Todd Park, co-founder of Watertown, MA-based Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN) and San Mateo, CA-based Maria Health, has been tapped to serve as chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Athenahealth announced. To satisfy government requirements, Park will resign this month from his post on the board of Athenahealth, a provider of  Web-based tools used by medical practices to managing billing, electronic medical records (EMRs), and other functions.

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The healthcare industry is facing a shakeup in the way it uses information technology, and this is creating all sorts of opportunities for entrepreneurs in New England. This was the take-home message from some of the top minds in the Health 2.0 field, who we gathered together last week for a jam-packed panel discussion at the XSITE event at Boston University.

We heard from expert panelists on the front lines of this transformation in healthcare—such as John Halamka, chief information officer of both CareGroup Health System/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and Joseph Kvedar, the director of Partners HeathCare’s Center for Connected Health—about how their respective organizations are changing the way they use the Web and other technologies to improve the delivery of medical treatment, among other aspects of healthcare. And IBM’s Bruno Nardone, the company’s national segment leader for state and local healthcare, filled us in on how Big Blue is working in the Boston area on such initiatives as a virtual radiology theater to enable new ways for radiologists and their colleagues to interact online.

It’s no mistake that there was a big crowd of more than 100 people for the Health 2.0 panel; there’s a lot doing at the crossroads of IT and healthcare these days. For one, President Obama is calling for nationwide adoption of electronic health records to help control the rising costs of healthcare in the U.S., and his administration tucked $19 billion into the historic $787 billion stimulus package this year to cover some of the costs of the major undertaking. That’s a potential boon for Boston-area companies that provide electronic health records such as Athenahealth (NASDAQ:ATHN). Locally, we’ve seen a recent surge in startup activity in the Health 2.0 arena, including the launches of young firms like Connected Health and Life Image. (For details on more startups in this field, Wade delineated Boston’s growing Health 2.0 cluster about a year ago.)

Here are some of the bigger themes covered during the Health 2.0 discussion:

—Leveraging technology to reach patients wherever they need care. At Partners’ Center for Connected Health, Kvedar says, his team of doctors and innovators are searching for ways to …Next Page »

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MedAptus, a Boston-based provider of billing software for medical practices and hospitals, reports it has raised $6 million in a financing. The financing, led by previous investor Boston Millennia Partners, is intend to expand MedAptus’s “Intelligent Charge Capture” software business. MedAptus says that one feature of its software is to enhance organizations’ investments in electronic medical records. The electronic records have become a hot topic since President Barack Obama allocated $19 billion for EMRs in his $787 billion federal stimulus package passed by Congress in February. (Here’s a recent interview I did on the topic with Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush.)

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It was nice to see a little venture activity among New England’s biotechs this past week, but overall things have been relatively quiet.

—Regulus Therapeutics, a Carlsbad, CA-based spinoff of Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY), took a step toward greater independence with $20 million in Series A financing from Alnylam and Carlsbad’s Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ISIS), which joined with Alnylam to form Regulus in 2007. Regulus, which is working to develop drugs based on the relatively new field of microRNA, also changed its corporate status from an LLC to a C-corporation to pave the way for contributions from outside investors down the road.

—Acusphere (OTC:ACUS) of Watertown, MA, revealed plans to move its headquarters from there to Tewksbury, MA, and to cut 40 jobs, representing about two-thirds of its staff. Acusphere is seeking FDA approval cardiac imaging agent, perflubutane polymer microspheres (Imagify).

—Venrock Associates of Cambridge, MA; New York; Palo Alto, CA; and Israel launched Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners with a $194 million fund to invest in public and late-stage private healthcare companies.

—Ryan caught a glimpse of a nascent Boston-area biotech called Novophage that’s out to turn bacteria-infecting viruses into a new weapon in the rapidly escalating battle against antibiotic-resistant microbes like MRSA. The startup, whose scientific founders include MIT’s Bob Langer and Gregory Stephanopoulos, Boston University’s James Collins, and …Next Page »

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Most doctors in the U.S. have never heard of Athenahealth, the Watertown, MA-based firm offering Web-based software for managing billing, electronic medical records (EMRs), and other functions in physician practices. But the federal government plans to invest $19 billion to make funds available for doctors to switch from the usual paper-based systems to electronic medical records, giving them a new reason to learn more about Athenahealth (NASDAQ:ATHN) and its offerings. I caught up last week with Jonathan Bush, the outspoken CEO of Athenahealth, to get the lowdown on how the company is seizing this multibillion-dollar opportunity.

