The vast majority of mobile applications in the marketplace aren’t coming from well-established businesses, but experimental developers. The apps can even accrue a good user following, but those developers don’t exactly have the skills or desire to build a business around their creations.

“It’s laughable how many times I’ve heard, ‘I didn’t get into this to answer support requests,’” says entrepreneur Jonathan Kay.

Kay is the chief operating officer and co-founder of Apptopia, a Cambridge, MA-based startup developing a marketplace that condenses the droves of similar, one-off app projects and puts them in the hands of people looking to turn them into real moneymakers. It looks like the lovechild of eBay and a Web domain brokerage, with hints of a mobile strategy consultancy.

As you can imagine, buying and selling source code for mobile applications is just a bit more complex than auctioning off your used electronics. “I’m spending more time than I’ve ever wanted to with lawyers,” says Kay, who I caught up with this week.

The company is the brainchild of co-founder Eliran Sapir, who jumped on early iPhone trends to create the mobile app GPush, which created push notifications for Gmail on the iPhone. Despite the paid app’s popularity in the iTunes app store, Sapir couldn’t quite figure what business to sell it to for an exit, Kay says. But he kept thinking about the problem, and later toyed with the idea of creating a mobile app brokerage while entrepreneur in residence at Cambridge-based Greatpoint Ventures. Last fall, Sapir connected with the boisterous Kay—a former brand evangelist for local startup the Grasshopper Group—and left the venture firm to work on Apptopia full time.

Apptopia’s first step is to formulate a target price range for app developers to sell at, using market knowledge and algorithms. Developers then must give Apptopia access to their apps that enables the startup to gather accurate, objective data on performance, user base, and other information that will inform prospective buyers.

“Much like in eBay, we provide a professional middle ground where a buyer and a seller can actually negotiate,” Kay says.

Sellers can list their apps to be purchased for a fixed price within that suggested range or set up an auction with a minimum starting point.

Connecting buyer and seller is just part of the challenge, though, says Kay. Apptopia continues to oversee that payment and transition process, and has developed contracts with lawyers outlining the details of the agreement.

“If you put the app up, you legally are bound to send us the source code,” says Kay of the developer responsibilities. Sellers also have to agree not to … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Waltham, MA-based A123 Systems (NASDAQ: AONE), the lithium-ion battery maker, has laid off about 125 employees at its manufacturing facilities in Livonia and Romulus, MI. The news originally broke the week of Thanksgiving and was reported by media outlets including the Observer & Eccentric and Crain’s Detroit Business.

The layoffs are apparently the result of lower demand from Fisker Automotive after its plug-in hybrid sports car ran into production delays. A123 invested in Irvine, CA-based Fisker early last year. Media reports quote Jason Forcier, the vice president and general manager of A123′s automotive group, and PR manager Dan Borgasano as saying the layoffs are temporary and the workers should be hired back within six months.

Forcier spoke with me last year around the opening of the Livonia plant. At the time, he noted that “the battery industry is really a rejuvenation for the whole area. This is extremely important for Michigan from an economic standpoint.”

A123 still employs about 600 people at its two Michigan plants and its research and development center in Ann Arbor, according to the Crain’s report.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

If you want something done right, the old saying goes, do it yourself. That’s exactly what XL Hybrids, a Boston-based transportation tech startup, is up to these days.

Despite a thin layer of gloom that pervades much of the cleantech industry, XL Hybrids is advancing in its quest to make commercial vans and trucks greener and more fuel-efficient. The two-and-a-half-year-old company is announcing today it has appointed Richard Canny, a longtime Ford Motor exec and electric vehicle expert (former CEO of Think Global), to its board of directors. Canny is based in the Detroit area and gives XL Hybrids some more gravitas and deeper connections in the auto industry. But there are a lot of other things going on under the hood at this ambitious startup.

“We’ve been hard at work not only in technology development but also in re-examining our market,” says Justin Ashton, the company’s co-founder and vice president of business development.

Part of that re-examination includes ending a partnership that XL Hybrids had formed about a year ago with U.K.-based Ashwoods Automotive, which makes a vehicle retrofitting kit. The plan had been for XL to adapt the kit for the U.S. market. But XL found the process was taking too long, in part because European vehicles are so different from American ones. “It made sense to work on our own,” Ashton says.

