July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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SAN FRANCISCO — BandPage and Ning have teamed up to help musicians create and manage their community of fans online.

The goal is to help bands and solo artists that need a better way to connect with fans — and are ready to go beyond a static Facebook page or website.

In less than 24 hours, for instance, a band called Run River North was able to create a page with a community forum, news, music, and tour dates. Another customer, the Swedish electric house duo Dada Life, took the notion of community one step further. Their überfans, dubbed “citizens,” can climb the member ranks and become “Ambassadors” by completing missions on the Ning site.

Fans can submit photos on the Dada Life community forum

The idea is that alternatively to building the site from scratch (an expensive and time-consuming proposition) artists with a BandPage account can automatically shift and sync content. BandPage is a venture-backed startup that helps artists manage their online presence in one central hub; this includes music, tour dates, videos, an About page, a mailing list, and more.

“Our focus has always been and will continue to be to help musicians represent themselves,” BandPage CEO J Sider [pictured above] said in a recent interview with VentureBeat. 

A band can choose to alter the design of their site with a header and background image, and make any adjustments to the font and color. In addition, fans can be administrators and moderate content, and bands can choose to share information with a select group.

Ning, which is now owned by Glam Media, made the announcement at the SFMusicTech conference today. Try the new product out for free here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Stripe and Parse are joining forces to move the world of mobile payments forward.

Today, the two startups announced a partnership that will allow thousands of developers to quickly and easily integrate payments into their mobile applications.

Stripe and Parse are both Y Combinator alums that provide developer-centric tools to move online businesses forward. Stripe’s technology makes it easier for developers to enable online credit card payments. The company is built on the idea that “transaction on the web is a problem rooted in code, not finance” and companies can use its API to integrate a full check out system within minutes. Parse is a mobile app development company that takes care of the nitty-gritty, technical, server-side of mobile development so its clients can focus on areas like user experience and design.

With this partnership, Parse will integrate Stripe with 60,000 of its Parse-powered applications.

“We thought it’d be cool if you could instantly connect your Stripe account to start accepting payments in a Parse mobile app,” wrote Stripe developer Alex MacCaw in a blog post. “If you’re building an app on Parse and want to accept payments, you don’t need to write any server-side code. Just create a Stripe token within your mobile app, and then pass the token to a Parse Cloud Code function to create a charge.”

Both companies have an impressive roster of clients. Along with the partnership, Stripe also announced that mobile-first startups like Lyft, Exec, SideCar, OrderAhead, Sesame, and Postmates enable payments using Stripe, and Parse works with major brands including Armani, Cisco, The Food Network, Toms, and Hipmunk. Both startups provide cross-platform solutions and are dedicating to creating a vibrant, reliable, and secure mobile ecosystem.

“Parse is all about making developers’ lives easier,” Parse CEO Ilya Sukhar wrote in an email. “We think the world of application development is far behind where it should be in terms of how easy it can be to create rich, engaging applications on mobile, desktop, and web. Accepting payments is a huge piece of functionality that’s typically painful, tedious, and complicated. Stripe has turned that upside down. The partnership came about from a longstanding friendship between the two companies. We’re both leading the charge in this new “developer-first” era of companies.”

These two companies are at the intersection of a few major trends happening in the tech world. Mobile, and specifically mobile commerce, is taking off, and the payments industry is being disrupted on all sides whether it is in terms of peer-to-peer payments, Bitcoins, or dongles. It is important for businesses of all sizes not only to have a mobile presence but also to try to  monetize on that presence in a way that provides meaningful returns.

This is one in a string of moves that Stripe has taken to focus on mobile. Stripe’s third announcement of the day was the release of updated versions of its iOS and Android libraries. Stripe and Parse are both based in San Francisco.

Photo Credit: Dulup/Flickr

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It may not be as trendy as “big data,” but IT automation software is still big business, and startups in this sector are pulling in massive funding rounds.

Virtualization giant VMware has invested $30 million into Puppet Labs, a Portland, Ore.-based provider of software for system administrators. As part of the funding, the companies formed a strategic partnership to deliver a more robust set of IT tools to customers.