Bush, the first cousin of former President George W. Bush, has his doubts about the program. For one thing, the $19 billion isn’t a lot of money for its ambitious purpose, and for another he says that he wants to know what specific standards doctors will be held to in their use of federally subsidized electronic medical records. The $19 billion is part of the broader, $787 billion stimulus package passed in Congress last month. Some of the details such as a murky requirement that doctors will have to show “meaningful use” of electronic records to get the federal dollars have yet to be fully explained. Athenahealth is hoping that the requirement means doctors will have to actually use the electronic records and integrate them into their practices, playing into the company’s strengths in providing software and online services that touch multiple aspects of medical practices.

In any case, doctors are going to get a bigger dose of Athenahealth and its chief executive. The firm revealed during its earnings call last month that it plans to increase its investment in sales and marketing this year. And here’s a link to Bush’s colorful TV appearance two weeks ago on CNBC.

The interview below captures Bush’s thoughts about the $19 billion that the government plans to inject into his industry and its likely impact on Athenahealth. (And if you can’t tell from the interview, Bush hints that he has some obvious philosophical differences with the stimulus package.)

Xconomy: Do you think the government’s spending on EMRs will be effective?

Bush: Obviously, the standards are still up in air …Next Page »

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As venture-backed tech and life sciences companies around the country are hunkering down to figure out how to survive the downturn, the same can be said for the venture backers themselves. That was one of the interesting observations I heard during a recent interview in San Francisco with Bryan Roberts, a partner who specializes in healthcare investing for one of the oldest and most successful venture firms in the country, Venrock Associates.

Venrock, the venture capital fund started by the Rockefeller family in 1969, has a history of getting in on the ground floor of some of the biggest life sciences companies ever formed. It was an early backer of San Diego-based Idec Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA-based Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and San Diego-based Illumina. Some of its more recent early-stage bets have been on Fate Therapeutics (which has ties to all three Xconomy network cities), Watertown, MA-based Athenahealth and Cambridge, MA-based Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, as well as Seattle-based Trubion Pharmaceuticals.

The downturn is making Venrock “pickier,” but it hasn’t caused the firm to change any fundamental strategies, Roberts says. Venrock has a $600 million fund that it looks to spread its capital from the Rockefellers, endowments and foundations across emerging companies in information technology and healthcare. The split is about 60/40 between the two sectors, with some new investments popping up in energy, Roberts says. Venrock is still following its blueprint of the past five years, which is to invest in a mix of very early stage seed opportunities with as little as $250,000, all the way up through investments in public companies of $25 million. The firm still favors disruptive technologies over what it considers “incremental, lockstep stuff,” Roberts says. But one key difference is that Venrock is now applying a little more scrutiny to colleagues in the venture world than it once did, Roberts says.

“We’re putting a lot of care into syndicate formation. You’d like that the investors you invest with today will still be here in four or five years when the company needs them,” Roberts says. “It’s unclear what the shakeout will be. The same shakeout there will be on the company side, we may see on the investor side as well.”

The investors who will make it through the downturn—no shock here—are ones that can point to better than average returns, he says. “The mean return on healthcare in the last decade is neck and neck with Treasuries, which is an ugly notion,” Roberts says. “There will be much more of a premium on performance.”

As for new company ideas, he said he’s still seeing interesting seed-stage investing opportunities, as well as later-stage. One difference is that Venrock is now asking more questions and pushing harder on entrepreneurs’ assumptions than it once did. But he’s clearly still in business, and hasn’t completely lost a sense of humor. When my interview time was up, he was sitting back to listen to a pitch from the “the next great medical device company.” Since the pitch hadn’t even started yet, he was just kidding around. But it might be worth checking back in a few months to see if he actually invested or not.

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The news was mostly good for Boston-area life sciences firms this past week, with some money raised, some deals done, and some intriguing new technologies unveiled.

