07/29/11

Lucid Commerce Gets $8M More

Seattle-based Lucid Commerce, an advertising tech company focused on TV marketers, said today it has raised $8 million in Series C financing led by Rho Ventures. StarVest Partners, Positec USA, and previous investors OVP Venture Partners and Greycroft Partners also participated in the round. Lucid Commerce was founded in 2005 and is led by CEO Tyson Roberts. Lucid’s TV analytics agency, Proceed Media Group, is based in Seattle and New York.

07/28/11

Mirador Nabs EU Approval

Seattle-based Mirador Biomedical, the developer of a device to prevent dangerous bleeding episodes in hospitals, said today it has gotten clearance from regulators to start selling the product in the European Union. The company won FDA approval last October, and since then, its device has been used in more than 2,000 procedures in more than 50 U.S. hospitals, who are looking to avoid mistaken insertions of catheters into the wrong kind of blood vessel.”With U.S. sales picking up briskly, we look forward to expanding our commercialization effort in the EU,” said Mirador CEO Karl Schmidt, in a statement.

07/25/11

SonoSite Reports Narrow Q2 Loss

SonoSite (NASDAQ: SONO), the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, said today it had a net loss of about $1.1 million in the quarter that ended June 30, compared with a profit of $1.9 million in the same period a year earlier. The company’s sales climbed 18 percent to $72.7 million in the most recent quarter, but the increased revenue was offset by increasing expenses, particularly on new strategic initiatives the company is advancing in the wake of its 2010 acquisition of VisualSonics.

Another $20M for Motif Investing

Motif Investing, the San Mateo, CA-based startup developing a new investing portal, disclosed its $7 million Series A round round just weeks ago. But today the company says that it has raised $20 million more, in a Series B round led by new investor Ignition Partners of Seattle. The round was joined by existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and Foundation Capital. Founders Hardeep Walia, a former Microsoft executive, and Tarig Halily, a former hedge fund analyst, say they expect a fall 2011 launch for their site, which will allow individuals to invest around themes or “motifs” such as cloud computing.

07/21/11

Flux Drive Lands $1.5M

Cleantech startup Flux Drive has raised $1.5 million to develop its energy-saving magnetic drives for electric motors. The company, based in Sumner, WA, says it can cut the daily energy consumption of pump and blower motors by up to 75 percent. Flux Drive’s product attaches to electric motors, like the ones that power big ventilation systems, and uses a magnetic system to speed them up or down depending on how much output is needed. The investment was led by Northwest Energy Angels and the Alliance of Angels.

07/20/11

Concur Invests $5M in Yapta

Seattle-based Yapta, an online airfare and hotel rate tracking service, has a new partner: Concur (NASDAQ:CNQR), the online expense and travel management service for businesses, is making a $5 million strategic investment. The deal includes Concur using Yapta’s price tools for its TripIt Pro service, which helps business travelers manage their itineraries. Concur bought TripIt earlier this year for up to $120 million. Concur has made several other deals this year with an eye to expanding its travel footprint.

07/19/11

Lockerz Adds $1.5M

[Updated at 1 pm with detail] Seattle social networking startup Lockerz is adding some more financing—but it’s not as big as last time around. A new SEC filing indicates the company raised about $1.5 million of a round that could be worth about $1.75 million, offering equity along with options or warrants on shares. After initially declining any comment, Lockerz now says the money is related to a recent acquisition, which appears to mean its grab of AddtoAny. Lockerz has previously raised about $60 million in venture backing. The site is trying to blend gamification and e-commerce elements with social networking, handing out redeemable points to its target audience of teens and young adults for their social sharing activities.

Winshuttle Acquires ShareVis

Bothell, WA-based business software company Winshuttle is growing again—this time, it’s acquired privately held ShareVis, based in Carlsbad, CA. Terms weren’t disclosed. Winshuttle makes software that lets companies “shuttle” huge reams of data between different programs—for instance, bridging the gap between familiar programs like Excel and sophisticated business-management software from German software giant SAP. ShareVis does something similar with Microsoft products, including SharePoint. Winshuttle says it is integrating the ShareVis technology, and that the employees will stay in place.

07/12/11

Lockerz Acquires AddToAny

Seattle social networking startup Lockerz has acquired AddToAny, a software company that provides “share” buttons on websites. Terms were not disclosed. Lockerz, led by Amazon.com veteran Kathy Savitt, is positioning itself as a kind of younger alternative to Facebook. It’s organized around “PTZ,” a system of points that users gather by doing regular social functions and can redeem for shopping discounts. Lockerz has raised a bunch of venture capital, and recently acquired photo sharing service Plixi.

Swype Adds $6M

Seattle mobile-startup Swype, which makes input software for mobile devices, has closed a $6 million Series C financing round led by Ignition Partners and previous investors Samsung Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Benaroya Capital, Docomo Capital. Swype’s main product allows people using touchscreen devices like smartphones enter text by sliding their finger across the virtual keyboard, rather than tapping out each letter. The software can predict which letter you’re trying to type by analyzing the path your finger traces on the screen (it also has old-school tap mode). The financing brings Swype’s total fundraising to about $14 million. The company is a descendant of Tegic Communications—Swype’s Cliff Kushler was one of the inventors of Tegic’s T9 text-predicting software for feature phones. Others from the Tegic team went on to work at Nuance, after it acquired Tegic from AOL.

