This week’s deal news covered a breadth of sectors: biotech, medical devices, mobile applications, software, and robotics. Not to mention a major venture capital fund raise.

—Waltham, MA-based drugmaker Avila Therapeutics was bought by New Jersey-based Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) for $350 million, with as much as another $575 million available in milestones. Avila is a maker of “covalent” drugs that are designed to shut down the activity of disease-causing proteins for a prolonged period of time.

—Verastem, a young Cambridge, MA-based biotech working on drugs targeting cancer stem cells, completed its initial public offering, led by UBS and Leerink Swann. The IPO (5.5 million shares sold at $10 apiece) represented a strong showing among investors, as Verastem originally indicated it planned to sell 4.5 million shares priced between $9 and $11 each. The underwriters have a 30-day option to buy another 825,000 shares.

—Burlington, MA-based ConforMIS, a maker of knee implant systems, raised $89 million in a Series E funding from private equity investors and government investment funds abroad. The company said it will put the money toward sales, manufacturing, and expansion of its technology.

—Co3 Systems, a maker of data loss management software, received new funding from Fairhaven Capital. The Cambridge, MA-based startup said it will put the money (whose sum was undisclosed) toward sales, marketing, and engineering.

—Malborough, MA-based medical device startup Navilyst Medical will be acquired by Albany, NY-based AngioDynamics (NASDAQ: ANGO) in a transaction valued at $372 million, based on the company’s $14.20 per share closing stock price Monday. Navilyst, which focuses on … Next Page »

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They say the first casualty of war is the truth. Based upon recent events in the U.S. presidential elections, it looks like the truth is a casualty in politics as well. Whether out of desperation, ignorance, or political convenience, current and former contenders for the Republican presidential nomination have been questioning the long-term economic value of venture capital and private equity, which has been wrongly and unfairly labeled “vulture capitalism.”

First, let’s be clear. Venture capital and private equity—while related in that they both involve pools of private capital striving to generate returns for their investors (typically non-profit pension funds, foundations and university endowments)—follow very different approaches in achieving their goals. But neither seeks to undermine employees. In fact, venture capital typically creates jobs over the long term and private equity minimizes job losses.

Venture capital—a key component of the financial foundation for Silicon Valley—is focused on leveraging creative talent, capital, the hard work of employees and entrepreneurial experience to create and grow new businesses based on disruptive ideas. When successful, new businesses and industries are the result—creating new jobs for employees and wealth for investors and contributing to the competitive posture of America. When unsuccessful, the venture capital investors involved and their employee partners bear the costs of the failed effort. There are no government bailouts here—unless the politicians become involved a la Solyndra, the clean tech startup that fell into bankruptcy despite a $535 million federal loan guarantee. A situation like Solyndra is rare, however.

Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs don’t always win in the marketplace, but they don’t quit, either. In many instances, the same investors and talented engineers who failed will form new teams and pursue new dreams—always looking to create value and opportunity from ideas. The innovation flywheel is often successful and very lucrative: According to a 2011 Global Insight study, venture-backed companies accounted for 11.9 million jobs (11 percent of U.S. private sector employment) and $3.1 trillion in revenue in the U.S. in 2010—21 percent of the total US GDP–all based on an annual investment equal to less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

By and large, these are jobs at the higher end of the spectrum with solid, innovative companies—and often those that become global industry leaders, such as Intel, Apple, Google, Genentech, Facebook, Twitter, to name but a few. Ironically, while countries around the world are replicating the U.S. venture capital model and working overtime to encourage innovation and support venture capital ecosystems, U.S. politicos, themselves devoid of any new or creative ideas, have chosen to attack the engine of U.S. technology leadership.

Private equity also plays an important, though different, role in the U.S. economy. It builds and restores established but usually faltering companies. While colorful robber baron images of Gordon Gekko, acquiring functional businesses and breaking them apart for pure financial gain, may still be a popular reference point in today’s media, it is an inaccurate analogy in the vast majority of cases. Like venture capital investors, most private equity investors are paid for building real value, for themselves and their investors, not simply to make a quick buck. They do this by investing in under-performing companies, often in or on the verge of insolvency, in hopes of … Next Page »

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Buyouts and mergers of Web companies that offer online “daily deals” have accelerated sharply over the past five months, driven by a rapid decline in valuations and a surplus of Groupon clones, according to a report issued today by CB Insights, a New York data services firm.