—Luke talked to Tod Woolf, CEO of RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII), about the tremendous challenge of delivering RNAi-based drugs—and how the Worcester, MA-based firm plans to overcome it. Its goal: an oral pill that uses RNA interference to combat inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, atherosclerosis, and Type 2 diabetes.

—New England Patriots owner the Kraft Group is reportedly looking for tenants for a 1.6-million-square-foot biotech office park it’s planning to build near Foxborough’s Gillette Stadium.

—Pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) unveiled plans for an independent research unit—located in Cambridge, England, and Cambridge, MA—aimed at developing stem-cell-based treatments for multiple diseases.

—Ascent Therapeutics finally lifted the lid on its technology. Ryan learned that the Cambridge, MA-based biotech is developing a new class of molecules, which it calls “pepducins,” designed to target an important type of molecule on cell surfaces in a new way. The technology intrigued investors enough to help Ascent raise $19 million in a Series A venture capital round from the likes of HealthCare Ventures, Novartis Option Fund, and TVM Capital.

—Cambridge, MA-based ZafGen, which is developing fat-fighting drugs, raised $14 million in a Series B round from Third Rock Ventures and Atlas Venture.

—An FDA panel found in a 10-8 vote that Targanta Therapeutics (NASDAQ:TARG) has not yet proved that its experimental antibiotic oritavancin is safe and effective. Though the FDA …Next Page »

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A powerful anecdote about the ills of U.S. health care this past election season was about President-elect Barack Obama’s mother, who struggled to navigate the medical system while suffering from cancer, which eventually killed her in 1995.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I talked to Anshul Amar, chief technology officer of Maria Health, a stealthy San Mateo, CA, startup developing a service with online tools to help patients manage their health care. We at Xconomy don’t usually write about tech firms outside of our three main coverage areas (Boston, San Diego, and Seattle), but Maria has generated sufficient buzz here in the Boston market to justify a post.

Why the buzz here in the Hub? For one, Maria was co-founded early this year by Todd Park, co-founder and former chief development officer of Watertown, MA-based health-care software firm Athenahealth (NASDAQ:ATHN). Park, a board member of Athenahealth, stepped down from his full-time post there earlier this year, not too long after the company raised $113 million in its September 2007 initial public offering. The other co-founder of Maria and the young firm’s CEO, Giovanni Colella, is a former chief executive of another notable health-care IT company, RelayHealth, based in Atlanta.

According to Maria’s cryptic Web site, the firm also has on staff former employees of Internet giant Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO), but Amar declined to name names.

Maria has pretty well managed to stay off the press’s radar—other than brief mentions in recent stories primarily on Athenahealth in the Washington Times and health-care IT blog HisTalk—and Maria’s Amar told me that the firm plans to keep most details of its technology and service under wraps until sometime in 2009. Amar would not say much more on the topic than the following: …Next Page »

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For the better part of a decade, advocates of computing in healthcare have fixated on the dream of paperless medicine—a new era in which every patient’s medical records would be stored digitally and every hospital, physician’s practice, pharmacy, and insurer would have access to these records, reducing paperwork costs and medical errors. But for all of the time stakeholders have spent squabbling over standards for electronic medical records, and all of the money providers have spent rolling out costly and controversial proprietary medical-database systems, these dreams haven’t gotten very far. More than 80 percent of medical practices still keep paper records, according to a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Meanhile, the Internet has given birth to a totally new way of doing business and interacting with consumers: Web 2.0. And in a rush of Web-based health initiatives that has picked up significant steam just in the last few weeks, entrepreneurs and programmers are leapfrogging over the problem of electronic medical records to tackle much broader (and ultimately more important) issues such as how to use the Internet to track people’s health, how to use the power of social networking to improve standards of treatment, and how to deliver medical advice over the Web.

And it’s not surprising—given the Boston area’s dense concentration of high-tech hospitals, leading universities and medical schools, computing hardware and software companies, and Web startups—that much of this “Health 2.0″ revolution is happening right here in the Bay State. Last week’s launch of Boston-based American Well is only the most recent local example, and it’s sure to be followed by more.

