VentureBeat

The mysterious Conduit Labs has gone through pains to keep its nature under wraps. The company’s stated goal is to create online social experiences that are as rich as those we have offline, and it has managed to raise $5.5 million from Charles River Ventures and Prism Ventureworks without even launching a product.

Yet, despite numerous appearances on gaming conference panels from its CEO and co-founder, Nabeel Hyatt, and buzz surrounding the fact that one of Rock Band’s game designers is involved, no one has had any idea what Conduit Labs is actually doing.

Now, thanks to the magic of FriendFeed and some sleuthing on Twitter, I managed to get myself into the company’s alpha site, LoudCrowd, and while the alpha version of LoudCrowd does not reveal the full scope of Conduit Labs’ secrets, it does offer some enticing hints.

So far, it seems that LoudCrowd is part virtual world, part social network and part casual game. Before I began, I created an avatar using only the most basic set of options. I could pick skin color, hair color and sex. I then uploaded a photo, hoping that it would map my face to my avatar, but it didn’t. At this stage, photos are just used so other people could identify me on the dance floor.

Dance floor? Yes.

Right now, LoudCrowd’s experience centers around a rhythm-based dancing game that is like a far simpler version of Dance Dance Revolution — a Dance Dance Revolution for the casual gaming set. The key to the game is pressing arrow keys at the right time. I won points when I brought out my skills and won more points when fellow dancers chose me as a partner.

These points, as you might have guessed, can be used to jazz up my avatar. Currently, LoudCrowd simply automatically offers new items, like “space” jackets, pants and hats. I imagine that down the road, one will be able to select from a range of options and, of course, pay real cash to make one’s virtual self exceptionally special.

Conduit Labs has built the whole game on Flash, and the talents of the company’s designers are abundantly clear. The game is simple and fun, the look is cartoonish, but not cheap, and the animations are great. While the dancing game could get old eventually, it’s clear that there will be many others to play as LoudCrowd develops. Hyatt once told me that Conduit Labs has “no desire to rebuild a social graph,” so I expect it will leverage those that already exist — perhaps by using Facebook’s Friend Connect or building the whole package into the social networks, themselves.

As an interesting aside, it seems that the company paid $39,000 to buy the LoudCrowd url.

We have reached out to Hyatt for comment and will update when we hear back.

(Thanks, Annie Ok!)

Loudcrowd Preview by Conduit Labs from conduitlabs on Vimeo.

Competition exists in all walks of life. Ibeatyou capitalizes on that idea with a site that allows users to set up competitions across a wide range of fields, everything from dancing to comedy to music to yes, sports (checkout our full coverage here).

As an example, basketball star Steve Nash posted a video challenging users to see who could hit the most free-throws in a minute. Users watch the competiting videos and judge each on a scale of one to five. The video with the highest average score when the competition ends is the winner.

Now the site will find itself in a competition of its own. The Ibeatyou logo will be placed on the Luczo-Dragon Racing car during this year’s Indy 500. Steve Luczo, the chairman of hard drive manufacturer, Seagate, and an Ibeatyou investor, is the owner of the car. The car finished 5th in last year’s Indy 500 and looks to continue that success given the competitivness of Ibeatyou.

As part of the marketing relationship, Ibeatyou will also set up a competition between the Luczo-Dragon Racing car and other prominent drive around the time of the Indy 500 event. The actual race will take place on May 25.

Ibeatyou isn’t stopping there. The site has also announced a partnership with the popular social network application Watercooler. Watercooler brings together fans of popular television series and various sports to interact on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. The over 20 million people who use the Watercooler application will now have a chance to compete against one another via Ibeatyou competitions.

Given the built-in relationships inherent in social networks, those networks seem like a natural breeding group for web-based competitions.

Ibeatyou faces some competition in its business model from Strutta, another online site which asks users to vote on their favorite videos in different competitive categories.