CB Insights counted 22 global mergers and acquisitions in the sector during the second quarter that ended in June—more than double the M&A activity that took place during the first three months of 2011, when nine companies offering online discounts for local goods and services were involved in M&A transactions. An additional 22 M&A deals disclosed in July and August have brought the five-month total to 44—before the third quarter has even ended. (Disclosure: CB Insights will share with Xconomy a portion of the revenue from any copies of the report that it sells to our readers. Nobody involved in the writing or editing of this post was involved in negotiating this arrangement or was aware of it before publication.)

The five-month surge in M&A activity far outpaces the 28 transactions done over the previous 15 months (from the beginning of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011), according to CB Insights. The data reinforces a report yesterday from Dow Jones VentureWire, which said the industry is undergoing a shake-out. Citing data from Yipit.com, which aggregates daily deals, VentureWire reported that 170 of 530 daily deal sites across the country—nearly a third—have shut down or been sold so far this year.

“Looking past just the headline M&A transaction numbers, it becomes apparent that things are not going swimmingly in the daily deal space,” CB’s analysts write in their 17-page report. Valuations also have declined sharply since the first quarter, based on the way daily deal sites are valued according to “price per subscriber,” which fell 36 percent and “price per voucher sold,” which fell 40 percent during the current quarter.

The CB report attributes the declining valuations to … Next Page »

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For a while, I was optimistic that 2011 would be a good year for venture capital-backed IPOs, and it wasn’t just wishful thinking. There were 72 VC-backed IPOs last year—six times as many as in 2009. The year ended with a bang and 2011 got off to a good start. In the first half of 2011, there were 36 IPOs, right on target for at least a replay of 2010.

Lately, however, I have parked my optimism at the side of the road.

Our high jobless rate has not budged, housing remains in the tank, and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe now threatens the United States. In addition, the U.S. government’s debt load grows more out of control every day. And, of course, we have stalemate over fiscal policy in Washington.

Predictably, all this makes the stock market very volatile, and that isn’t a good backdrop for IPOs. When the market goes up 200 points one day and down 200 points the next, very few investors are interested in IPOs. You need market stability and a better economic backdrop. Marque companies like Zynga, Facebook, and perhaps Groupon can probably go public in this environment (Groupon postponed plans for an IPO in September), but most companies will be on the sidelines until deep into 2012.

Many of them are good, solid middle market companies that are growing briskly and making money, but aren’t big enough, in the current climate, to interest Wall Street investment bankers. This could eventually change, but not in this market.

Fortunately, the picture isn’t completely bleak, because there are alternatives in the private market, both short-term and long-term. One is the advent and growth of markets for trading illiquid assets online, such as SharesPost and SecondMarket, which have created a marketplace for trading shares of private companies. Trading on the secondary markets allows company founders and key managers to liquidate some of their stock and tie themselves over financially until their real payday comes along.

Longer-term, more private equity buyers may enter the fold to help middle-market companies monetize themselves. The incentive is there; unlike the IPO market, a record amount of cash was generated from exits in the private equity sector in the second quarter, inspiring confidence in the asset class. According to Preqin, an alternative asset research firm, private equity general partners generated $120 billion from 300 exits in the second quarter.

Seasoned technology private equity firms such as TA Associates and Summit Partners are already a part of this picture as so-called growth capital investors, and they focus heavily on middle-market companies—companies with revenues of $50 million to $1billion that are typically profitable. In aggregate, these middle-market companies generate more than $6 trillion in annual revenue, or 40 percent of the national GDP, and employ 25 million people.

TA Associates, Summit Partners, and other companies like them usually make a minority investment in such companies when they are seeking help to finance a transformational event in their lifecycle, such as a substantial international expansion. In addition to their capital, these firms provide strategic guidance and a significant network of contacts. Unlike venture firms, they often use debt rather than equity in their financings.

Corporate recipients of growth capital don’t necessarily want money for international expansion. They may want money to diversify their product line, for example, or to expand into a related but new field. But in a global economy, particularly at a time when the U.S. is growing much more slowly than it once did, accelerated international expansion is often the highest priority. International business surveys show that well over half of executives of midsize American businesses plan to increase their overseas sales targets.