The area’s Health 2.0 cluster may not be quite as big as the New England clean energy cluster, but it’s larger and more varied than some other clusters we’ve covered, such as the music and technology cluster and the Internet video cluster. It’s also growing fast, with new companies being launched every month. And it has all the hallmarks of success, including buy-in from big outside players like Microsoft (which is partnering with American Well to roll out its HealthVault service) and Google (which recently signed up Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts as its first partners for its Google Health project in the hospital and insurance industries, respectively).

What qualifies a company as a Health 2.0 venture? In this list, we’re including any New England-based company that uses the Web or other digital media to deliver software or services intended to help people manage their own health or to help providers manage healthcare delivery. That means we’ve left out a number of local firms, such as Health Dialog, D2Hawkeye, MedAptus, MedVentive, and mTuitive, that could be classified as “e-health” companies, since they are in the business of collecting or analyzing data that’s used to improve patient health or healthcare administration. But if a company doesn’t tap into Web 2.0 technologies and/or use digital media to communicate with consumers, we didn’t include them here.

As always, we invite you to send comments and additions to editors@xconomy.com.

American Well
Boston, MA

A 24/7 online network that matches consumers seeking medical care with doctors for live consultations via Webcam, instant message, or telephone (profiled in Xconomy last week).

Athenahealth
Watertown, MA

Subscription, Web-based software aimed at helping individual clinics and provider networks manage billing and electronic medical records. (Athena shelved plans for a secondary public offering in February 2008.)

Body1
Cambridge, MA

Creates online, interactive multimedia training courses for healthcare executives and clinicians as well as consumer-oriented, advertising-supported health information portals such as Heart1.com.

…Next Page »

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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 separating myth from reality (IPOs, for instance, are NOT exit events).

The panel was offered by the MIT Enterprise Forum. My knowledgeable, and entertaining guests, included Jonathan Bush, Jr., chairman and CEO of Athenahealth; Gail Goodman, president and CEO of Constant Contact; Jonathan “Jono” Goldstein, managing director of TA Associates; and Bruce Evans, managing partner of Summit Partners. Both Athenahealth and Constant Contact made their public market debuts last fall.

We talked IPO, we talked SPO, we talked lockups, and we talked growth private equity. There were tales of road-show perks—private jets, fine scotch, and black sedans—and the question of who really pays for them. And, of course, we heard about startup and growth travails, from both the entrepreneur and the investor sides. I wrote about one aspect of the evening shortly thereafter, when I outlined Bush’s five things to know about going public in, IPO Advice from the President’s Cousin—Strike That—IPO Advice From a CEO to Whom the President is Related.

But now the whole show is available on the MIT Enterprise Forum site, along with other video podcasts of events the group has put on. Check it out. Take these veterans’ advice to heart. And when the IPO market does turn around, may you be ready.

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Just four weeks ago, we wrote about Pogo Jet setting its IPO terms—noting that while other firms were taking flight from their initial public offering plans as the economy went into a nosedive, the Chicopee, MA-based jet charter service led by former American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall was “letting its IPO ambitions soar.” Indeed, even though it doesn’t expect to begin commercial operations with a fleet of very light jets (VLJs) until next year, the firm had filed plans with the SEC to offer 7 million common shares at between $12.50 and $16.50 per share.

It looks like news of the souring economy has finally reached Chicopee, as Pogo Jet announced yesterday that it has postponed its IPO “due to current market conditions.” Apparently, news of the flight delay hasn’t reached everyone at the firm, though. As we wrote this today, Pogo Jet’s homepage still carried the happy announcement: “POGO IS GOING PUBLIC” (which, presumably, it still is). And you could find all the details of Pogo Jet’s offering plan, an “OpenIPO” auction, here.

Meanwhile, just in case you’re keeping score, here’s our updated list of other New England firms that have pulled or postponed their IPO or secondary offering plans so far this year:

Archemix — Cambridge, MA-based biotech

Athenahealth (secondary public offering) — Watertown, MA, provider of business services for medical practices

BG Medicine — Waltham, MA-based molecular diagnostics firm

Elixir Pharmaceuticals — Cambridge-based biotech

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Sure, they might be technological visionaries, multi-millionaire entrepreneurs, imposing CEOs, legendary venture capitalists, and the like. Everyone around them knows what they do professionally. But did you know one of them was also a Top Gun fighter pilot? Or that another accompanied Yo-Yo Ma on piano at the wedding of Bill Nye the Science Guy? And then there’s the wealthy investor who endowed not a classroom or a laboratory—but a men’s room.