Ibeatyou raised angel funding from Prism VentureWorks and two former partners at Crosslink Capital. Angel investors also include Baron Davis, a star on the Oakland-based Golden State Warriors professional basketball team as well as retired professional football star Ronnie Lott’s investing arm, Champion Ventures.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Trius Therapeutics raises $30M for new antibiotics (release)
• Genomas gets $1.2M grant for genomic side-effect tests (release)
• Provasculon receives $500K, enters Biogen Idec incubator (VentureWire)
• Animal diagnostics firm Quadraspec aims for $5M round (VentureWire)
• MPM Capital names two executive partners (release)
  

Trius Therapeutics raises $30M for new antibiotics – Trius Therapeutics, a San Diego startup developing new treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections, raised $30 million in a second funding round. Investors included Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, FinTech Global Capital, Sofinnova Ventures, Versant Ventures, Interwest Partners and Prism VentureWorks.

Trius said the funding will allow it to push its new treatment, an oxazolidinone antibiotic it calls TR-701, into late-stage human tests. The drug, which is intended for drug-resistant staphylococcus and similar infections, is currently in early-stage, phase I trials. Unlike many other new antibiotics, which must usually be taken intravenously, the Trius drug can be taken as a pill.

Genomas gets $1.2M grant for genomic side-effect tests – Genomas, a Hartford, Conn., personalized-medicine startup, received a $1.2 million small business-innovation grant from the NIH. The grant will fund genetic work aimed at identifying people who are most likely to suffer painful side effects from cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

Statins — particularly Pfizer’s Lipitor, the best-selling drug on the market today — have built up a formidable reputation based on studies that showed they could prevent fatal heart attacks. More recently, however, critics of the drugs have pointed out that stopping one heart attack requires close to 100 people to take the drugs regularly, putting new attention on statin side effects, which can range from painful muscle aches and weakness to memory loss. The Genomas test is intended to reveal whether an individual patient is likely to experience those nerve and muscle effects, known technically as statin-induced neuromyopathy.

Full-scale massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) are generally built by giant studios, not venture-funded startups, but Sparkplay Media is one of the few exceptions, with an upcoming game called Earth Eternal.

The game will come with its own distinct Web 2.0 angle, though — the ability to tie in with social networks like Facebook. Although CEO Matt Mihaly is being quiet on specific details, he says that there will be applications and activities on social sites that can have a direct influence on characters in the main game.

Based on an altered version of the real world, Earth Eternal will also have a distinct emphasis in-game on social activities instead of fighting or gaining levels, as in a game like World of Warcraft.

Mihaly says the game is being designed to “gently push people toward each other.” In-game activities like fishing, for example, will often be more effective if performed in groups.

The target market is people in their mid- to late-teens to their early twenties, although it will also be family-friendly. The game will be free to play in either a web browser or separate application, and Sparkplay will make its money from in-game item sales.

Partial versions of Earth Eternal that Mihaly calls “Groves” will be released this summer. In the meantime, the company is releasing a Facebook application called SuperVillains in the next week or two to create some initial buzz and will begin hiring more people to finish the main game.

Sparkplay’s funding is for $4.25 million, from Redpoint Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. It was previously bootstrapped with about $750,000 of the founder’s own money. The company is based in Mill Valley, Calif.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• MRI image-analysis firm Confirma receives $18M (release)
• Specialty pharma Zogenix raises $18M (release)
• Arcion pulls in $8.8M for topical pain gel (release)
• Bayhill Therapeutics files for $87M IPO (Edgar)
• Peakdale Molecular, chemistry-services provider, raises £1M (release)
• Radiopharmaceutical maker Cellectar draws in $13M (release)
• Critical-care drug maker Ikaria names Daniel Tasse as CEO (release)
• Noxxon Pharma appoints Frank Morich as CEO (release)

MRI image-analysis firm Confirma receives $18M –Confirma, a Bellevue, Wash., developer of automated systems for medical-image analysis, received $17.5 million in a third funding round. Investors included Telegraph Hill Partners, Fluke Venture Partners, Northwest Venture Associates, Prism Ventureworks and Versant Ventures.

The company already sells image-analysis software and associated equipment for breast-cancer detection, and is developing a similar system for prostate cancer. We previously covered the company here.

Specialty pharma Zogenix raises $18M – Zogenix, a San Diego specialty pharma, raised $18 million in a new financing round. Investors included Abingworth Management, Clarus Ventures, Domain Associates and Scale Venture Partners.

Zogenix previously raised $60 million in a first funding round back in Aug. 2006, and apparently has been quiet since then. Our coverage of them is here. Zogenix is developing a needle-free injection system for pain and CNS drugs, which it licensed from Aradigm in 2006.