So, XL Hybrids is handling the technology for commercial fleets by itself now. “Our strategy has shifted to doing all systems development [ourselves] but working with tier-one suppliers for components,” Ashton says. That means employing large battery makers and established electric motor manufacturers, he says. “Our role is to build the hybrid architecture from the ground up.”

The architecture consists of a hybrid electric powertrain (for which XL has patents pending) that can be installed on either existing vehicles or new ones. It includes a lithium ion battery, electric motor, and control software. The computer-aided design drawing of the system (see left) resembles a space-age tuba, or maybe a Star Wars pod-racing engine, but the point of the powertrain is to store energy wasted in braking and reapply it during acceleration. XL says this results in about 20 percent lower fuel consumption and emissions for high-mileage city driving, in standard cargo vans (typically made by GMC or Chevy).

Starting in January, XL Hybrids is working with commercial fleet companies to start pilot tests of retrofit cargo vans in the Boston area. If all goes well, there will be a couple dozen vehicles on the road around New England by June, Ashton says.

But he emphasizes that there is a bigger opportunity. “This business is not about retrofit. Long term, it’s about creating a unique hybrid powertrain for a large market,” Ashton says. “We can do retrofits where they make economic sense for our customers. But we have a lot of interest from customers in what’s called ‘upfitting’”—putting the technology into new vehicles.

Of course, this could be a difficult journey for a small startup—but XL is focusing on a market it thinks it can handle. “The real challenge in transportation is finding your path to get your product to market. And dealing with some of the largest companies in the world with long product cycles,” Ashton says. “We don’t want to wait. You have to find a business model that is relatively capital efficient, that leverages existing infrastructure.” He adds, “Right now we’re focused on a niche within a niche. The commercial vehicle side is dwarfed by the consumer segment. Our strategy is to position ourselves.”

XL Hybrids was founded by a team of MIT grads in 2009 and has about 10 employees. The company has raised roughly $4 million from angel investors and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund. It says it plans to raise more money next year.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

All this talk about quarterly earnings and venture stats reminded me: I never posted my favorite stories from Xconomy Boston’s third quarter.

Yes, I know it’s almost the end of October, and the third quarter ended a month ago. I must have been traumatized by the collapse of the Red Sox or something (is baseball still going on?). Go ahead, run me out of town like Theo and Tito.

This time, I’m not consulting with my colleagues. I’m a rebel, a maverick. I work alone. Without further ado, here are my favorite stories from July through September:

Top 10 Tech Stories:

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

This week’s deals news in New England was dominated by cleantech and life sciences firms.

—Quincy, MA-based Bluefin Robotics, a maker of  autonomous underwater vehicles, acquired the assets of Hawkes Remotes for an undisclosed sum. Hawkes Remotes is a spinoff of Hawkes Ocean Technologies, a Bay Area developer of deep-ocean explorer vehicles.

—Providence, MA-based NABsys, a developer of gene-sequencing technology, raised $10 million in a Series C financing led by its return investor Stata Venture Partners. That brings NABsys’ total funding pot to $21 million. The startup said it will put the money toward developing and commercializing its solid-state electronic systems for single-molecule DNA sequencing and analysis.

—Mascoma, a Lebanon, NH-based biofuels developer, filed for a potential $100 million initial public offering, which is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley, UBS Investment Bank, and Credit Suisse. As of fall 2009, the company had raised $100 million in private equity and about another $100 million in government grants and loans.

—Massachusetts startups collected $156.5 million in equity-based funding in August, continuing to dip from the dollars raised in earlier months of the summer, according to data from CB Insights Funding Flash.

—My hunch is that this month’s Bay State funding numbers will turn out better; Westborough, MA-based cleantech startup Boston-Power announced Tuesday that it had raised $125 million in funding, led by Beijing firm GSR Ventures. Return Boston-Power backers Oak Investment Partners and Foundation Asset Management also provided funding, along with the Chinese government. As a result, the developer of lithium-ion battery technology will shift its operations and manufacturing to China. Boston-Power has now raised more than $316 million.

—Cambridge, MA-based Tokai Pharmaceuticals took in a $23 million third tranche of its Series D round from existing investors Novartis Venture Fund, Apple Tree Partners, and angel investors. The money will go to Tokai’s prostate cancer drug galeterone (TOK-001), as it moves into the second of three clinical trial phases needed for FDA approval.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Just after I wrote that no Massachusetts-based cleantech companies inked funding last month, Westborough-based Boston-Power bucks that trend for September.