Many growth capital companies eventually go public, but with a substantial lag. Some middle market companies may seek more aggressive avenues for growth—they can be acquired, operated and re-tooled to become more successful , for example. This is traditional work for a private equity firm in select industries. Such scenarios, however, are far less likely in the case of technology companies.

It would be easier and probably better if seasoned and strong technology companies could go public today. But if they cannot, it’s nice to know that there may be options besides acquisitions.

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We caught some personnel updates and other news from public and private New England companies developing drugs, medical devices, and diagnostics technology.

—Woburn, MA-based Pathogenetix, the diagnostics and biodefense company formerly known as U.S. Genomics, raised $4 million of a targeted $9.5 million equity financing.

—Beacon Endoscopic, a Newton, MA-based startup that’s developed a fine needle aspiration system for endoscopic ultrasound and endoscopic bronchial ultrasound, inked a $5 million Series B financing from MVM Life Science Partners and took in new money from its existing angel investors.

—Knome, a Cambridge, MA-based company focused on providing personal genome sequencing services, reported in an SEC filing that it has raised $5 million of a funding round that could hit $20 million. The startup was founded by Harvard geneticist George Church in 2007.

—Mara Aspinall left her post as CEO of On-Q-ity, the Waltham, MA-based cancer diagnostics startup. She’s now the president of another business focused on cancer diagnostics: Ventana Medical Systems, an Arizona-based division of healthcare giant Roche. No word yet on who will succeed Aspinall as CEO of On-Q-ity. She’s still listed on the website as founder and director.

—Cambridge-based Acceleron Pharma expanded an anemia research partnership it has had with biotech Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) since 2008. Celgene will pay $25 million upfront to Acceleron and could pay up to $217 million more in milestone payments and double-digit royalties, as part of a new joint development and commercialization deal for ACE-536, a compound that treats anemia.

—New York hedge fund MSMB Capital Management is attempting to thwart a proposed merger between Lexington, MA-based Amag Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMAG) and Allos Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ALTH), with an unsolicited bid to acquire Amag for $18 per share. The MSMB offer represents a 25 percent premium on Amag’s closing stock price the day before. Wall Street had reacted negatively when the $686 million merger with Allos was first announced.

—My colleague Greg wrote about Boston biotechie Stéphane Bancel, who up until last month was CEO of bioMérieux, the France-based microbiology and diagnostics firm. Read about Bancel’s thoughts on diagnostics and his work with BG Medicine, Knome, and ModeRNA here.

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Lowell, MA-based M/A-COM Technology Solutions indicated in an SEC filing that it seeks to raise $230 million through an initial public offering. The company, which makes wireless chips, is owned by the semiconductor-focused private equity fund GaAs Labs, whose owner John Ocampo bought the firm for around $90 million in 2009. Lead underwriters for the deal are Barclays Capital, J.P. Morgan, and Jefferies.

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New York-based interactive advertising firm BrightLine received $30 million from private equity firm JMI Equity, according to a press release. The seven-year-old company creates and implements ad campaigns that invite viewer involvement across cable, satellite and other TV platforms. Its clients include Unilever, Kellogg’s, and GlaxoSmithKline.

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[Corrected 7/19/11, 5:45 pm. See below.] Last month, Beverly, MA-based Eliza took in its first-ever outside investment, with an undisclosed equity financing from Parthenon Capital Partners, a private equity firm with offices in Boston and San Francisco.

Founded in 1999, Eliza offers speech recognition technology that powers automated phone calls to patients on behalf of accountable care organizations, employers, and hospitals, to cull qualitative information on patient health and offer actionable steps for improving wellness. [An earlier version of this paragraph incorrectly stated Eliza was founded in 2002. We regret the error.]

This whole time Eliza has been keeping a low profile and bootstrapping as it built out its technology to serve more customers, in the meantime accruing data from more than 450 million interactions with patients, says Eliza co-founder and president Alexandra Drane.

Things have started to heat up in the last couple of years surrounding national health reform, Drane told me when I caught up on the phone with her and fellow co-founder and CEO Lucas Merrow last week. “We started to consider a financial partner to help the organization go through opportunities for inorganic growth,” Drane says. “There may be an opportunity for us to think differently, more aggressively, in more intense ways in some areas.”

