New Funding:
- Motorola, Intel and three venture capital firms have invested $16 million in Dexterra Inc., a Seattle area company whose software runs on wireless devices and connects mobile workers to billing records, parts inventory and other back-end office information.
- Sapias Inc., provider of enterprise-class mobile resource management solutions, has secured $8 million in financing led by Alloy Ventures and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
- MedManage Systems Inc., provider of prescription drug-sampling solutions, has received $6 million in Series C Preferred funding. Versant Ventures led the new round of financing. Other investors joining the round include Lilly Ventures and existing investor, Prism Venture Partners. Proceeds will be used in development.
- Ketera Technologies, provider of 'on demand' spend management solutions, has secured $10 million in its follow-on funding provided by Integral Capital Group along with current investors Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital.
- Scalix Corp. - San Mateo, CA; developer of email and calendaring platform based on Linux; $6 million; round not specified; Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV).
Liquidity:
- Orative, a San Jose-based telephony software company, has acquired the assets of Bonita Software, based in Raleigh, N.C. Under the terms of the agreement, Orative acquired several patent pending technologies, tools, and other intellectual property.
- Interface Software, a provider of CRM solutions enabling professional services firms and similar relationship-based organizations to create the Relationship Intelligence, acquired the assets of Scout Solutions, the developer of its Aptus CRM product, for an undisclosed amount.
- Number Six Software, a software management firm, acquired Praxis Solutions, a software productivity and engineering firm, for an undisclosed amount.
- Nanosys filed to go public, see below for more information.
- Silver Lake and Texas Pacific Group are acquiring McAfee's sniffer division for $275 million. I remember the first time I got my hands on a sniffer, it laid bare all of the networks secrets... literally.
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3344431
- Integration software maker Tibco on Thursday said it plans to acquire British software company Staffware in a cash and stock transaction valued at $217 million.
Main Dish:
- good article on Channel9 in the Seattle PI. What I think is interesting is that the newspaper is coming to the conclusion that the best things happening in media are happening outside of the mainstream media.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/170561_msftnotebook26.html
- Nanosys' SEC docs are dissected over at Nanobot, lot's of good information to digest before you do your next nano deal. The following is totally off the topic, I was on a panel discussing venture capital at a London School of Business event with Jen Fonstad from DFJ. She mentioned nanotech as a hot investment area, and promptly threw out the 'smart pants' example! I had to laugh because whenever I hear something from DFJ, it's a sure thing that smart pants will come up!
http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_nanobot_archive.html#108276188830736148
- CEO pay is grossly disproportionate to the rest of the employee population, and to the value they create (or don't in many cases)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/170554_onthejob26.html
- President Bush called for an elimination of taxes on broadband, and for 100% coverage in something like 3-4 years. Sounds good on the surface, but one thing I have learned is that taxes on telecom end up paying for deployments and support is less populated rural areas, still a damn big part of the U.S.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63218,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5
- VentureOne's Q1 financing statistics are out
http://www.ventureone.com/ii/1Q04FinancingPreview.xls
- by the way, did anyone save the Merrill Lynch On Demand Index that I linked to last week. The report was pulled from the ML servers and I only have a hard copy.
- double feedback loops. Is the cat teaching the mouse... does your company learn from feedback?
http://jstrande.typepad.com/blog/2004/04/the_mouse_teach.html
- lot's of venture money going into biotech... again. By the way, the Mercury put in place a registration requirement for their website, check out the URL that is generated for an article.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/8521767.htm?ERIGHTS=7395071353112036813mercurynews::[email protected]&KRD_RM=4onponstsqqqlllkkkkkkkklmp|Jeffrey|Y
- Google struggles with VC dreams
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-5199555.html?tag=nefd.top
- I read this post in Ventureblog and thought about the similarities to how I have been feeling lately. The fact of the matter is that in spite of being a VC for 6 years I do not think of myself as a very good VC. This business relies on 2 fundamental skillsets, the first being the ability to find deals and get in at a good valuation on good terms, the second being everything that happens after you become an investor. I think I'm good on the later and not so good on the former... let me explain. I can find interesting deals, no problem at all, but the problem I have is that I don't particularly care about prices and once I find something I'm interested in I kind of get tunnel vision on that to the exclusion of other companies in the same space. Terms bore me, and I don't particularly care about how elegant the financing mechanism are, in fact, financial details bore me to a large extent. For me it has always been about building things, which is why I so much enjoy being an advisor and participant in companies after they are financed. Technology still fascinates me, and I love being around smart and energetic people, which has always been contagious in my view. At any rate, all of this has me wondering whether or not I want to stay in VC, because to be a good VC requires that you get good at the buying and selling of things, not just the building.
http://www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2004/000533.html
- oceans are rising faster near the coast than in mid-ocean, according to this research. It's interesting, but not totally shocking because we've known for years that the ocean surface has high spots and depressions (El Nino is a big bulge in the surface).
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994903
- cost vs. quality in offshoring.
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/5787.aspx
- jeez, a 400gb disk drive... just what one needs for a killer home media server.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1572234,00.asp
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