The developer of advanced lithium-ion battery technology is announcing today that it has raised $125 million. The deal, which brings Boston-Power’s total funding pot to more than $316 million, has some serious implications for the company’s place in Massachusetts and its executive structure, though.

Beijing-based GSR Ventures led the round, which also included Oak Investment Partners, Foundation Asset Management, and grants, tax incentives, and other funding from the Chinese government, Boston-Power founder and now international chairman Christina Lampe-Onnerud says (she was executive chairman prior to the transaction announced today). GSR managing director Sonny Wu will now chair Boston-Power’s board of directors.

“We are embracing the electric vehicle opportunity in China,” Lampe-Onnerud, an Xconomist, told me over lunch Monday. While the vast majority of Boston-Powers operations will be moving to China (read on for more on this), she herself has elected to stay in Massachusetts.

The funding announcement follows last week’s news that Boston-Power CEO Keith Schmid, chief financial officer Steve Byram and vice president of marketing Sally Bament were leaving the company. Lampe-Onnerud says those moves were part of Boston-Power’s overall plan to shift its operations and most of its product marketing to China, where the company is building a new factory. Boston-Power will be searching over the next few months to fill the CEO, CFO, and marketing positions in China; meanwhile, “between the board and management team, we’re hosting those functions,” Lampe-Onnerud says.

What’s staying in Massachusetts, in addition to Lampe-Onnerud, are the R&D, designing, and fine-tuning of the company’s battery cells. All of these operations will take place in the Westborough office, while China-based teams will focus on developing the battery technology for customer applications. Boston-Power will be reducing its roughly 80-person workforce in the Bay State by about 35 percent, as those functions shift abroad, says Lampe-Onnerud. The global sales staff will also remain in Westborough, though Boston-Power expects most of its customers to come from China. The company plans to … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Interesting day for a couple of companies whose names start with “Boston.” Who’s next, Boston Dynamics? Boston Harbor Cruises? Maybe the Boston Red Sox.

—Westborough, MA-based Boston-Power, a developer of advanced lithium-ion battery technology, saw three top executives leave last Friday, including CEO Keith Schmid. The news was first reported by Mass High Tech this morning. Chief financial officer Steve Byram and vice president of marketing Sally Bament have also left the company, according to the report.

Boston-Power hired Schmid as chief executive this past February, replacing founder Christina-Lampe Onnerud (an Xconomist), who took the role of executive chairman of the company.

A spokesperson for Boston-Power declined to offer any comment beyond what has been reported in area media outlets today; the accuracy of the reports was not disputed, however. Schmid, Byram, and Bament’s names still remain on the Boston-Power website as of this evening. The company is expected to announce a new financing round soon, much of which comes from Chinese investors, according to the original report.

—Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) has appointed Michael Mahoney, 46, as the company’s new president (as of next month) and future CEO (slated for November 1, 2012). Mahoney, formerly worldwide chairman of the medical device and diagnostics group for Johnson & Johnson, will succeed interim CEO Hank Kucheman. Just to complicate matters, Kucheman isn’t actually interim CEO yet—he’s executive vice president and group president—because current CEO Ray Elliott hasn’t stepped down yet (not until October 17).

Back in May, my colleague Luke reported that Elliott announced his resignation less than two years after he was brought in to help turn things around for the medical device company. “Investors will surely frown on the Elliott era,” Luke wrote, because of declining sales figures and stock prices.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Auburn Hills, MI-based ALTe last week announced a long-term supply agreement with Waltham, MA-based A123 Systems for complete lithium ion battery packs to be integrated into ALTe‘s range-extended hybrid electric powertrain systems. The battery packs are designed to deliver higher power, longer life, and increased safety. This announcement comes just weeks after ALTe’s agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric for the California utility to test drive a vehicle retrofitted with an ALTE powertrain.