Puppet Labs hopes to accelerate market adoption and secure high-profile customers in new geographies.

Ramin Sayar, the vice president of the virtualization and cloud management team at VMware, said in a statement that this will allow for “more extensive automation and orchestration solutions across infrastructure and application elements” for VMware-based private and public clouds, OpenStack and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Sayar revealed that a major focus for the partnership will be software-defined datacenters. He framed it as a win-win situation for both companies.

Puppet Labs has already integrated its flagship product, Puppet Enterprise, with VMware. Puppet Enterprise lets automatically manage virtual machines, and take advantage of VMware’s vSphere API. Going forward, the companies plan to collaborate on new products. 

Marionette image via eugene // Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

What’s a former Bush cabinet member to do? Advise tech startups, apparently.

Khosla Ventures and RiceHadleyGates are forming a strategic partnership. RiceHadleyGates is an international consulting firm founded by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. As part of this agreement, RHG will lend its expertise on international and domestic issues to Khosla portfolio companies as they face regulatory, political, and public policy issues.

The technology community is now global. Each country has its own set of laws, cultural mores, and political issues, not to mention Internet guidelines. There are emerging markets in all corners of the globe and teams are increasingly distributed across national borders. Maneuvering through this brave new world is challenging for anyone without an extensive background in international relations, and all the more so for young entrepreneurs. This relationship between Khosla and RHG is intended to give startups the advice they need to successfully navigate these murky seas.

During an interview with VentureBeat, RHG founding partner Anja Manuel said the firm already works with technology companies and has a range of expertise to offer, spanning business, operations, governance, and international policy. In many cases, the consultants will help Khosla’s startups figure out which emerging markets to enter from a strategic business perspective, as well as how to navigate the regulatory and governmental environment in those countries. RHG’s role will also be to provide expert insight into foreign affairs to help entrepreneurs understand the global picture.

“We consider ourselves a Silicon Valley firm,” Manuel said. “We can help them understand changes happening in those emerging markets. For example, we are helping one of our clients understand what’s going on with the debate over Internet freedom in India and then how to influence the debate. Then you look at how Twitter and Facebook are used as a megaphone and were catalysts of Arab Spring. These are interesting problems for the governments that are being affected, but difficult for the companies themselves who were thrust into this unintentionally.”

Khosla Ventures is a prestigious venture capital firm that invests in sustainability and IT technology, including clean energy, mobile, IT, cloud, big data, storage, health, food agriculture, and semi conductors. The firm firmly espouses the importance of building companies with “lasting significance” and extends its involvement with portfolio companies beyond financial backing.

“We view ourselves are operational and strategic partners,” said Khosla partner Samir Kaul in an interview with VentureBeat. “After working with Condi and RHG on a few projects, we thought about how we can broaden this relationship between our two groups. There are a lot of places in the world where RHG has great insights and experience that most venture capital firms just don’t have or wouldn’t be able to provide, but there are policy and regulatory issues that need to be understood, particularly for our companies as they grow and aspire to go global.”

Over the past couple of years, venture capitalists have started to put greater emphasis on their role as strategic advisors. Big-name firms have added personnel to help portfolio companies with PR, HR, marketing, finance, and recruiting. This agreement with RHG is an extension of that trend and a smart move for a firm like Khosla that leans towards investments that extend far beyond Silicon Valley.

Activision’s VP of mobile Greg Canessa discussed the game publishing giant’s move onstage today with IGN mobile gaming editor Justin Davis at VentureBeat’s GamesBeat conference.

Davis asked Canessa what happened between April, when Activision had no dedicated games in the appstore, and June, when the company decided to grow its mobile division.

“The thinking evolved,” Canessa said. “Customers are spending time on tablets and smartphones for an increasing proportion of the day. The technology for these devices is powerful, and they have reached the point where midcore and hardcore gaming experiences can be expressed and compelling.”

Canessa said Activision Mobile will focus on building a strong internal staff and growing organically. The company is somewhat late out of the gate on this front, which will affect the roadmap for growth. It will work on publishing its own games, while also providing tools for independent developers to launch their own projects, Canessa said.