Eliza still has every intention of focusing on healthcare, but it’s looking to use the financing to build out new capabilities based on needs that have been revealed from the data in patient calls. The Eliza technology is designed to help patients tackle things like diabetes and high blood pressure that are already classified as health problems, but other issues that aren’t as concretely defined have come up in loads of calls with patients, Drane says. Patients talk to the system about issues like caring for elderly parents or financial stress, for example, that have interfered with patients’ ability to care for themselves properly, Drane says.

“Our hypothesis is understanding, A, how to establish a relationship with somebody to help them to understand issues, and B, that these issues in and of themselves have health consequences,” she says. “That is a big focuse for us right now at Eliza. It all relates to having the most accurate pictures of who people are and what they care about.”

Eliza could potentially be eyeing other acquisitions in the healthcare sector, as well as increasing its headcount, which is now at about 170 people, Merrow says. “We already planned on doing some pretty strong hiring prior to the investment. As part of this we’ll be beefing up,” he says.

Ultimately, the company hopes to get its technology in the hands of many more firms focusing on healthcare. Things are just beginning on this front, both Drane and Merrow say.

“A lot of customers don’t use this technology yet,” Merrow says. “It’s still an early lifecycle for what we do. We definitely needed expertise and capital to help us address that.”

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Burlington, MA-based medical device developer InfraReDx announced today that it had raised $24.1 million in an equity offering it sold to existing investors. The money will go to ongoing and new clinical trials exploring additional applications of its LipiScan IVUS coronary imaging system, which combines near infrared light and a type of intravascular ultrasound to provide detailed images of a type of fatty plaque in the arteries. Last October InfraReDx raised $21 million to launch the system in the U.S. shortly after it had gained FDA clearance.

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As a technology venture capitalist, I provide funds to help companies reach their next evolutionary level more quickly, efficiently, and successfully than without my cash. My mandate is to also offer non-cash benefit and support that, one might argue, is even more critical than cash to speed ahead of milestones, competitors, and expectations.

In the course of my work, I have had the opportunity to invest in my home market, the United States, and in international and emerging markets including the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China). I’ve also held various operational roles in some of these markets. While working in these places I’ve discovered, unsurprisingly, that the nature of business and entrepreneurship differ significantly from region to region. Sometimes these differences lead to great confusion, sometimes to great competitive advantage. Of the markets I’ve invested in, I seem to always get asked about the highly visible BRIC market of India, where I spent several years as a private equity and venture capital investor. So highlighted here are a few themes that may be of interest to those investing in or doing business on the Indian subcontinent, or thinking about it.

One key theme that crops up repeatedly is the ability of the Indian entrepreneur to build a company on limited resources. Getting more mileage out of the same resources seems to be an Indian talent. This is not simply due to pure frugality (which is an accusation I’ve heard but is hard to believe if one has experienced some Indian weddings or Indian hospitality). Nor is it due to goods and services being less expensive in India versus other regions (because on a relative basis this is not necessarily true). This phenomenon has to do with the very DNA of the populace and to a degree cuts across stratifications of class and wealth.

Generally, Indians think lean; they are orientated to do a lot with little. The understanding of this trait is reflected as a general bias in the Indian investment community which expects Indian entrepreneurs to bootstrap to a milestone or revenue target—whereas it is equally well understood that an American counterpart would need to raise a round to get to the same goal. This mentality also extends to the personal sphere. I recently met with an Indian student attending an MBA program here in Boston who confided that Americans had advised him to budget a horrifying amount for two years; he’s doing it on 40 percent less and says he hasn’t missed out on a thing.

Adjustment is another idea that runs deep in the Indian psyche. The visitor to India is sure to be asked to “adjust” to (admittedly sometimes inane) situations. In fact, adjusting is the only way to survive in India. Ultimately one comes to understand this is how a nation of one billion souls—often vastly different from one another in the physical, economic, mental, and spiritual spheres, and with different ambitions—co-exist without a major civil war. Adjustment is a key characteristic of how businesses are built and run, too. Entrepreneurs who suddenly face a threat to cash flow immediately institute all sorts controls, standard and imaginative, to conserve and extend cash runways indefinitely.