“We believe that ALTe’s innovative powertrain systems will enable organizations to cost-effectively hybridize their fleets of light trucks to realize the significant economic, environmental and operational benefits of electrification,” said Jason Forcier, vice president of A123‘s Automotive Solutions Group, in a statement.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Fremont, CA-based Leyden Energy, which is developing longer-lasting lithium ion batteries for consumer mobile devices, electric vehicles, and energy storage, said today that it has raised $20 million in Series B financing. New investor New Enterprise Associates led the round, which was joined by existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Sigma Partners, and Walden International. Leyden says it expects to use the funds to expand its global sales efforts and add manufacturing capacity.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

We saw a potpourri of tech news in San Diego last week, which included funding for an emerging cleantech startup, new technology from Tealium, and an acquisition by Qualcomm. Our briefing begins now.

—CMEA Capital’s Sumeet Jain offered his perspective on what’s missing, besides capital, from the tech sector of San Diego’s innovation community. Jain, who focuses on deals in software, consumer Internet, digital media, and mobile, says it would help if there were a better way to curate San Diego’s tech companies and entrepreneurs, because, as he put it, “screening companies is not a good use of my time.”

—The IPO window appears to be re-opening to pre-recession levels, with 140 companies nationwide registered for an initial public offering during the three months that ended June 30, according to the latest the “Ernst & Young U.S. IPO Pipeline Report.” In San Diego, the Active Network successfully raised a total of $190 million in its May 24 IPO. Meanwhile Ambit Biosciences withdrew its IPO on June 7 and Fallbrook Technologies withdrew its IPO registration on April 29. The IPOs for two other San Diego companies are pending: semiconductor design company Peregrine Semiconductor and a drug developer, IASO Pharmaceuticals.

—San Diego-based Wildcat Discovery Technologies, a five-year-old cleantech startup, has emerged after raising $7.5 million through a combination of equity, convertible debt, and securities. Wildcat is using high-throughput screening technologies to identify and develop new materials for batteries, hydrogen storage, gas separation, carbon capture, and in other technologies and processes.

—San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) acquired certain assets related to gesture recognition technology from Sunnyvale, CA-based GestureTek. The move suggests Qualcomm could be moving to develop technology to compete with Microsoft Kinect, computer vision technology developed for the Xbox 360 video game console. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

—San Diego-based Tealium rolled out TealiumiQ, its technology that enables corporate marketing departments to easily manage JavaScript-based tags on their web pages, using a universal tag management system.

—The National Science Foundation unveiled its plans to put $5 million a year into the I-Corps, or Innovation Corps, a program that’s intended to university scientists and engineers build startups around their technologies. As Wade reported, the centerpiece of the NSF program is a $50,000 cash award for 25 teams each quarter and a nine-week crash course in technology entrepreneurship. The program is now accepting proposals and will name its first batch of 25 awardees on September 30.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Busy day for a couple of well-known cleantech companies around Boston. One public company has signed a big deal in China, while the other, an ambitious upstart, is carefully protecting its intellectual property as it heads toward large-scale commercialization.

—A123 Systems (NASDAQ: AONE), the Waltham, MA-based maker of lithium ion batteries, said today it has won a contract with China’s Dongfang Electric, a large manufacturer of wind turbines and power equipment. A123 will provide an energy storage system for Dongfang’s manufacturing facility in Hangzhou by the end of this year. Financial terms weren’t given. If all goes well, this will be A123’s first storage system installed in China.

A report in CNET today has more context on the deal: A123’s battery bank will be attached to a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine and diesel generator to test how well the batteries can smooth out the dips in wind energy production. A123 has car battery manufacturing facilities in China, but no grid storage systems there yet, the report says.

—Joule Unlimited, the Cambridge, MA-based biofuels startup, said today it has been awarded a pair of U.S. patents that cover its method for producing ethanol at high volumes and high efficiencies. The method involves genetically engineering “photosynthetic bacteria”—microorganisms that convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into ethanol without fermenting sugars from cellulose or other types of biomass. The patents (#7,981,647 and #7,968,321), which were granted in the past month, cover various enzymatic mechanisms that Joule has engineered into cells to maximize their ethanol productivity.

Joule has received plenty of media attention since it started in 2007. The company is also applying its method to produce energy in the form of diesel fuel, which could power trucks and planes. Joule has previously been awarded patents in the area of diesel production. The overarching idea is to replace fossil fuels, but most biofuels makers have found “they can’t compete on a cost basis,” said Joule senior vice president Troy Campione, on a panel at our XSITE conference last month. Joule, of course, believes it is different.