Here at Xconomy, we’re all about telling the story of the Greater Boston innovation community—and let’s face it, we have a taste for the offbeat. So we’ve been hanging out at water coolers, listening in on the rumor mills, and pumping folks for information to get at those juicy details about the innovation elite that usually don’t show up on a company’s executive bio page.

So who endowed that men’s room? Read on to find out. And if you know something we don’t know about one of this area’s key tech players, by all means pass it along (self-disclosure welcome) by e-mailing us at editors@xconomy.com. We plan to share the information bounty at irregular intervals.

Here’s our inaugural installment:

David Aronoff, general partner of IDG Ventures Boston, was a ski jumper from age 5 through high school. He grew up in Lyndonville, VT, home of “Bag Balm,” a lubricant that helps cows avoid chapped teats.

Xconomist Bill Aulet, Entrepreneur in Residence at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, played professional basketball for the Colchester (UK) Moels (it was the 1980-81 season, so anyone can take him now) and was player-coach for the second half of the season.

Many people know that Jonathan Bush, Jr., chairman and CEO of Athenahealth, is related to the President, but did you know just how cheeky he is about that fact? “The President is my cousin, and he lobbied hard for the role and succeeded in the end. We took him. Sometimes we think about putting him back,” says Bush.

John Chory, WilmerHale partner and chair of the firm’s Venture Group in Waltham, graduated as a distinguished cadet from West Point (top 5 percent of his class). He served five years as an active duty intelligence officer, including time in Korea’s DMZ, achieved the rank of major, and is Airborne qualified.

MIT grad and venture capitalist Brad Feld, managing director at Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital in Colorado, recently paid $25,000 to endow a men’s room at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Feld blogs that despite having bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT, that school rejected his offer to do the same. “No such challenge at CU Boulder,” he writes. …Next Page »

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I’m too bummed about the Super Bowl to come up with a snappy lede for today’s roundup. Here are last week’s deals:

—Coal gasification firm GreatPoint Energy of Cambridge, MA, forged a long-term agreement with St. Louis-based Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) to build plants close to the company’s mines in Montana and Wyoming.

—Visible Measures closed a $13.5 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Park, CA’s Mohr Davidow Ventures and Cambridge, MA-based General Catalyst. The Boston-based firm last week unveiled its “VisibleSuite” audience measurement system at the Demo 08 conference.

—Inverness Medical Innovations (AMEX: IMA) of Waltham, MA, inked a deal to purchase Marietta, GA’s Matria Healthcare (NASDAQ: MATR) for some $1.18 billion in cash, stock, and the assumption of debt. Inverness investors didn’t seem to like the deal; the company’s stock fell 8 percent on news of the acquisition, the latest in a long string of buys for Inverness.

—Facebook shopping-engine maker StyleFeeder of Cambridge, MA, raised $2 million in Series A financing from Highland Capital Partners and Schooner Capital; the same two firms provided the startup’s $1 million seed round last year.

—Virtual Iron Software of Lowell, MA, raised $20 million in equity capital from Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, and SAP Ventures, bringing the virtualization firm’s total venture financing to $65 million.

—Boston-based MocoSpace, a provider of cell phone-based social networking, closed a $4 million second-round financing from General Catalyst, Pilot Group, former eBay executive Michael Dearing, and others.

—Second Rotation announced it had completed a $4.4 million initial financing round led by Venrock and including the participation of angel investors Austin Ligon, Ashton Peery, and Henry Vogel. The Waltham, MA-based startup buys consumers’ unwanted electronics and sells them online.

—Yet another virtualization firm, AutoVirt of Nashua, NH, closed a $4 million Series A funding round. Waltham, MA-based Kepha Partners and Boston-based Sigma Partner participated in the deal.

—Watertown, MA’s Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN) pulled its planned secondary stock offering, citing poor market conditions. The news came on the same day that Bob posted about Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, Jr.’s pointed advice for entrepreneurs contemplating an IPO.