Insider Trader Pleads Guilty in SeaGen Case

Zishen Fan, of Chino Hills, CA, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to charges that he traded on insider information on Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN) in 2010, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Western Washington. Fan’s brother, Zizhong “James” Fan, now deceased, was at the time a manager of clinical programming at Seattle Genetics, and was accused by securities regulators of providing tips to Zishen that enabled the brothers to make more than $700,000 on the nonpublic information, officials said. Zishen Fan could face up to 20 years in prison when he faces sentencing on Oct. 7.

07/11/11

Primus Sold to Precision Castparts

Oak Hill Capital Partners said today that it will sell Bellevue, WA-based aerospace components manufacturer Primus International to Precision Castparts of Portland, OR, for $900 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011. Oak Hill acquired Primus in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. Primus employs 1,500 people across seven sites, including three in the Seattle area, to manufacture metallic and composite parts, kits, and assemblies for such aircraft as Boeing’s 737, 777 and 787 and Airbus’s A320, A330 and A350. Mark Donegan, chairman and CEO of Precision Castparts, said the Primus management team, led by current chief Jim Hoover, will remain with the company.

Hutch, Sangamo Win $20M HIV Grant

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has secured a five-year, $20 million research project from the National Institutes of Health to study a method in which a patient’s T-cells can be modified to prevent HIV infections. The Hutch’s Keith Jerome and Hans-Peter Kiem are the lead investigators on the grant, and they are collaborating with scientists at Richmond, CA-based Sangamo Biosciences (NASDAQ: SGMO), the University of Washington, Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope in Duarte, CA, and Seattle Children’s Hospital. The approach seeks to eliminate a protein on immune cells, called CCR5, which the HIV virus uses as a gateway to infect and damage the immune system.

07/08/11

Finsphere Adds $1.75M

Bellevue, WA-based Finsphere, which makes mobile software to help banks and other institutions fight financial fraud and identity theft, has added $1.75 million in financing from undisclosed investors. Paperwork filed with the SEC shows this latest round is in addition to a previous $1.75 million financing that Finsphere reported in March. Finsphere is led by chairman and CEO Mike Buhrmann. Investors listed on the company’s website are Mohr Davidow Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and Frazier Technology Ventures.

07/06/11

Zillow Estimates $12-$14 Share Price

Online real-estate company Zillow has updated its SEC papers for a planned IPO, saying it expects shares to have an initial price of between $12 and $14. That could bring the company about $55.7 million and put its value close to $380 million, not including options for underwriters to cover over-allotments. The top end of the price range values Zillow at more than 10 times its nearly $30.5 million in revenues for 2010, although 2011 first-quarter revenues more than doubled to about $11 million compared with a year earlier.

PayScale Lands $7M

PayScale, a Seattle company that provides real-time compensation data to employers and employees, says it has raised a $7 million financing round to expand sales and marketing. SAP Ventures was the lead investor, joined by Burke Dale Victor, Fluke Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, SAP Ventures, and Trinity Ventures. In a statement, CEO Mike Metzger says PayScale has more than doubled its business subscription customers in the past 18 months. PayScale says its dataset now includes nearly 30 million unique career profiles.

07/01/11

Zynga Files for $1B IPO

Several days later than expected, San Francisco-based Zynga, the maker of blockbuster social and mobile games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, has filed registration papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for an initial public offering. The company, which has opened offices in Seattle and Boston in the past year, says it hopes to raise $1 billion in the sale of common stock. The filing shows that Zynga’s largest shareholders are CEO Mark Pincus (16 percent) and venture firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (11 percent), Institutional Venture Partners (6.1 percent), Foundry Group (6.1 percent), Avalon Ventures (6.1 percent), DST Group (5.8 percent) and Union Square Ventures (5.5 percent).

06/30/11

RevenueLoan is now Lighter Capital

RevenueLoan, an alternative financing service for entrepreneurs, is changing its name and broadening its focus. Founder and CEO Andy Sack writes about the name change and hints at the larger implications in this blog post, which says the Seattle-based startup’s team has “realized there’s a lot more opportunity to disrupt the small business growth capital and lending incumbents.”
RevenueLoan debuted about a year ago, centered around an investment approach known as revenue-based financing. Basically, investors get a portion of future revenues in exchange for their capital, rather than equity or debt to a traditional bank. As Sack wrote a bit earlier on his blog, he’d determined that a change was in order because that particular investment vehicle was likely “a product and not a company.”
RevenueLoan previously raised $6 million from Voyager Capital, Summit Capital, and Founder’s Co-op, the seed-stage firm helmed by Sack and Chris DeVore.

NanoString Adds $2.5M Financing

NanoString Technologies, the Seattle-based maker of genetic analysis instruments, has collected $2.5 million in new financing, according to a regulatory filing. NanoString’s financing, which could be worth as much as $14 million over time, comes in the form of debt that be converted later into equity holdings, as well as warrants to buy shares in the future at a certain price, according to the filing. NanoString last raised $30 million in an equity financing two years ago.

06/29/11

Animoto Pockets $25 Million

New York-based Animoto, which lets anyone create professional-looking videos on the fly, raised a $25 million Series C, according to VentureWire. Animoto’s Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology analyzes and combines images, video clips and music—allowing the average Joe to achieve the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques that professional TV and film producers can. The funding round was led by Spectrum Equity Investors, with participation from previous investors Madrona Venture Group and Amazon.