The company has a pilot plant in Texas that has been producing ethanol and is slated to start producing diesel later this year. Joule says it has also signed a lease for land in New Mexico on which it is building a demonstration-scale plant that will begin operations next year.

While the new patents should help distance Joule from some of its competitors, they don’t necessarily get the company to commercialization any faster. George Church, the Harvard geneticist (and chairman of Joule’s technical advisory board), was quoted in the New York Times in March saying, “It’s not a totally obvious organism and they’ve changed it pretty radically, so it’s not clear they can protect everything by patents.”

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

ALTe Powertrain Technologies has a lot of room to grow. Both literally and figuratively.

Inside the company’s mammoth 150,000 square foot headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI, pieces of white paper arranged on the floor neatly mark the location of soon-to-be assembled parts of its product: A powertrain kit that will convert ordinary gas-powered vehicles into plug-in hybrids.

Other than some showcase vehicles and a few engineers hunched over a laptop, the place is pretty empty. But that will soon change.

If all goes to plan, ALTe, founded by Tesla Motor veterans and backed by former Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda, will start shipping out its powertrain kits in July 2012. The startup has already secured $16.5 million in capital and is looking to raise another $100 million in debt and win a $65 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Everyone seems to be saying ‘yes’ right now,” CEO John Thomas tells Xconomy. “Two years ago, there were a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘nos’. For the first time, it looks like our financing will be in place.”

“Now,” he says, “we finally get to go big.”

Thomas is the former general manager of Tesla, the Silicon Valley-based company that sells high-end electric cars to wealthy customers. The idea was to first target customers who can afford the pricey vehicles and then expand into the larger consumer market, he says.

But given the cars’ cost and limited range between recharging, average consumers will not be purchasing them in large numbers anytime soon, Thomas says.

“We fell in love with electrification but we felt it would take a long time,” he says.

What’s needed, Thomas says, is some sort of transitional technology that could lead the way to electric cars.

Enter Andy Grove. In 2008, the legendary former Intel chairman, alarmed by rising gas prices, began to push for retrofitting cars with electric car technology.

“Grove said ‘if you can convert gas guzzlers, you can have a significant impact on foreign oil consumption,’” Thomas recalls.

Inspired by Grove’s call, Thomas and others formed ALTe in 2009 to focus on a market where they believed gas to hybrid conversion technologies could pay for themselves: commercial and government fleets which operate approximately 10 million to 30 million vehicles in the United States.

“The fleet was dying for a solution,” Thomas says.

ALTe’s technology centers on a patented hybrid control unit, which essentially serves as the cars’ brains. The technology manages everything from power demand and consumption to how the newly installed batteries interact with the car’s existing internal combustion engine.

ALTe also developed an efficient, systematic approach to creating the conversion kits, wheras other companies tended to only focus on specific pieces of technologies, Thomas says.

The company has partnered with Manheim, the world’s largest vehicle wholesaler, to install the technology on customer fleets. ALTe will ship the kits out of Auburn Hills to warehouses located near Manheim facilities across the country. Customers who wish to do their own retrofits can learn the technology in training sessions at ALTe’s headquarters.

ALTe’s technology is not cheap: $27,000 for the basic kit and $40,000 for heavier vehicles like buses and vans. But Thomas insists the technology pays for itself. By boosting the vehicles’ fuel economy from 60 to 200 percent (and meeting emission standards), a customer can recoup the investment within eight to 30 months, he says.

Thomas says Europe and India are interested in the technology, and the Chinese are particularly interested because they are both trying to control pollution and to develop their own domestic car industry.

But there are plenty of potential customers in the United States, specifically the federal government, which is requiring its cars go green, Thomas says.

“If we sold to no one but the government, we would sell our factory out,” he says.

ALTe recently formed an advisory board of companies it expects to purchase its technology, including Frito Lay, DirectTV, Waste Management, Cox Cable, NBC, and Pacific Gas & Electric.

Thomas envisions ALTe as “an umbrella company” that provides carmakers with the technology and expertise to exploit the latest energy technologies, whether its solid state lithium ion batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. An IPO or a strategic alliance with a major supplier are possible, he said.

But in the end, “we expect electric vehicles to be the answer,” Thomas says.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

Every startup, at some point in its maturation, needs to put up or shut up. EnerG2 is starting to enter that phase when it’s time to find out if it can really do what it said it was going to do.