Imaginative and unapologetic cost cutting are modus operandi and occur in cities and rural villages, amongst the educated and illiterate, the rich and poor. In one real example, an Indian CEO … Next Page »

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Waltham, MA-based Harvest Power, a cleantech and waste management startup with operations in Seattle and Vancouver, BC, said today it has raised $6 million from new investor SAM Private Equity, based in Zurich. The deal is an extension of Harvest’s Series B round, first announced in March, which now totals $57.7 million. The company was founded in 2008 and focuses on converting organic waste into soil products and electricity. Its previous investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Waste Management, Munich Venture Partners, TriplePoint Capital, DAG Ventures, Keating Capital, and Generation Investment Management. Earlier this month, Xconomy’s Luke Timmerman profiled Harvest Power and its West Coast genesis and operations, sitting down with co-founder Jan Allen in Seattle.

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Here in Boston, we fret about losing tech talent and leadership to the West Coast. So today, let’s celebrate the return of one of our own.

Michael Schreck has joined Boston-based digital publishing firm Zmags as its new CEO, as of earlier this month. Schreck, a prominent investor and entrepreneur, has spent the past eight years in the cultural wasteland of Orange County, CA, as CEO and managing director of Equity Pacific Group, a private equity shop. Before that, he made his name in Boston as a co-founder of a number of startups including m-Qube and Upromise, and a co-founder and general partner at venture firm General Catalyst Partners. He originally came to town in the early 1990s to work at Monitor Group and then attended Harvard Business School; now he’s moving back.

These things come full circle. Ten years ago, Schreck was helping recruit big-name CEOs to run companies. Now he is the big-name CEO.

But why Zmags? My colleague Wade wrote about the company back in 2009, when it was best known for its platform for publishing digital magazines (hence its name). Over the years, Zmags also has been focused on digital marketing—helping brands design and develop interactive catalogs for the Web and mobile devices. The firm started in Denmark in 2006 and moved its headquarters to Boston in 2008. This month, Schreck succeeds former CEO Jens Karstoft, a co-founder who is staying on as vice president of strategic innovation.

Zmags is also rolling out a new digital merchandising and e-commerce service today, called CommercePro. The basic idea is to help brands optimize their catalogs, marketing materials, and shopping analytics across iPad, iPhone, Android devices, Web browsers, and other channels. A key feature: the new software lets consumers make purchases directly from within a Zmags catalog or magazine (on a Facebook fan page, say), and also helps brands keep track of what’s working and what’s not.

“You can imagine it, architect it, test it, and get the data back,” Schreck says.

It sounds like an intriguing opportunity for Schreck (see left), who has some deep perspective on digital and mobile marketing. In the early 2000s, he helped start m-Qube, which grew out of a previous startup called Proteus Mobile. Back then, Schreck says, the question was, “Is texting going to be big in the U.S.?” Major wireless carriers thought no—that consumers would leap-frog to an enhanced messaging system—but m-Qube stuck with its plan, keeping mobile-marketing content simple and short via SMS. But marketing via text messages severely limited what brands and marketers could do on mobile devices.

What’s changed in the interim? In a word, the iPad/iPhone. Schreck calls it “the great leveler—nobody could imagine that device [iPhone] until it appeared in our palm.” Schreck’s epiphany for his new job came to him during a boardroom meeting with a bunch of public-company CEOs. Apparently it’s a faux pas to have your laptop open during such meetings. But “we all had our iPads out,” he says. “It was weird, I’ve never seen anything like it.” There were different age groups represented in the room, from junior to senior execs, he says. “It was everybody. You could have an iPad there, it was this sort of information appliance. You couldn’t have a laptop. I thought, ‘This is amazing.’”

Indeed, according to Jeff Glass of Bain Capital Ventures, who worked with Schreck … Next Page »

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Waltham, MA-based Thermo Fisher Scientific (NASDAQ: TMO), a provider of products and services for labs, announced that it has acquired Sweden-based Phadia from the European private equity firm Cinven for about $3.5 billion in cash. The acquisition of Phadia, which provides allergy and autoimmunity diagnostic products, is expected to close fourth quarter 2011 and will likely be immediately accretive to Thermo’s adjusted earnings per share, the company said.

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As chief technology officer for the Obama administration, Aneesh Chopra has been heavily involved in efforts to expand access to huge amounts of government data, and encourage techies and entrepreneurs to help solve public policy problems using that data. Xconomy’s Wade Roush talked with Chopra last year, producing this in-depth Q&A that included discussions about healthcare innovation, the government’s role in baiting entrepreneurs with competitions, and big data feeding commercial solutions.

