Recent posts and comments

• Fate Therapeutics Chooses CEO—Will Be Based in San Diego

  After a months-long hunt, Fate Therapeutics, the superstar-laden, bi-coastal stem cell startup backed chiefly by Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners and Arch Venture Partners of Seattle, has named its CEO, the... Read more »

• Biogen Idec Sets Date for Showdown With Icahn, Proxy Battle Begins

  The meeting date has been set, the battle lines drawn, proxy salvos lobbed. And one famous Biogen Idec board member goes unnamed.

  That’s the latest in the struggle between Biogen Idec... Read more »

• Eons Creates New Chief Product Officer Position, Looks to the Cloud for Some Services

  After losing its second chief technology officer in seven months, Eons is looking to revamp the position by creating a new chief product officer job that combines technology and product development... Read more »

• Commenting on: How Massachusetts Gets Her Groove Back

  Robert said: Hi John, Appreciate your comment. Just one point of clarification on solution No. 2 (and we realize just posting a PP... Read more »

• Who Knew? Take 2: More Strange-But-True Details of Boston’s Innovation Leaders

  Personal insights. Conversation starters. Gossip. Whatever the excuse, it’s high time for the second installment in Xconomy’s Who Knew? series, our wildly popular roundup of little-known, offbeat facts about the New... Read more »

• Leostream Channels $3M Series A Funding

  Waltham, MA-based desktop virtualization software company Leostream, which lets users sign on to personalized desktop environments remotely, has completed a $3 million Series A funding round led by Meakem Becker... Read more »

• Eons Loses Another CTO in Management Split

  Barely three months after it announced the hiring of new chief technology officer Eric Golin, some four months after the firm’s previous CTO Reed Sturtevant left to head a new Microsoft... Read more »

• As Y Combinator Prepares to Open Summer Camp, Paul Graham Speaks

  Y Combinator bills itself as “a new kind of venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups.” The company also has a different kind of headquarters, one that alternates between Cambridge,... Read more »

• Moldflow Bought for $297M

  Framingham, MA-based Moldflow (NASDAQ:MFLO), a maker of software to aid in the design and manufacturing of plastic components, will be acquired by California’s Autodesk for $22 a share, or... Read more »

• Just Turned 25, Pegasystems See Big Ride Ahead

  In 1975, at age 19, former New England junior chess champion and then Dartmouth College student Alan Trefler decided to enter the World Open chess tournament in New York—and play for... Read more »

• Workshop Tackles the $64M Question: Is Boston’s Venture Ecosystem Losing More Ground to Silicon Valley?

  Is the Boston venture capital community losing some of its edge? Vinit Nijhawan is concerned it might be. Starting at noon today, a select group of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, venture fund... Read more »

• Venture Performance Strong in 2007—Questions Raised About New Year

  The data are in on fourth quarter 2007 venture capital returns, and it was a very good year for venture funds. They returned 19.5 percent for the year, far outstripping the... Read more »

• Are You, Were You, Will You Be Ready for IPO?

  Late last January, on the heels of BG Medicine and Elixir Pharmaceuticals pulling their planned initial public offerings, I moderated a panel at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium examining the IPO climate and... Read more »

• Top First Quarter New England Venture Investments

  Updated: It wasn’t a pretty quarter—Q1 2008, that is—for venture deals, particularly in New England. But the 11 area firms listed below didn’t seem to be complaining, as all received... Read more »

• Aurora, Draper Labs, and BAE Team, IBM’s Merger Machine Steams, Lonelygirl15 Beams, & More Deals News

  New England firms had a dismal first quarter in terms of securing venture capital investment, but the past week saw a few of them make stabs at turning around Q2, in... Read more »

• New England Venture Investment Falls Sharply in Q1—But Exactly How Far Is the Question

  Venture investments in New England firms were down in the first quarter of 2008. Way down. But just how far they tumbled is a matter of debate—as regional numbers from the... Read more »

• VisEn Medical Sees $5M in Expanded Series B Round

  Woburn, MA-based VisEn Medical, which develops fluorescence technology for non-invasive in vivo imaging, today announced it has raised $5 million in an expanded Series B financing round led by Merck... Read more »

• GM Savors A123Systems and Coskata Deals Amid Dreams of Clean Vehicles That Can’t Crash

  When General Motors unveiled its lavish 330-acre, Eero Saarinen-designed technical center in 1956, company president Harlow Curtice cruised to the podium in a shark-finned, bubble-domed Firebird II gas turbine experimental car.... Read more »

• Biogen Idec Announces Its Own Director Slate—Digs in Against Icahn

  Biogen Idec’s battle with Carl Icahn is heating up in advance of the firm’s upcoming annual meeting—for which a date has yet to be announced. The Cambridge, MA-based biotech giant today... Read more »

• BSX Snares CryoCor for $17.6 Million

  Boston Scientific will acquire San Diego-based CryoCor, with which it has an existing agreement to develop treatments for cardiac arrhythmia, for approximately $17.6 million, the company announced today. Under the... Read more »