The Seattle-based company, founded in 2003 with technology from the University of Washington, started to talk big when it raised $8.5 million from OVP Venture Partners and Firelake Capital in the fall of 2008. EnerG2′s technology idea was to create synthetic carbon powders with properties that make them highly efficient at storing energy. The business, as CEO Rick Luebbe told my colleague Greg Huang then, was all about using these novel carbons to power new ultracapacitors for industry, and eventually better batteries for cars, tools, and mobile computing devices.

EnerG2 hasn’t said a whole lot about those myriad applications since, but yesterday it issued a statement that—without naming names of customers or providing financial terms—suggested it’s starting to make some headway. The company said it is working on putting its synthetic carbon powders into lead acid batteries, lithium ion batteries, next-generation lithium batteries, ultracapacitors, and natural gas storage technologies. EnerG2 said it is working with industrial, academic and governmental customers. While the company isn’t profitable, it is generating revenue from sales of carbon products for ultracapacitors, which is supporting a broader push into the new market segments, Luebbe said yesterday.

The overall market for its carbon products could reach $15 billion to $20 billion over the next 20 years, he says.

“We are solving a real need, and enabling these technologies to advance more quickly,” Luebbe says. “We’re the only company that can make these carbons.”

While EnerG2 is technically an eight-year-old company, it spent several years in R&D mode, and is still in relatively early days as a true commercial enterprise. The company has about 30 employees. EnerG2 can only make small quantities of its synthetic carbons now, but a big step ahead is being planned for October, when the company plans to open a factory in Albany, OR. That plant, which will be staffed with another 35 workers, is supported with a $21.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Rick Luebbe

Much still needs to be proven in terms of how EnerG2 operates on a commercial scale, and whether it can penetrate even a small percentage of the big market it envisions.

There’s no question there’s a huge demand for the kind of carbon EnerG2 seeks to make. Carbon, of course, is everywhere in today’s world in solid forms like graphite and diamonds, and yes, various gases in the atmosphere. But carbon is also an essential ingredient in batteries. Most of that carbon comes from natural sources that are chock-full of organic carbon—things like coal, wood, oil, and specific forms of biomass like pecan shells and coconut husks, Luebbe says.

Those “natural precursors” usually get cooked at something like 800 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit to peel off all the unnecessary oxygen and hydrogen atoms to leave a form of “activated” or highly porous carbon that is what eventually goes into all of the industrial uses mentioned above. The problem, Luebbe says, is that you get a lot of impurities when you do things this way. Coconut husks, for example, are a popular source for carbon that goes into ultracapacitors, but the carbon that comes from that source has a lot of iron attached to it, so you get a lot of iron impurities along the way. And, Mother Nature being fickle as she is, coconut husks grown in various countries with various climates have highly variable … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Envia Systems, a Newark, CA-based startup developing cathodes for high-capacity lithium ion batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, said today (PDF) that it has raised $17 million in Series C financing. General Motors’ venture investment wing, GM Ventures, put $7 million into the deal; the rest came from new investors Asahi Kasei and Asahi Glass and existing investors Bay Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Pangaea Ventures. In a separate announcement, Envia said that it has started shipping sample quantities of its manganese-rich cathode material for testing by potential customers. As part of its investment, GM has secured rights to use the material.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Editor's Note: This post was co-authored with Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital]

1. The Rise of Celebrity Science

Nations, cultures, economies all get what they celebrate. Celebrate celebrities and we’ll have another generation of over-consumptive, over-indebted, overweight, underemployed citizenry. But celebrate scientists: thinkers, doers, achievers, explorers, inventors, creators and we stand a shot at restoring the very human capital that led to the rise of what made our nation great. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. So I founded the largest-ever celebration of science, the USA Science & Engineering Festival, to inspire and galvanize a force of young scientists keen to invent, explore, discover and create. 1 million participants is a good start, just 299 million to go.

2. The Rise of the IPO

Nearly a decade has passed without a blockbuster set of IPOs. Hints abound that the resurgence of an IPO market is upon us. The rise of secondary markets swapping shares of Facebook and other social-networking darlings prove there is pent-up demand and that capital is ready, willing, and able to once again fund high-flying companies that didn’t exist a few years ago and are the essential companies of tomorrow. Groupon, despite having 500 competitors and being founded only two years ago may be the fastest company in history to get to a billion dollars in revenue.

