Hard Sports
Turbine, a game publisher that makes massively-multiplayer online games but may soon be enacting a major strategic shift, is in the process of taking $40 million in new funding led by Granite Global Ventures, according to Dan Primack.
While its Lords of the Ring Online: Shadows of Angmar computer game franchise has found success, expectations are that the company will move toward the console market. Primack also speculates that it could be preparing to take a… Continue Reading
Imprivata, a secure access innovator, raises $15M
Imprivata is a Lexington, Mass. company that is working on single sign-on authentication technology, which consolidates all of a corporate user’s accounts to a single password and adds additional security measures to prevent hackers.
The company’s software works together with physical location trackers like keycards, so that an employee’s account will be unusable if, for instance, his location tracker shows him to be in a different place than the computer he’s logging in at.
SAP Ventures provided… Continue Reading
Web analytics company Coremetrics raises $60M
Coremetrics, one of many analytics companies trying to help website owners understand and market to their visitors, has raised $60 million in a fifth round of financing.
Back in 2006, we said there was some real demand in this area, but probably not enough to support all the companies that were springing up. Coremetrics, however, seems to be getting some real traction, which chief executive Joe Davis attributes to building sophisticated marketing tools — such as… Continue Reading
Roundup: Social network Hi5 launches its developer platform, Facebook does regular old targeted advertising, and more
Here the latest action:
Social network Hi5 publicly launches its developer platform — San Francisco-based Hi5 may be a big opportunity for developers of third-party applications that live on social networks. It is popular in places like Portugal, Thailand and select countries of Latin America. Overall, it’s one of the largest social networks worldwide, with more than 35 million monthly active users — and the company claims that only 25 percent of them also have profiles… Continue Reading
CafeMom cooks up $12M more in funding
While the big names in the social networking world, Facebook and MySpace, get most of the headlines, several niche networks are out there signing up millions of users. One such network is CafeMom, a social network for mothers, that has just raised a new round of funding.
Already positioned well with several big-name advertisers such as Wal-Mart, HP, Disney, Johnson & Johnson and General Mills, CafeMom hopes to use this new money to attract even more… Continue Reading