Bayhill Therapeutics files for $87M IPO – Bayhill Therapeutics, a Palo Alto, Calif., biotech focused on autoimmune disease, filed to raise $86.3 million in an IPO. The company aims to restore the immune system to a state of “tolerance,” theoretically defusing particular autoimmune diseases while leaving the body’s defenses intact.

Bayhill’s approach to inducing tolerance is by using small loops of DNA, known as plasmids, that code for a specific protein antigen that appears to set off the body’s attack against itself. By introducing those plasmids in such a way that they’ll be taken up and “turned on” by the immune-system’s antigen presenting cells, the company hopes to re-educate the immune system to ignore those particular proteins.

Like most novel biotechs at this stage, Bayhill’s technology is intriguing but unproven. Its lead candidate, a drug for multiple sclerosis, has completed a mid-stage, phase II trial, but the result are complex to interpret. The company’s drug is a plasmid that codes for “myelin basic protein,” or MBP, one of the immune-system’s targets in MS. In that phase II trial, however, Bayhill only tested some patients to see if they had high levels of antibody to MBP — and the company only saw a significant reduction in MS-related brain lesions among those few patients with high MBP-antibody levels.

Featured companies: Cyntellect, Lectus Therapeutics, NeoMatrix, Nexstim, Pearl Therapeutics, Proteon Therapeutics, SupplyScape

(UPDATED at 10am PT: See below.)

Airway-disease specialist Pearl Therapeutics raises $15.5M — Redwood City, Calif.-based Pearl Therapeutics, a drug-formulation company focused on respiratory disease, raised $15.5 million in a first funding round. Investors included New Leaf Ventures, Clarus Ventures and 5AM Ventures.

Pearl doesn’t appear to have a working Web site yet, but according to its release, the company aims to treat unspecified airway diseases using “particle technologies” it has licensed from Nektar Therapeutics. Nektar, of course, is the company that spent years co-developing the inhalable insulin Exubera with Pfizer, only to see it flop in the marketplace — not least because the bulky inhaler resembled nothing so much as a bong.

In fact, Pearl’s ties to Nektar run deep. In addition to licensing its basic technology from Nektar, the company was founded in 2006 by two former Nektar executives, Adrian Smith and Sarvajna Dwivedi. Pearl most likely also aims to reformulate existing drugs into a better inhalable form — and presumably hopes for better luck in doing so.

Proteon Therapeutics sucks in $12M for vascular drug — Proteon, a Waltham, Mass., biotech, raised $12 million in a follow-on to its first funding round. Investors included TVM Capital, Skyline Ventures, Prism VentureWorks and Intersouth Partners.

Proteon’s main drug candidate, PRT-201, aims to do something new by permanently enlarging blood vessels at the site of administration. The technology is based on elastases, a type of protein-cutting enzyme, which supposedly modify the “extracellular matrix” of blood vessels in order to enlarge them. The company expects the drug might be useful for kidney-dialysis patients, who now often have to undergo surgery to create blood vessels large enough for a connection to the blood-filtration devices, and in peripheral arterial disease.

Brain scanner Nexstim beams in €8M — Nexstim , a Helsinki, Finland-based developer of brain-imaging techniques, raised €8 million ($10.9 million) in a private placement. Investors included HealthCap, LSP (Life Sciences Partners), Finnish Industry Investment and Sitra.

Nexstim is working on a new brain-imaging technique it calls “navigated brain stimulation.” The details are pretty hairy — check out the company’s release if you’d like to know more — but it essentially combines several different electromagnetic-imaging techniques with a movable coil that can be guided wherever the operator would like. The system isn’t approved for clinical use, although Nexstim said the funding would allow it to obtain the necessary regulatory approval.

Health software company SupplyScape raises $10M, names new CEO — SupplyScape, a Woburn, Mass., developer of supply-chain software for life-sciences companies, raised $10 million in a third funding round. Investors in the latest round included IDG Ventures Boston, North Bridge Venture Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Bethesda Partners, and Pfizer Strategic Investments Group.

The company also named Mark O’Connell, former CEO of MatrixOne, as its chief executive.