Since then, President Barack Obama announced a new initiative called Startup America, a public-private partnership that aims to boost the economy by improving the conditions for entrepreneurs. Chopra has been among the key evangelists of this effort, which he described as “the national call to arms, so to speak, around the opportunities to promote high-growth entrepreneurship.”

As a preview to his appearance tomorrow at the Technology Alliance’s State of Technology Luncheon, I spoke with Chopra about the administration’s efforts, the role of the private sector, and what it takes to produce results that last beyond the next State of the Union speech.

One of his big messages includes a strong dose of economic optimism: “It is my thesis that there’s never been a better time to be an innovator than today, especially when tackling the big challenges that are in front of us.” Specifically, he calls out the nation’s systems for healthcare, education, and energy.

In healthcare, the focus of Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative for his first term, Chopra says there are “three forces that are coming into play that we believe will act as rocket fuel for innovators.”

The first is changing the way society pays for health services.

“In this country, you get what you pay for. And if Medicare pays people more if they perform more procedures, schedule more visits, then what you see is a pretty healthy growth in both of those areas. If you incentivize value, which is making sure people stay healthy, we believe that shift in payments will open up a new market for a range of IT-enabled services that do not exist today,” Chopra says.

The second trend spurring healthcare innovation, he said, is the modernization of health records and information, allowing better sharing among providers and other actors in the system.

“We will have an unprecedented transformation in the healthcare sector to digitize healthcare information that today is locked up in a file cabinet. And we have put in place the technical foundation for that data to be liberated with full respect to patient privacy and security,” Chopra says. “It’s not just the fact that the information is now digital, it’s that it’s now more liquid and accessible.”

The third force boosting entrepreneurship in healthcare, Chopra says, is throwing open the doors to vast troves of government data. The Department of Health and Human Services, he says, … Next Page »

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Germany-based Bigpoint, an online gaming company with a developer team in San Francisco, said that it secured $350 million in a recapitalization financing from TA Associates and Summit Partners, growth equity firms with offices in Boston and Silicon Valley. The deal gives TA and Summit a controlling share of Bigpoint together, with previous shareholder Comcast Interactive Capital’s Peacock Equity Fund selling its holdings and GMT Communications Partners and GE selling a majority of their Bigpoint stake. Bigpoint, which makes the games Battlestar Galactica Online, Farmerama and DarkOrbit, will put the new money toward international expansion

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San Diego-based TVC Capital, a small private equity firm focused on software investments, realized a gain in Pleasanton, CA-based Polycom’s (NASDAQ: PLCM) $50 million cash acquisition of El Segundo, CA-based Accordent Technologies.

In a statement today, Pleasanton, CA-based Polycom’s Sudhakar Ramakrishna says, “We believe Accordent has the most elegant video content management solution on the market. This transaction positions Polycom at the forefront of end-to-end video content and management.”

TVC Managing Partner Jeb Spencer, who served as chairman of Accordent’s board, tells me in a note this morning that TVC was Accordent’s lone institutional investor, putting $4 million into the company in 2006. TVC Managing Partner Steve Hamerslag also served on the board.

“TVC takes an activist approach to its software acquisitions and investments and believes in a more bootstrapped approach to growing technology companies,” Spencer says. “Accordent’s small raise of $4 million was enough capital to build the leading US enterprise video content management company.”

Accordent’s technology enables users to capture digital video content whether it is being used to deliver highly scalable live webcasts from a studio, providing automated rich media webcasting from the meeting or classroom, adding a streaming extension to videoconferences or enabling user-generated content from the desktop. The deal expands Polycom’s total available market by $500 million, according to data from market research firm Wainhouse Research. In addition, Wainhouse says the market for this video management segment is projected to generate a compounded annual growth rate of 32 percent through 2014 to $1.2 billion. And as a strategic partner with Microsoft, Accordent deepens Polycom’s integration with Microsoft Lync and Sharepoint.

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The big guys are getting bigger: Three prominent venture and private equity firms with Boston representation are in the news this week about raising big new funds.

How does this affect startups and innovation? Probably not all that much, other than being part of the natural cycle of money flow. But it’s interesting, and possibly encouraging, to see big investors having some initial success in what remains a very difficult fundraising environment. Perhaps the IPO and exit markets are heating up.