“We want our third-party division to complement our first-party initiatives,” he said. “There is a vibrant and thriving indy development community, especially on mobile, but getting a game recognized on an app store is an enormous problem. This is an area Activation can help with.”

Activision offers Flurry an aggregated community of tens of millions of users, and Flurry will reciprocate with expertise, data analytics, and a monetization platform. Furthermore, by publishing games through Activision, third-party developers will also have access to big data and can use it to iterate their games.

As a result of this announcement, Activision Mobile has received a tremendous amount of inbound interest. While he cannot sit down with them all, Canessa said independent developers hold a fond place in his heart and he looks forward to providing a launching pad for creative, well-executed games.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Smartphone company HTC is investing $300 million in digital sound company Beats Electronics, the company told All Things Digital.

Along with the investment, HTC will form a strategic partnership with Beats to begin integrating Beats technology into its entire line of products.

The partnership is likely part of HTC’s effort to boost its brand awareness in the U.S. While it has a strong manufacturing business, HTC isn’t as well-known as a consumer brand compared to competitors like Samsung and Motorola.

Consumers can expect to see the first HTC product with Beats integrated technology before the end of 2011, according to the company.

The HTC partnership with Beats is exclusive on all smartphones, according to the company. Beats already has a deal with Hewlett Packard to integrate its technology within HP PCs and the HP TouchPad tablet.

The Skype service will be delivered through HDTVs through a Comcast adapter box (meaning anyone without an HD set is out of luck) and will require a high-quality video camera as well as custom remote control that enables texting capabilities, according to Comcast.

Subscribers will be able to use full screen video calling and instant messaging from Skype. However, voice calls to and from outside phone numbers won’t be included in the integration, since those options would compete against Comcast’s telephone services.

While Comcast didn’t mention how much the Skype integration services would cost customers, the company is likely to see a boost in revenue through additional subscription costs.

For Skype, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, the partnership with Comcast gives it an advantage over other video calling services, including Apple’s Facetime.

Comcast said it expects to begin testing the integrated Skype services for some of its 23 million internet subscribers in the next few months.

• Amira Pharma strikes GSK partnership on lung, heart drugs worth up to $425M (release)
• Wolters Kluwer Health takes stake in Logical Images (release)
• Gentiva Health acquires Home Health Care Affiliates for $55M (release)
• Compuware buys Hilgraeve to upgrade healthcare IT (release)
• Touchstone Health appoints Michael Muchnicki CEO (release)
• Australia’s Xenome names Ian Nesbit as CEO (release)

Amira Pharma strikes GSK partnership on lung, heart drugs worth up to $425M – Amira Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego biotech focused on drugs for lung and heart problems, struck a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline potentially worth $425 million in upfront and milestone payments.

Amira is developing anti-inflammatory drugs based on its understanding of immune-system elements called eicosanoids. These fatty molecules are produced by white blood cells when foreign threats are perceived, triggering several different types of inflammation, which can damage healthy tissue when it’s prolonged by allergies or autoimmune disease.

Diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, atherosclerosis, arthritis and psoriasis are often the result. Amira aims to defuse the underlying inflammation caused by eicosanoids by inhibiting “upstream” molecules that are necessary for their production.

The company’s two lead candidates have entered early stage, phase I human tests. One compound targets asthma; Amira hasn’t identified which diseases the second drug is being tested in.

Under the partnership, GSK will have rights to develop and commercialize all of Amira’s compounds in its current development program, which are technically known as FLAP inhibitors (FLAP standing for 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein). In return, Amira will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, milestones related to development and potential tiered royalty payments.

Wolters Kluwer Health takes stake in Logical Images – Logical Images, a Rochester, N.Y., developer of medical image-analysis tools, sold a minority equity stake to Wolters Kluwer Health, a healthcare-information company in Conshohocken, Pa. The companies didn’t announce terms of the deal.

Logical Images makes visual healthcare tools for physicians and patients. Its products include VisualDx, a diagnostic tool designed to help physicians identify some 900 visually identifiable diseases, and VisualDxHealth, which does roughly the same thing for interested consumers. The companies said they intend to integrate VisualDx with Wolters’ product Clin-eguide, a “decision support” tool for physicians.