The average person, however, could be forgiven for having no clue what SupplyScape actually does. According to the company’s press releases, it makes software to “maximize product integrity and create business value for pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device companies.” Its Web site promises “collaborative pharmaceutical value chains” that improve “security and profitability.” As it turns out, the company’s software helps track and trace drugs from their point of manufacture through various distribution channels in order to guard against counterfeits, at least so far as I can tell from its Web site.

Cancer screener NeoMatrix raises $9.6M — San Diego’s NeoMatrix, a company focused on early detection of breast cancer, raised $9.6 million in a third funding round. Private investors provided the funding, the company told me. (Its release doesn’t include these details.) Out of sheer coincidence, two southern California businessmen — Anthony Ciabattoni and Richard Franco Sr. — also just joined the company’s board (see the release for details).

Founded in 2000, NeoMatrix sells a screening test that detects pre-malignant or malignant cells in “nipple aspirate fluid,” which is extracted from the breast using a “gentle” suction device. The company said the new funds will allow it to hire its first sales reps, expand its marketing efforts and to convert or retire remaining debt the company used to finance development of its test.

Lectus draws in £3M for MS drugs — Cambridge, England-based Lectus Therapeutics, a biotech focused on a class of drugs known as ion-channel modulators, raised £3 million ($6.1 million) in funding from the Wellcome Trust. The investment is intended specifically to fund development of drugs for multiple sclerosis. Lectus had previously identified its primary disease interests as urinary bladder disorders, pain and angina.

Cell imager Cyntellect adds $3M in funding — Cytellect, a San Diego developer of cell imaging and manipulation systems, raised an additional $3 million in a fourth funding round, bringing the total for the round to $18.1 million. Bru II Venture Capital Fund, based in Reykjavik, Iceland, provided the additional funding.

Cyntellect’s laser-based equipment makes it possible to fluorescently image cells, isolate and destroy unwanted cells in a sample, and to “optoinject” various molecules directly into cells. See our previous coverage here.

UPDATE (10am PT): Added items on Cyntellect, Lectus Therapeutics, NeoMatrix, Nexstim, Pearl Therapeutics, and Proteon Therapeutics.

(UPDATED at 3:10pm PT: See below.)

Featured companies: Agendia, EndoGastric Solutions, FlowCo, Gentris, MedManage Systems, ParagonDx, Presidio Pharmaceuticals, Xoova

Presidio Pharma raises $26M for viral treatments — San Francisco’s Presidio Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing new antiviral drugs, raised $26 million in a second funding round. Investors included Panorama Capital, Baker Brothers Investments, Bay City Capital, Ventures West Capital, Nexus Medical Partners, Sagamore Bioventures, George Rathmann Fund and Peninsula Overview Partners.

Presidio’s lead drug candidates take aim at HIV, hepatitis C and other viral infections. None of its drugs have entered human tests yet.

EndoGastric Solutions pulls in $30M for “transoral” surgeries — Redmond, Wash.-based EndoGastric Solutions, a medical-device maker developing products for incision-free gastrointestinal surgery, raised $30 million in a fourth funding round. Investors included DeNovo Ventures, Chicago Growth Partners, MPM Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, Foundation Medical Partners, and Oakwood Medical Investors.

In March, EndoGastric received FDA clearance for a device it calls the StomaphyX, a disposable surgical instrument that can be passed into the stomach or the intestines via a patient’s mouth. Although EndoGastric isn’t too clear on exactly what the StomaphyX is for — the company says it’s for use in “endoluminal transoral tissue approximation and ligation” — the device appears to be a sort of staple gun that can fasten together parts of the stomach or intestines. EndoGastric says the device can be used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease, and its Web site appears to suggest that it can also perform bariatric surgery from inside the stomach as a treatment for obesity.

Agendia gets $34M for gene-based diagnostics — Amsterdam-based Agendia, a developer of gene-based diagnostic tests for cancer, raised $34 million (€25 million) in a fourth funding round. Investors included ING, Van Herk Biotech, Gilde Healthcare Partners and Global Life Science Ventures.

Agendia, founded in 2003, sells diagnostic tests that assess the “activity level” of various genes in tumor tissue, a technique that allows it to predict whether, for instance, a woman has a high or a low risk of seeing her breast cancer return. That test, sold under the brand name MammaPrint, was approved in the U.S. in February. Agendia has developed similar tests for identifying unknown cancers and for assessing the prognosis of colon cancer.