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Talk about timing. On the very day we post the IPO advice of Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, Jr.—in an article that happens to mention the current tough economic climate for IPOs—Athenahealth (NASDAQ:ATHN) announces it is shelving its plans for a secondary public offering. And, you guessed it, the company is citing the current tough economic climate.

Athenahealth announced its SPO, under which the company and selling shareholders that included Oak Investment Partners and Cardinal Partners planned to offer just over 3 million common shares, back in early January. But on the heels of recent decisions by both BG Medicine and Elixir Pharmaceuticals to postpone their IPOs, it is hardly a surprise to see the economic foul weather extending into the secondary market.

Be sure to check out Bush’s IPO pearls of wisdom—you’ll see what I mean when I say I guess he won’t be getting out of his lockup early, and he won’t be taking any cool jet rides with investment bankers and their “really nice scotch” anytime soon. In late afternoon trading, though, Athenahealth’s stock was on a nice little ride of its own, up $1.67, or just over 5 percent, at $33.07.

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It’s shaping up to be a bleak year for IPOs. Last Thursday, BG Medicine pulled its initial public offering, citing market conditions. The week before that, Elixir Pharmaceuticals also put its IPO plans on ice. But the idea of IPOs was alive and well last Thursday night, when I had the pleasure of moderating a great discussion—Are You Ready for IPO?—before some 300 guests at MIT’s Kresge auditorium and who knows how many others who watched on a special TV broadcast at 45 locations worldwide.

The panel was put on by the MIT Enterprise Forum. And I had four fantastic, eloquent, insightful, and humorous guests: Jonathan Bush, Jr., chairman and CEO of Athenahealth; Gail Goodman, president and CEO of Constant Contact; Jonathan “Jono” Goldstein, managing director of TA Associates; and Bruce Evans, managing partner of Summit Partners. Both Athenahealth and Constant Contact are roughly 10 years old and successfully went public last fall.

We dissected the current climate for IPOs (bleak no matter how you slice it), the spectrum of investors—from angels, to early and mid-stage VCs, to growth private equity folks like Goldstein and Evans (who typically invest in established, profitable companies looking to move to the next level), to buyout artists who use as much debt as possible to purchase companies that typically are not growing very fast. Along the way, we heard some riveting tales from Bush and Goodman about what it was actually like to go on the IPO road show, the wheeling and dealing with investment bankers, the private jets and black sedans, lock-up periods, and a lot more. Somewhere near the end of our discussion, Bush whipped out some notes he had taken and delighted the crowd dispensing some key advice to entrepreneurs who might one day seek their own IPO.

Now, to put his comments in perspective, it’s important to know that Bush is anything but demure. Like when I said: “People often ask you how you are related to the President, and I’m told that’s not the right question: How is the President related to you?

And he said: “Yeah, you’re goddamn right. The President is my cousin, and he lobbied hard for the role and succeeded in the end. We took him. Sometimes we think about putting him back.”

I figured pearls of wisdom from such a character were too good to pass up, so I snatched his notes and convinced the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Greg Wymer to let me listen to a private video feed of the broadcast so I could get things exactly right. The result is a slight hodgepodge and condensation of what he wrote and what he said at various times during the event.

It all started when we were talking about investment bankers—and that seems to have set him off:

“The investment bankers are really charming and incredibly good negotiators…they’re very savvy, very svelte kind of smooth talkers, and you can see a lot of use for that after you’ve been, you know, kind of filleted by them. I wish that somebody, either our lawyer, or…somebody had given me a list. Can I give you the list?”

What moderator would say no?

1) On lockup (the period after a company goes public when key insiders can’t sell their stock). “There’s a lockup and they say, ‘It’s always got to be 180 days. It’s just what’s done.’ Well it absolutely does not have to be 180 days. It …Next Page »

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Our previous post (see below) was about Waltham, MA-based BG Medicine pulling its planned initial public offering. It was bad news, but it comes at an interesting time—I am a couple hours from leaving the Xconomy offices to host a panel in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium entitled, “Are You Ready For IPO?”

The panel is being put on by the MIT Enterprise Forum, in collaboration with the NASDAQ Educational Foundation. Among other things, it is designed to examine in detail what an IPO really means, how to plan for it, how the current economic environment affects that strategy, and what alternatives there might be for up-and-coming firms.

I’ll be speaking with some absolutely great guests who know this subject cold. They include two CEOs who successfully took their companies public last year: Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO of Athenahealth, and Gail Goodman, president and CEO of Constant Contact. Also on hand will be two growth private equity leaders who come at the IPO process (and the alternatives) from the investment side of the ledger: Jonathan Goldstein, managing director of TA Associates, and Bruce Evans, managing partner of Summit Partners.

The panel starts at 7 pm, and there’s a reception beforehand. You can find more details here. Hope to see you there!

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It seemed like half of the Boston area’s life sciences sector was out at JPMorgan’s Annual Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last week, but somehow the deals—in that industry and the rest of tech—kept getting done back here in town.

—Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners led a $47 million Series B financing for Montreal-based jewelry retailer Ice.com. Bob recounts Ice’s long journey from Montreal to Bill Gross’s Idealab Internet incubator to Pasadena and back to Montreal.

—Verenium (NASDAQ: VRNM), a developer of biofuels and specialty enzymes in Cambridge, MA, inked an agreement with St. Louis’s Bunge Oils aimed at improving the production of edible oils.

—Following on a strong IPO in September, Watertown, MA-based Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), filed for a secondary public offering of approximately 3.11 million common shares. The company provides online billing and other business services for medical practices.

—Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) and Carlsbad, CA’s Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) forged a strategic alliance potentially worth close to $2 billion. The deal centers on a lipid-lowering treatment from Isis that employs an older RNA-based technique called antisense.

—Primera Biosystems of Mansfield, MA, a molecular diagnostics firm, closed a Series B financing round worth $21 million led by Abingworth Management.

—Burlington, MA-based Aushon Biosystems raised $4 million of a $7 million Series B round from North Bridge Venture Partners, according to peHUB. The firm provides microarray products and services for life sciences research and the diagnostics market.

—Boston’s Ze-Gen, a waste gasification startup, secured $2.5 million in venture debt from Palo Alto, CA-based Pinnacle Ventures.

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First (and second and third) impressions are important. But it’s also nice to go out on a sweet note.

Yesterday, we brought you a list of Massachusetts’s top 10 venture deals for 2007: you might think of them as great entrances (although most were later- stage deals, so we’re straining a bit). Today we’re looking at the year’s greatest exits for Bay State firms—either through mergers & acquisitions or IPOs.

And there were some doozies. Like the $775 million Britain’s BUPA paid for Boston-based Health Dialog, or the $430 million Bristol-Myers Squibb squibbed out for Adnexus Therapeutics, almost on the eve of the Waltham company’s planned IPO.

Four of the top M&As were in biotech/pharmaceuticals/medicine, but only two of the top 10 IPOs came in that field (although one company on the list, Athenahealth, is an IT support services company for medical practices). Boston’s EnerNOC, which went public to the tune of nearly $92 million, was the only energy company on either list, despite the red hot nature of investment in that field.

The rest of the companies spanned a wide array of sectors, from data storage to wireless to business applications and even a media content company (TechTarget), which we at Xconomy are always glad to see.

By the way, there was one massive New England acquisition—Dell’s purchase of Nashua, NH-based network storage device maker Equallogic for $1.4 billion—that overshadowed all of the Massachusetts deals, and was in fact reported to be the largest all-cash acquisition of a venture-backed company in history. But it’s not included in our list today, which only covers the Bay State. The list also leaves out the spectacularly successful August IPO of EMC subsidiary VMware. While EMC is located in Hopkinton, MA, VMware’s headquarters remain in Palo Alto, CA.

If you can read a trend in all this, please let us know—but maybe all the stats mean is that good companies can be found in every field. So here are the lists, …Next Page »

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Watertown, MA-based Athenahealth (NASDAQ:ATHN), which provides online billing and other business services for medical practices, has filed for a secondary public offering of approximately 3.11 million common shares. Selling shareholders include Oak Investment Partners and Cardinal Partners. Athenahealth’s strong IPO last September made it runner-up only to VMware in Xconomy’s “Google IPO Impersonation of the Half Year” awards.