I’m reminded of what micro-VC David Beisel (whose quarterly Web Innovators Group meeting is this Monday) said, when he predicted that over the next 10 years, big venture firms will raise even larger funds. (As a corollary to that, Bob Nelsen from Arch Venture Partners remarked last fall, in response to the notion of VC contraction, that “it’s hard to kill a venture fund, but it’s easy to kill a venture partner.”)

OK, here’s the news around town:

—Bessemer Venture Partners is planning to raise a new fund in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion, according to a report in Bloomberg this morning (based on unnamed sources). The firm’s last fund, completed in 2009, was about $1.35 billion, the report says. Bessemer is known for its investments in companies like Skype, LinkedIn, Yelp, American Superconductor, Endeca, Sirtris, VeriSign, and Vertica.

—Greylock Partners announced this week that it has expanded its present fund to $1 billion (up from $575 million in late 2009) and has formed a growth-stage fund to focus on more established companies. Greylock’s later-stage investments—about 40 percent of its dollars since early 2006—include Constant Contact, Zipcar, Pandora, Redfin, Facebook, and Groupon.

—Summit Partners is raising a $500 million venture fund and a $3 billion growth equity fund, according to a report in Mass High Tech this morning, which cites SEC documents filed for a growth-stage fund and a venture fund. Summit closed a $300 million venture fund and a $3 billion growth fund back in 2005, the report says. The firm’s investments have included Casa Systems, Innov-X, Winshuttle, and Cloudmark.

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Cambridge, MA-based music gaming firm Harmonix has laid off 12 to 15 percent of its full-time staff of about 240, according to a report in the gaming blog Joystiq. Harmonix, the developer of the Rock Band, Dance Central, and original Guitar Hero franchises, was sold by Viacom (NYSE: VIA) to private equity firm Columbus Nova in December. In a statement this week, Harmonix said it is restructuring its organization to “bring it into alignment” with its “current product development plans.”

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The holidays have ended, and we have some catching up to do. Get ready for 2011 with our wrap-up of San Diego’s recent tech news.

—Qualcomm said it was coming: The San Diego wireless giant agreed to sell the wireless spectrum that runs its Flo TV mobile television service to AT&T for more than $1.9 billion, after spending $683 million to acquire rights in the 700-megahertz band over several years in the mid-2000s. Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs said last summer that its Flo TV network could be used to “data cast” magazines, video, and other content to mobile devices in a much more cost-effective manner—and AT&T said that’s how it plans to use it. CNET put together a good rundown of what the deal means for AT&T, which you can find here.

—Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins who settled their lawsuit against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for $65 million, told the New York Times that they intend to appeal their own settlement for a chance at a bigger windfall. The Winklevoss brothers, who are now living in San Diego while they train for the U.S. Olympic rowing team, told the Times they will pursue their case on Jan. 11 before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The Winklevoss twins allege that Zuckerberg stole their idea in creating Facebook, which calls their contentions “absurd” and the claims “frivolous.”

—A report from the San Diego Foundation determined that clean technology companies in San Diego County have attracted $445 million in venture capital over the past five years. Based on existing trends, the report predicts that clean energy and cleantech industries will become major job creators here for years to come. The report also says local cleantech companies already have the potential to draw $200 million to $1 billion in further investments, and that would create between 5,400 and 27,000 jobs.

—JMI Equity, based in San Diego and Baltimore, raised $875 million for its seventh fund, which San Diego managing member Paul Barber attributed to … Next Page »

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Cambridge, MA-based Harmonix, the music-gaming company behind Rock Band and Dance Central, said today it has been sold by Viacom (NYSE: VIA) to Columbus Nova, a private equity firm based in New York. Financial terms were not disclosed in the press release, and Harmonix was not immediately available for comment.

“We’re excited to be returning to our roots as an independent and privately owned studio,” said Harmonix representative John Drake in a blog post.

Viacom announced its plans to sell off Harmonix last month. Speculation had swirled around whether Electronic Arts or another big publisher would snap up the studio, which was founded in 1995 and bought by Viacom/MTV Networks for $175 million in 2006. Now it looks like Harmonix will be free to form partnerships with the big game distributors while maintaining its independence.

[Disclosure: I'm in a band with one current employee and one former employee of Harmonix. The band, Honest Bob & the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, has songs in Harmonix games.]

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