MedManage Systems, a drug-sampling service provider, receives $5M — MedManage Systems, a Bothell, Wash., company that helps drug manufacturers push free samples into the hands of doctors in order to “build brands,” raised $5 million of a planned $10 million financing, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Investors include Lilly Ventures, Prism VentureWorks, QuestMark Partners and Versant Ventures.

At heart, MedManage’s business seems to be a consulting service that uses a mix of technology, data analysis and old-fashioned legwork make it easy for physicians to hand out free drug samples, which the MedManage site calls “a proven marketing strategy” for “influenc[ing] physician prescribing behavior.”

The company’s Web site is larded up with all manner of marketing buzzwords, but it’s actually fascinating to read through. That’s because most folks in the pharmaceutical industry would never admit that drug samples are part of a sophisticated marketing program aimed at getting doctors used to particular brands and patients to request them by name. (Large drug companies would prefer you to believe that they give away free drugs out of the kindness of their heart and sympathy for the people who can’t afford their products.) MedManage, however, makes no bones about using samples to push particular drugs. So for a peek behind the curtain, check out MedManage’s description of what it calls its “OmniSample Solution” — it’s very illuminating.

Xoova raises $2.5M for medical social-networking — Santa Monica, Calif.-based Xoova, a social network for doctors and patients, has raised $2.5 million in a first funding round last year, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Spark Capital Partners provided the funding.

Xoova allows physicians to post profiles of themselves online, much the way Facebook and similar services do for the general population. Xoova CEO Tommy McGloin estimates that 20,000 doctors have already done so, a number he hopes will grow to 100,000 by the time he begins raising an expected $5 million round next year.

Consumers can search the doctor profiles and, in some cases, can make appointments online if the doctor has signed up for a free Xoova service. McGloin said the company intends to roll out new features in coming months, although the one cited by VentureWire — allowing patients to both book and cancel appointments online — sounds awfully mundane.

Cardiac-device maker FlowCo raises $250K — FlowCo, an Indianapolis medical-device developer, raised $250,000 in a seed financing. BioCrossroads provided the funding. FlowCo, which doesn’t have a Web site, is working on a new catheter for deploying arterial stents, the wire-mesh devices that prop open clogged arteries, more accurately.

ParagonDx acquires Gentris unit for early diagnostics — ParagonDx, apparently a newly formed Morrisville, N.C., biotech firm focused on molecular diagnostics, said it acquired the Gentris Diagnostics unit of Gentris, a pharmacogenomics firm also based in Morrisville. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

It’s not immediately clear exactly what this transaction means — I’m assuming ParagonDx was essentially spun out of Gentris, but the release isn’t terribly clear on that point. There are also some other oddities, such as the fact that as of this moment, the ParagonDx URL redirects to the Gentris site. It’s entirely possible that they’re just working out merger-day glitches, but it’s also possible something else weird is going on.

UPDATE (3:10pm PT): Added items on MedManage Systems, Xoova, FlowCo and ParagonDx/Gentris.

Conduit Labs is a secretive new company, not launched yet, but which says it wants to build a new social network: One built around virtual world gaming, but with networking components that reflect real life, just like Facebook does for students on college campuses.

It has just received $5.5. million from Charles River Ventures and Prism Ventureworks.

Conduit Lab founder Nabeel Hyatt and Susan Wu, a virtual world games expert who led the investment for Charles River, are coy on specifics. However, they says there’s something missing in the experience of today’s most popular games, such as World of Warcraft: Interactions designed around real-life relationships.

Friends playing on WoW, but who live far away from each other, can only hang out online. They can also meet at Second Life or other online worlds and gaming sites, but they can’t go out and play a casual game of basketball on a Saturday afternoon.

Conduit Labs, based in Cambridge, Mass., wants to combine the social web of real life, as embodied in social networks, within a meaningful virtual environment that could include virtual pick-up games of basketball, or any number of other activities that friends might want to do together — karaoke, dancing, etc. It would still be online, only much more realistic.

Wu was an early skeptic about Second Life, because it didn’t offer these things.

