Recent posts and comments

• 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 »

• Aileron Raises $10 Million

  Cambridge-based biopharmaceutical company Aileron Therapeutics, which is developing peptide drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, has raised $10 million in a private placement of preferred stock, the company... Read more »

• The Funded Opens Individual VC Ratings to Public View

  Gossip and the inside dope are hard to resist—especially when they pertain to people who might hold your company’s fate in the palm of their hands. So, when you think about... Read more »

• Life Sciences 2028—Three Snapshots of the Future

  A genetic disease probability chart for each person. Drugs prescribed, based on genetic profiles, for those most likely to respond well. The integration of molecular and cellular biology with engineering to... Read more »

• Twist of Fate—How A Band of VCs Recruited a Scientific Dream Team to Control Our Cells’ Destinies

  “Like all VCs,” Amir Nashat is saying, “we come late to the story.”

  Nashat is talking about the formation of Fate Therapeutics, and in one sense what he’s saying is... Read more »

• Icahn Turns Up Heat, Files Suit to Force Biogen Idec to Turn Over Records of Failed Sale

  Activist investor Carl Icahn launched another salvo in his battle to force a sale of Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB), filing a suit yesterday in a Delaware court demanding that the... Read more »

• Iomega Accepts $213M EMC Purchase Offer

  It’s official. Just weeks after EMC sweetened its previously spurned purchase offer, San Diego-based storage maker Iomega has formally accepted a takeover bid from the Hopkington, MA-based data management and infrastructure... Read more »

• New IDG Capital Fund Thinking Big, Thinking Global

  No press release. No fanfare. Just Pat McGovern talking to VentureWire. And so, the existence of IDG Capital was brought to public attention yesterday.

  The IDG chairman is forming the new... Read more »

• A Word About World Wide Wade—the Debut

  Xconomy is all about hyperlocal coverage of the innovation community in greater Boston and New England. But we also know that our readers have many interests that reach far beyond our... Read more »

• Harvard’s Guru of Tech Transfer: More Seed Funding, Industry Deals Afoot—and the Social Mission is Key

  Harvard has taken a bit of a bashing over the years on the tech transfer front. After all, MIT, the champion of university technology transfer and licensing, is right down the... Read more »

• Lattice Engines Nets $1.7M in Series A Round

  Boston-based Lattice Engines, a maker of business decision analytics software, has completed a $1.7 million Series A funding found led by Battery Ventures, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory... Read more »