3. The Rise of the Tablet

The iPad was just the start. Samsung’s Galaxy and a slate of other touch tablets will continue seizing netbook and laptop share. When we get over the buzzword and just start calling the “cloud” the “Internet” again, people will also see that the prophecies of George Gilder and Sun’s Scott McNeely—that the network is the computer—were correct all along.

4. The Rise of Nuclear & EVs

My partners at Lux Capital always tell entrepreneurs to shave with Occam’s Razor: find the simplest solution. In energy it’s nuclear power, and the electrification of everything, including cars. Watch for just-out-of-stealth startups like Kurion that are solving … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

[Updated 1:15 pm. See below] It’s been a busy week for Boston-area company financings, but it’s particularly interesting to zero in on some progress in cleantech.

Somerville, MA-based XL Hybrids, a startup that converts commercial fleet vehicles into hybrids, said it has raised an additional $2 million from undisclosed investors. The company also has formed a partnership with U.K.-based Ashwoods Automotive, which makes a retrofitting kit that XL Hybrids plans to use in the U.S. The news was first reported by the Boston Globe.

Last July, Tod Hynes, XL’s president, told me the company was targeting town cars, duty vans, and other commercial vehicles that travel more than 30,000 miles a year and get low gas mileage. XL’s approach is to retrofit these vehicles with lithium ion batteries, electric motors, and other integration and control technologies so as to reduce their fuel consumption by 15 to 30 percent, he said.

The company has been running pilot tests in the Boston area to prove the concept. Reached by e-mail today, Hynes says to stay tuned for more information on pilots in the coming months. He adds that Ashwoods Automotive is “one of the leading hybrid conversion companies in the world,” and that it recently won an award as the fastest-growing cleantech company in Europe. “We are working very closely with them to co-develop their system for the American market,” he says. [This paragraph was updated with comments from Hynes---Eds.]

XL Hybrids was founded in 2009 by a team of MIT alums, including Hynes. The company has raised a little more than $3.8 million to date from angel investors and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund. XL currently has 10 full-time employees, according to the Globe report.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

We saw much of what has happened coming. I am surprised at how quickly the domestic auto industry has become profitable at still a depression level of sales. Looking ahead I think we will be surprised at the rate of cost reduction of batteries and electric and plug-in hybrid technology.

[Editor's Note: This is part of a series of posts from Xconomists and other technology and life sciences leaders from around the U.S. who are weighing in with the top surprises they've seen in their respective fields in the past year, or the major things to watch for in 2011.]

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Blue Spark Technologies, a Westlake, OH-based company that makes printed batteries for flexible electronics, among other applications, has raised an additional $5 million in B-round funds from non-institutional investors, VentureWire reports this morning. The company had raised $2.5 million in two earlier closes of the B round. Those previous investors were Early Stage Partners, which is based in Cleveland and has a branch in Ann Arbor, MI, and SunBridge Partners. Among Blue Spark’s partners are NTERA, a Philadelphia-based developer of printed electronic displays; Novalia, a UK-based designer of printed electronics; and Soligie, a Minneapolis-based company that manufactures and markets printed electronics.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

We’re all gearing up for one of Xconomy’s biggest events of the year—today’s “5×5: Five Cities, Five Big Tech Ideas” forum, which is sold out. But I wanted to shine a little light on five other Boston-area companies I’ve been hearing about lately in my discussions with entrepreneurs and investors around town.

Frankly, it’s impossible to write about all the companies I’d like to cover, but here are a few that have piqued my curiosity this week—not necessarily the biggest or most successful, but interesting nonetheless. (And none of them are in particularly frothy sectors like social media or daily deals, I might add.)

So, apropos of nothing, here are five companies to watch:

—FastCAP Systems: This MIT spinoff is developing a better ultracapacitor, which is an energy-storage device that competes with batteries and eventually could power your car or cellphone. FastCAP has won funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for its technology, which uses carbon nanotubes to construct more efficient electrodes. Another startup in this sector is Seattle-based EnerG2, which is also using a carbon-based nanomaterial to improve ultracapacitor electrodes.