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This is the week that everybody in the media seems to be gazing back upon 2007, but here at Xconomy, well, we’re not that into the first half of the year. No offense intended to January, February, et al—we just weren’t around yet to cover all the people, companies, and happenings that surely made those first six months of the year a fascinating time in the New England innovation ecosystem. So, in honor of the hemi-anniversary of our June 27 launch (no need to send gifts, a few extra clicks will do), we present the Xconomy Half-Dozen-Stories-of-the-Half-Year Awards.

The “Who Knew?” Story of the Half Year:
Boston: The Hidden Hub of Music and Technology
Wade, a recent transplant from the West Coast with a healthy interest in the intersection of technology and entertainment, began to notice that the Boston-area music-tech scene is a lot more rocking than stereotype would lead you to expect. He spent weeks exploring a fascinating web of companies, all combining music, computing, and the Web, and unearthed a hidden technology cluster. The story was part of the inspiration for Xconomy’s upcoming Battle of the Tech Bands.
Runner Up:
VC Varsity (showcasing the little-known athletic prowess of the area’s private equity circuit)

Home-Team Victory of the Half Year:
iRobot v. Robotic FX
We did our journalistic best to be objective in our coverage of Burlington, MA-based iRobot’s patent-infringement and trade-secrets-violations cases against an Illinois rival and the firm’s founder (a former iRobot employee). But the whole massive shredding/tossing of evidence thing… Well, it makes an impression, doesn’t it? Evidently it did on judges in Massachusetts and Alabama, because they endorsed settlements that put Robotic FX out of business and locked founder Jameel Ahed out of the industry for the next five years.
Runner Up:
Red Sox v. Rockies

Story Tip of the Half Year:
Upheaval at MERL
Don’t want to reveal too much about how this one came in, except to say that in a town like this one, kids’ playdates are shockingly prone to becoming parental networking events.
Runners Up:
IRobot’s Dumpster Diving Detectives (the classic anonymous phone call)
The Inside Story of Eons Layoffs (the classic insider source)
Metcalfe Takes GreenFuel Reins (the semi-classic e-mail tip, but we would have had the story two days earlier if our spies at Lanes and Games had recognized the thin Bob Metcalfe look-alike they thought they were seeing as the real, and newly svelte, Metcalfe)

Comment Catfight of the Half Year:
Sermo Strikes Back
I guess when you write a story about how a bunch of people are really ticked off about something (in this case, about some bloggers exposing a security loophole for Sermo, a popular Cambridge-based social networking site for physicians) it shouldn’t be too surprising that the story itself elicits some debate. But man, those doctors can get ornery! (And by doctors, I’m including the bloggers, too. Because I’m Switzerland, okay everybody?)
Runner Up:
What’s Wrong With Energy Investing? (And what’s wrong with making the simple observation that investing in alternative energy is a necessary, but wholly insufficient way to deal with the energy problem?)

Anticlimax of the Half Year:
Carl Icahn Shakes Up Biogen Idec
The activist investor burst on the scene in August. Biogen was up for sale by October. Pundits and bloggers (ourselves included) speculated about who would buy the pioneering Cambridge biotech, but in December, with no offers on the table, Biogen took itself off the block. Of course, you know the story ain’t over…
Runner Up
Genzyme Buys Bioenvision (a once-fiery shareholder revolt fizzles at the 11th, make that 13th hour)

Google IPO Impersonation of the Half Year:
VMware
Hopkinton, MA’s EMC sold just 10 percent of its Palo Alto-based VMware subsidiary in this offering, but what an offering it was. The stock (NYSE: VMW) debuted at $50—a 72 percent premium over its offering price—and soared to a high of $125.25 within a few months (it’s now down to a mere $86 and change).
Runner Up:
Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN) (The Watertown, MA-based, provider of online billing and other business services for medical practices priced at $18 and debuted at $30.)
Also Ran:
EqualLogic (NASDAQ: DELL) (The Nashua, NH-based maker of network storage ditched a planned IPO in favor of a $1.4 billion cash sale to Dell Computer—evidently the largest all-cash acquisition of a venture-backed company in history.)

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