Conduit wants, in part, to improve upon Facebook’s carefully plans meaningful social interactions on its site. Facebook features such as news feeds and mini feeds show people what their friends are up to and what their common interests are. Email notifications and pokes create an experience for Facebook users similar to a real-life community bulletin board, or pen-pal correspondences between friends, Wu says. However, most of these communications aren’t in real-time. There’s little instant messaging and no instant gratification of real communication.

The promise of the gaming angle, as proven by World of Warcraft and other online gaming worlds is that friends can interact in real-time, Hyatt explains.

Carefully designed social interactions have the potential to create the next generation of online relationships, they say. Hyatt and the other Conduit founders have a strong background in building online games and worlds, having worked on such diverse mainstream hits as Guitar Hero, Lord of the Rings Online and Asheron’s Call.

The market opportunity, Wu and Hyatt stress, has been recently highlighted by Disney’s purchase of kid virtual world Club Penguin. That site developed a paid-subscription service and virtual goods that allowed the company to grow without taking on VC funding.

In short, it’s all a little vague. We’re not entirely sure how the company can improve on instant messaging and real-time video interactions that are already possible. We do know, however, that Wu has given a lot of thought to gaming. So we look forward to following this company as it emerges.

KickApps, which enables publishers to quickly add social network functions to their offerings, has just raised $11 million in its second round of financing.

Thanks to companies like Ning, PeopleAggregator, Me.com, and KickApps, the creation of new social networks has become a commodity, and people are seeing green. Ning recently secured $44 million at a lofty $170 million pre-money valuation. In this bubbly environment, it’s not surprising to see investors looking for more.

While KickApps and Ning are frequently compared, there are significant differences. Ning focuses on social network creation for the masses, where these masses, regardless of programming ability, can launch good-looking, stand-alone social networks of their own. KickApps, based in New York, is aimed at publishers who have developers and want to build “community” functions like profiles, blogs, video and photo sharing into their sites. This makes KickApps more like Five Across, which Cisco recently acquired.

KickApps uses a web-based front end that lets publishers blend the social networking functions into their sites in a matter of days or weeks. By comparison, Five Across’ system is not web-based, currently lacks support for video, and is more complicated to deploy.

KickApps is powering social networks on over 5,000 sites, ranging from major media brands like HBO and Cinemax to off-kilter niche sites like Dee Snyder’s House of Hair.

The company offers its applications and hosting services to publishers for free in exchange for a piece of the incremental ad revenue its services generate, and targets the ads itself. Conversely, companies can pay for a license and place the ads themselves.

Softbank Capital led the round, which included previous investors Spark Capital, Prism VentureWorks and Jarl Mohn. The company had previously raised $7 million.

Entrigue Surgical, a San Antonio, Tex., medical-devices maker, raised $6.3 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription requires), crediting the San Antonio Express-News (no link available). Vertical Group and Prism VentureWorks provided the investment.

According to Entrigue’s bare-bones Web site — which features little more than a quick marketing blurb and a clock counting down to a “revolution” promised 65 days from now — and the Express-News item, Entrigue is developing devices and biomaterials for head and neck surgeons designed for ear, nose and throat applications.

A few more details from the News-Express item, which I had to dig up in Nexis/Lexis:

Fred Dinger III is in demand. Last July, Dinger, then CEO of Osteobiologics Inc., sold the medical device company to London-based Smith & Nephew PLC, an orthopedic biomedical firm, for $72.3 million….

A few months after selling Osteobiologics, Dinger formed Concept to Market, known as C2M, with four former co-workers. C2M is a biotechnology-consulting firm that works for Warburg Pincus in New York and The Vertical Group in New Jersey. C2M advises other biotechnology companies nationwide. Yet Dinger wasn’t content with just advising others. He wanted to run a company in San Antonio.

That’s when Entrigue Surgical Inc., a Boston-based startup focused on head and neck surgery, tried to recruit him as CEO. He told its officers that if they moved it to San Antonio, his team would run it. They agreed. Entrigue Surgical, with 10 employees, develops biomaterials and medical instruments for head and neck surgeons. Dinger just raised $6.3 million in venture capital for Entrigue Surgical.

There aren’t too many companies focused on otaryngology devices. One other is Menlo Park, Calif.-based Acclarent, a designer of a sinus-treatment device, which we last wrote about here.