—LeadKarma: This Web marketing startup, founded in 2006, was doing “lead generation” before most people knew what lead generation was. The company runs websites for specific industries, such as insurance, that help consumers find quotes for services (and help companies acquire customers). Sounds simple but effective—and it’s all based on algorithms that adapt to what consumers are buying at any given time.

—NeuroScouting: This stealthy startup stands out from most tech companies I hear about. Its approach is to understand how elite athletic skills show up in the brain of professional athletes—and then design computer technologies to enhance athletes’ mental training. The company is led by a couple of PhD neuroscientists, Wesley Clapp and Brian Miller, who believe they can blaze new trails in diagnostics and training in sports.

—Nexage: This is a three-year-old mobile advertising company whose time is coming. Nexage, which moved to Boston last year from California, focuses on helping publishers make more money from advertising through mobile devices. This week the company released a new software product, for rich media ads—ones that are interactive or include video, say—on mobile platforms. (The technology is complementary to what DataXu does on the “demand side,” for advertisers.) All in all, Nexage seems positioned to cash in on the mobile advertising industry once the absolute spending numbers go up, as experts have been predicting for years now.

—Shoebuy: OK, this online shoe-selling company was founded in 1999 and was acquired by IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) in 2006, but it’s still pretty interesting—and is still going strong as one of the top e-retailers in Massachusetts. (IAC also owns other sites like Ask.com, Match.com, Citysearch, and Urbanspoon.) One local entrepreneur told me, “It’s not Zappos, but it’s a hell of a business.” To me, Shoebuy seems like a smaller, more frugal version of Zappos, but it works basically the same way—and with similar results.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

OK, a flying Humvee doesn’t sound like a very green vehicle—but the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency isn’t interested in green.

DARPA is interested in improving the safety and lethality of U.S. troops in dangerous environments. And it is willing to pay handsomely for it—to the tune of a five-year, $65 million research program to develop what it calls a “Transformer” vehicle that works like a Humvee on land, but can also fly.

No, this isn’t an Onion article. The goal is to be able to carry four troops and their gear (1,000 pounds) over a distance of 280 miles on one tank of fuel, by any combination of air and land, the agency says. The vehicle must be able to take off and land vertically—meaning it will fly like a cross between a helicopter and a plane (see drawing above). And, oh yeah, it has to be piloted by an average Marine Corps soldier without any flight experience. In other words, it needs to fly mostly by itself.

If it works—a big if, indeed—such a vehicle could swoop over obstacles or tough terrain, and potentially could help troops avoid ambushes and improvised explosive devices in roads. It could also be used for evacuation or rescue missions where it would be very useful to scan the situation from the air and then drop in at the right spot—in urban combat operations, say—while maintaining some mobility on the ground after landing. (You can read more details and speculation in this Popular Mechanics article.)

A key participant in the DARPA program is Woburn, MA-based Terrafugia. You might know it as the “flying car” company, though the firm much prefers the drier term “roadable aircraft.” Terrafugia was founded in 2006 by five MIT-educated pilots, and has been developing a light sport plane, called the Transition, that can be driven on roads and is slated for testing and production next year. The company declined to comment on its involvement in the DARPA program beyond the information in its press release this week. But it’s clear that Terrafugia’s expertise in combining flying and driving vehicles is valuable here.

Indeed, Terrafugia is “one of the few companies that has experience blending the disparate ground vehicle and aircraft requirements into a single functional concept,” says Stephen Waller, the program manager for the DARPA project, in an e-mail. “This is the primary challenge to successfully develop the Transformer vehicle.”

Terrafugia is one of several companies participating in the program—and a few have connections to the Boston area. Virginia-based aerospace firm Aurora Flight Sciences, which has a research and development office in Cambridge, MA, and technical consulting firm Metis Design, based in Cambridge, both have received small-business research grants to work on the project. For its part, Terrafugia is the largest subcontractor to AAI, a Maryland-based aerospace and defense company owned by Textron, a multi-industry conglomerate headquartered in Rhode Island. AAI is one of the two main contractors on the DARPA project; defense tech giant Lockheed Martin is the other (see drawing on left for Lockheed’s competing design concept).

Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has been awarded $988,000 to develop an autonomous control system for the vehicle. Sanjiv Singh, a professor in CMU’s Robotics Institute, is leading that effort. And rocket engine company Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is working on the engine and propulsion technology for the … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share: