Ironwood Pharmaceuticals is gearing up for the possibility of an IPO. The Cambridge, MA-based developer of a new treatment for bowel disorders like for irritable bowel syndrome and chronic constipation said it may raise as much as $172.5 million from investors through the deal, according to a prospectus filed late today.

The proposed offering would be underwritten by JP Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, and Wedbush PacGrow Life Sciences. The prospectus doesn’t list how many shares it hopes to sell, or what the price range will be. Its proposed ticker is (NASDAQ: IRWD).

The proposed IPO filing doesn’t come as a surprise—we raised this question to the company last month when it added Genentech’s former chief financial officer, David Ebersman, to its board of directors. Ironwood has certainly put itself in a position to go public. Earlier this month, it passed the first two of four pivotal clinical trials, demonstrating that its drug is an effective new treatment for chronic constipation. The company has racked up a deficit of $290 million since its founding in 1998, yet it had $98.9 million left in the bank at the end of September according to today’s filing, so it’s not in urgent need of cash. Its lead drug candidate, linaclotide, treats chronic constipation that affects an estimated 26 million Americans, there are few available therapies for it, and the Ironwood drug has a way of working that’s unlike anything on the market. The U.S. healthcare system spends an estimated $25 billion on treating irritable bowel syndrome.

“We believe that linaclotide could present patients and healthcare practitioners with a unique therapy for a major medical need not yet met by existing therapies,” the company wrote in its prospectus.

Ironwood has no products currently on the market, but it has secured partnerships with three organizations to help commercialize linaclotide around the world. They are Forest Laboratories in the U.S., Laboratorios Almirall in Europe, and Astellas Pharma in certain Asian countries. The company has 167 employees.

Who stands to make the most money if Ironwood can complete an IPO? Ridgeback Capital Investments has the biggest stake in the company at 13.4 percent prior to the offering, followed by Venrock Associates with 11.3 percent, Polaris Venture Partners at 8.1 percent, and Morgan Stanley with 6.9 percent. Ironwood’s founding CEO, 46-year-old Peter Hecht, has a 5.5 percent stake, while Fidelity Biosciences has a 4.8 percent holding.

Ironwood still has a way to go before it can start generating cash flow from its first product. Results are expected from the additional two clinical trials of linaclotide in the second half of 2010, and the company will need time after that to submit its application to U.S. and European regulators and wait for them to complete their reviews.

If Ironwood can pull off this IPO, plenty of other biotech companies will to it as a bellwether to rekindle investors’ appetites for speculative biotech companies developing new products. Last month, Seattle-based Omeros (NASDAQ: OMER) completed the first IPO of a traditional U.S. biotech in the development stage since February 2008. While the company raised $62 million, it was a flop for investors. Omeros stock is down 25 percent from its IPO price of $10.

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Seattle-based Blue Marble Energy, the developer of renewable energy and specialty chemicals from biomass, said it has received a $2 million state grant through a partnership with the Odessa Public Development Authority. The company plans to use the grant, from the Washington Community Economic Revitalization Board, to build a refinery in Lincoln County that will turn organic biomass from around Eastern Washington into as much as 858 metric tons of biochemicals and 700 metric tons of green ammonia per year, says CEO Kelly Ogilvie, in an e-mail. The facility is expected to create 30 to 50 full-time jobs in its first year, he says.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Pilates is famous for shaping up peoples’ buttocks, tummies, and thighs. But what can the popularity of this fitness phenomenon and the market for health products do for investment portfolios? Cambridge, MA-based Lighter Living, which operates a health and fitness website that features Pilates expert and company founder Marjolein Brugman, has raised $3 million in an equity round of financing, according to an SEC filing.

Brugman, who appears to have pioneered an aerobic version of Pilates called AeroPilates, is listed in the regulatory filing as an executive and director of Lighter Living. There’s also a big name in venture investing involved with the firm: Michael Greeley, a founder and general partner of Boston-based venture firm Flybridge Capital Partners, who is listed as a director of Lighter Living. Neither Brugman nor Greeley was immediately available for comment this morning, but a spokeswoman for Flybridge confirmed that the firm is backing the company.

At first glance Lighter Living—which sells fitness and wellness products and offers health tips and insights from Brugman on its website—doesn’t seem like a typical bet for Greeley. However, he’s always told me that he is interested in businesses in which healthcare and information technology intersect. Previously, his interest in healthcare and IT has been manifest in investments he has led for Flybridge in companies such as Bedford, MA-based MicroCHIPS, a developer of micro-devices for medical uses, and business software firm BlueTarp Financial, of Portland, ME.

Yet Lighter Living does address a huge market demand for products that help people look and feel youthful, and there is an emerging trend of interest in this market among venture capitalists. Polaris Venture Partners is backing Cambridge, MA-based Living Proof, a provider of hair-care products based on advances in polymer science at MIT and other research institutions. Investments in the likes of Living Proof and Lighter Living could provide a boost for both consumers’ looks and venture portfolios’ outlooks.

Flybridge’s investment in Lighter Living is “building on [Brugman's] success in the healthy living market,” said Kate Castle, a spokeswoman for the venture firm. She said that Brugman has sold more than $500 million in healthy living products on the TV shopping channel QVC over the past 12 years.

Lighter Living is planning an official launch in 2010, Castle said.

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TheNextRound, a Framingham, MA-based startup that makes software for private equity and alternative investors, has been acquired by Windsor, CT-based SS&C Technologies for an undisclosed amount, according to an SS&C announcement today. SS&C makes financial management software for insurance companies, hedge funds, banks and credit unions, real estate companies, and other institutions.

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Cambridge, MA-based Cambridgesoft, which makes software for life sciences companies, disclosed in regulatory documents filed November 17 that it has raised $31.3 million in new equity-based financing. Cambridgesoft first announced the funding round (though not the amount) in a November 16 release that named new investor Health Evolution Partners and existing investor Goldman Sachs as the funders in the round.

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Dealmakers appear to be getting their business done before the week of Thanksgiving—because we’ve seen a decent stream of deal closings involving Boston-area life sciences and tech companies over the past week or so.

—Framingham, MA-based Punchbowl Software, which operates the party planning website MyPunchbowl.com, said it acquired technology assets of a group vacation website called I’m In. Punchbowl founder and CEO Matt Douglas provided details on why the transaction made sense for his startup.

—After months of operating quietly, seed-stage venture fund Founder Collective officially debuted last week. Eric Paley, a managing partner and co-founder of the firm, told us why he and other software entrepreneurs came together to form the new venture outfit, which has offices in Cambridge, MA and New York City. Here’s a hint: They were a bit frustrated with the status quo in the venture industry.

—Fate Therapeutics, the San Diego-based biotech startup focused on developing techniques that make stem cell research practical for the pharmaceutical industry, reeled in $30 million in a Series B round of venture financing. Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners led the new round of investment in Fate, which was founded by top academics at Harvard University, Stanford University, The Scripps Research Institute, and the University of Washington.

—ImmunoGen (NASDAQ:IMGN), a Waltham, MA-based biotech firm, reported this week that the firm sold a second license to its technology—which is for linking targeted antibodies to cell-killing molecules—to industry giant Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) for $1 million upfront, plus potential milestone payments.

—Corindus, a Natick, MA-based startup developing a robotic system for implanting vascular stents, collected $5.3 million of a planned $10 million in venture dollars, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

—Cambridge -based Ligon Discovery found $1 million in a seed round of financing from incTANK Ventures, with plans to validate its small molecule microarray system for drug discovery that was developed at Harvard. The company was founded by folks from Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

—We spotted Angus Davis, a co-founder of Microsoft’s voice-based Internet search subsidiary Tellme Networks, at Polaris Venture Partners’ Dogpatch Labs recently and wondered what he was up to. It looks like he’s been working on a new Providence, RI-based startup called Swipely, which quietly swept up a cool $1 million from First Round Capital.

—Jealous? Highland Capital Partners, the Lexington, MA-based venture powerhouse, closed its eighth fund, worth a whopping …Next Page »

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We hope to make this a regular feature in our Xconomy cities. It’s a look at small financings of private companies in tech, life sciences, and cleantech. These are deals in the roughly $100,000 to $1 million range, and they’re increasingly where the action is for local entrepreneurs, yet they’re often harder to track than the bigger deals we tend to report on.

And there were at least 12 of these smaller financings in the Northwest in October (see table below), according to ChubbyBrain, a New York-based information services company tracking VC, angel, and other investments in private companies. ChubbyBrain gets its data from regulatory filings, user submissions, and other sources, and this is the second monthly installment of “under the radar” deals in the Seattle area (you can see the previous deals for September here). The data didn’t include the investors or the stage of financing.

A few quick observations: Like the previous month, most of the financings were in Washington (7 out of 12), but a significant number (5) were in Oregon. Most were equity deals (7), with the rest (5) being debt financings. The majority of financings (9) were in software, Internet, or tech, while a much smaller number (3) were in life sciences and healthcare, and no cleantech or energy deals made the list.

If nothing else, these lists are a cool way to hear about emerging startups we otherwise wouldn’t know about. For example, I’ve heard of Teranode, Nearlyweds, and 1000Museums before, but Zapproved and Intellisist are completely new to me.

Here are the 12 “under the radar” deals from last month:

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Waltham, MA-based ImmunoGen (NASDAQ: IMGN) said today that Amgen has purchased a second license to develop a treatment that uses ImmunoGen’s technology for linking targeted antibodies to cell-killing agents that make them more potent. ImmunoGen will get $1 million upfront and could receive $34 million worth of milestone payments over time if Amgen is successful in developing a drug against an undisclosed target on cancer cells. Amgen bought its first such license to the ImmunoGen technology in September.

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Seattle-based Cozi announced today it has formed a strategic partnership with MeadWestvaco (NYSE: MWV), a Sidney, NY-based maker of school and office supplies and planning tools. Financial terms of the deal weren’t announced, but the partnership will give MWV consumers access to Cozi’s Web-based software for helping families manage their busy schedules. The tools include a family calendar, customized to-do lists, and messaging systems. This is the third partnership Cozi will announce with a Fortune 500 company this year, including a previous deal with Dell to pre-load certain home computers with Cozi’s software.

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Natick, MA-based Corindus has corralled $5.3 million of a proposed $10 million round of equity financing, according to an SEC filing. The firm is developing a robotic system that helps surgeons control the position of guidewires in veins in procedures to implant vascular stents, according to the firm’s LinkedIn profile. A call to company CEO David Handler was not immediately returned today, and it’s not stated in the SEC filing who participated in the financing. Prior to this financing, the firm raised $12.8 million in a Series B financing in spring 2008, according to a story I wrote about the deal for Mass High Tech.

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Ligon Discovery reported today on its website that it has raised $1 milllion in seed financing from incTANK Ventures. The Cambridge, MA-based startup says it uses a small molecule microarray system developed at Harvard University to discover drugs, and the drug-discovery technology has already been put to work at the Broad Institute. The company founders include Benjamin Ebert of Harvard Medical School, Angela Koehler of the Broad Institute, and company CEO Patrick Kleyn, who was previously director of scientific planning at the Broad. As part of the financing, IncTank Ventures general partner Christian Bailey is joining the board of directors at Ligon, according to the company.

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As startups developing next-generation biofuels emerge in San Diego, Boston, and elsewhere, a business model for rapidly expanding to commercial-scale operations already can be found in the biotech industry, experts said yesterday. The premise of presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group, is that collaborations being formed between biofuel startups and big energy are comparable to the partnerships formed between biotech startups and big pharmaceutical companies.

Biofuels development partnerships will be crucial to meeting renewable fuel standards that the federal government set in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Wain Fishburn, a founding partner of the Cooley Godward law firm’s San Diego office, said the standards require the U.S. biofuels industry to increase its production fourfold—from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons in 2022. Fishburn, who introduced the speakers at the Biocom event, said the ability to meet the federal goal depends on a variety of factors, including the ability to lower the cost of biofuels to be competitive with petroleum-based crude, and the scalability of feedstock, production facilities, distribution, and related infrastructure.

But what it really comes down to, as Verenium (NASDAQ: VRNM) executive William Baum told the audience, is capital.

Baum, who became Cambridge, MA-based Verenium’s executive vice president of business development in 2007 (following the 2006 merger of San Diego’s Diversa and Cambridge’s Celunol) said the need for capital was the theme he heard “over and over again” during a recent meeting that focused on the biofuels industry. “We’ve got hundreds of biofuel companies that are trying to get to the next stage. If you don’t have a big brother with deep pockets, like a BP, Exxon, Shell, or a Chevron, it’s going to be very difficult.”

A number of partnerships already have been established between biofuels startups and major energy conglomerates, Fishburn noted. He listed the following collaborations:

—BP, the London-based global energy conglomerate, has formed two strategic partnerships with Verenium, which has been developing technology to produce cellulosic ethanol using proprietary microbes to accelerate the breakdown of non-edible, high-cellulose plant material into ethanol. Baum described the first collaboration, announced in August 2008, as a technology joint venture for IP. (BP agreed to put up $90 million to develop “low-cost, environmentally sound cellulosic ethanol production facilities in the United States.”) Through a second deal announced nine months ago, BP agreed to provide an additional $45 million and to form a …Next Page »

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San Diego-based Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LGND) said today it has received $2 million in milestone payments as part of research collaboration with Merck that is due to expire next month. The partnership started with Organon, which was later acquired by Schering-Plough, which was then acquired by Merck.

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Seattle-based Voyager Capital has participated in a $5 million investment in 1020, the San Francisco developer of Placecast, a location-based advertising and marketing platform, according to a report in TechCrunch. Quatrex Capital and Onset Ventures also participated in the Series B funding, which will be used to accelerate Placecast’s technology development. Placecast’s algorithms combine data across the Web, mobile, e-mail, and Wi-Fi to try to maximize relevance for advertisers and publishers. In an interview with Xconomy last year, Voyager co-founder Enrique Godreau mentioned 1020 as an example of an intriguingly mainstream mobile startup.

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Managing a venture fund is hugely different from running a startup. Eric Paley told me that last year at this time his primary responsibility was at dental imaging firm Brontes Technologies, the MIT spin-off that he co-founded and where he had served as general manager after its sale to technology giant 3M (NYSE:MMM) in 2006. Nowadays, as managing partner and co-founder of new seed fund Founder Collective, his much broader focus includes meetings with a whopping 30 entrepreneurs a week, he said.

Early this month Paley’s firm had an official launch after closing a first fund of about $40 million to invest in seed-stage startups, even though reports about the firm surfaced in June after its initial SEC filings became public knowledge. The firm is made up of a group of successful entrepreneurs who have been backing each other’s startups for ages before coming together as Founder Collective. David Frankel, the firm’s other managing partner along with Paley, was a seed investor in Brontes as well as partner Chris Dixon’s startups SiteAdvisor and Hunch, for example. Their experience as entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital and reached successful exits, along with their compelling investment strategy, could help them succeed in the struggling venture industry.

Founder Collective, which has offices in Cambridge, MA, and New York (where Frankel is based), is taking a much different tack than many funds have taken over the past decade. Paley says that the vast majority of funds closed over the past 10 years have been more than $100 million, while most of the funds were less than that in the previous decade. But the big knock on the venture industry is that it’s done a poor job of returning capital and returns commensurate with their risk profile to their limited partner investors. And large funds often aim to invest big amounts of capital ($10 million or more) in their portfolio companies, even when companies don’t really need that much money, Paley says. Founder Collective’s first fund is a lean $40 million or so, and that money is intended to be invested in capital-efficient businesses that aren’t taking on more investment capital than is needed to achieve their goals. Indeed, we’re seeing this movement toward smallish investments in lean teams, at least in software/tech, all around the country.

Another big downside of a startup raising more venture capital than it requires to execute its plan is the dilution of ownership for the entrepreneurs who founded the company. “We really created the fund out of frustration that there wasn’t a really good answer for the capital-efficient business in the early days to achieve major milestones and increase the value of the company before giving so much of it away to investors,” Paley said.

There are no banker-turned-venture capitalists at Paley’s shop. Many of the partners maintain operational roles at startups they’ve co-founded. Dixon, a founder of Web security firm SiteAdvisor (acquired by McAfee), is full-time CEO of his firm Hunch that provides an online decision-making tool. Also, Micah Rosenbloom, who co-founded Brontes with Paley, is now the general manager of the Brontes business for 3M. (Here’s a full list of the the Founder team on the firm’s website.)

The investment philosophy at Founder is to back startups led by committed entrepreneurs. And though Paley said the firm has no stated limits on sectors or geographic areas in which it invests, the firm will most likely invest, as it has done so far, in …Next Page »

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Just when I thought venture deals, especially for software and tech companies, had headed south for the winter (or longer), the Northwest erupted with a slew of financings in the past week.

—But first, some serious biotech. Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners led a $30 million Series B round for Fate Therapeutics, a San Diego-based stem cell company with ties to the University of Washington, as Luke reported. Existing investors Arch Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Venrock Associates also participated in the funding, as well as three strategic corporate investors—Astellas Venture Management and Genzyme Ventures were named.

—Seattle-based DocuSign, a maker of software to automate and control the process of electronic signatures, received a strategic investment from Second Century Ventures, the VC fund of the National Association of Realtors. The funding amount was undisclosed, but the money will be used to accelerate and extend DocuSign’s efforts with real estate customers.

—Beaverton, OR-based Avnera pulled in an $8 million equity round from undisclosed investors, according to a regulatory filing. The company’s previous investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures, Intel Capital, and DAG Ventures. Avnera was founded in 2004, and designs novel chips for wireless audio applications.

—Seattle stealth startup Doxo raised $5.25 million in equity financing, according to a regulatory filing and media reports. The investors were not disclosed, but David Feinleib of Mohr Davidow Ventures was listed on the SEC form as a director.

—Bellevue, WA-based Enroute Systems, a developer of software that helps companies manage their parcel-shipping logistics, closed a Series A funding round worth $810,000 from Keiretsu Forum, Zino Society, Puget Sound Venture Club, and angel investors. Next up, Enroute is looking …Next Page »

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Framingham, MA-based Punchbowl Software, the company behind party planning site MyPunchbowl.com, said today that it has acquired the assets of I’m In, a group vacation website formerly owned by Waltham, MA-based GroupGo. Punchbowl’s founder and CEO Matt Douglas says the local search tools created by I’m In have enabled MyPunchbowl to launch a new local vendor portal where party planners can connect with small businesses.

“I had known the guys at I’m In from the local startup scene,” says Douglas. “They were building a group travel and local search product for the trip and travel world, and what impressed me most was their local vendor portal. They were doing a great job, and we kept an eye on them. Over time, the opportunity came to us to acquire the property, and long story short, I decided to pull the trigger. It’s not every day that a startup acquires another startup, but my investors and our board got together and said, ‘You know what, this is something that could really accelerate the company.’”

Punchbowl has acquired I’m In’s software code, designs, trademarks, and domain names, but hasn’t brought in any of its former employees. Douglas isn’t saying how much Punchbowl paid in the deal, but he says Punchbowl didn’t have to raise any new venture funding to make the purchase. The company’s most recent venture round of $2.1 million, supplied by Contour Ventures, Intel Capital, and eCoast Angels, came in September 2008.

Punchbowl earns revenue largely by generating sales leads for party vendors, so the new directory could be a big asset. “I can’t overemphasize how big of a project it is to launch a local vendor portal for 50 states and 30,000 cities—there are over 1 million vendors” in the new portal, says Douglas. “The technology we acquired will give us a huge head start, and we’re excited that we can finally talk about the acquisition and our new portal.”

Don Dodge—the former Microsoft emerging business team director who announced this week that he has accepted a position at Google—is on the board at Punchbowl. We profiled the startup shortly after its launch in October 2007.

GroupGo, meanwhile, was founded in 2005 by entrepreneurs and hotel-industry veterans Brian Harrington and Josh Lesnick and had backing from Annex Ventures. The company was known for helping groups of young adults plan so-called “girlcations” and “mancursions” to locations such as Napa Valley or Las Vegas. Boston.com profiled the company in 2007.

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San Diego’s Global Analytics Holdings says it has raised $10 million of a targeted $14 million round that consists of equity investments, options, and rights to securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. The company provides consulting services for business customers and specializes in developing software for statistical analysis, predictive modeling, and neural networks.

The filing indicates the capital is being raised in connection with a merger, acquisition, or exchange offer, but founding CEO Krishna Gopinathan did not respond to a call or e-mail seeking further information. According to the Global Analytics website, Gopinathan was the primary inventor of Falcon Fraud Manager, a neural-network technology developed at San Diego-based HNC Software (now part of Fair Isaac) that is used to protect most credit cards worldwide.

Global Analytics has been operating at least five years and has more than 100 employees, according to its website. A number of key executives at Global Analytics, including the executive vice president of analytics, vice president of products, and vice president of software development, are former HNC employees.

Last year, Global Analytics named Larry Rosenberger, the former CEO of Minneapolis, MN-based Fair Isaac, to its board of directors. The company also noted that Rosenberger and his wife Diane invested in the San Diego startup. Peter Rip, a general partner at San Francisco’s Crosslink Capital, also is on Global Analytics’ board, although Crosslink does not identify Global Analytics as a portfolio company.

Global Analytics also has formed a strategic partnership with Hewitt Associates, the Illinois-based human resources and outsourcing firm, and has been working on what it calls “the objective quantification of the value of human capital investments.” The company says it has been working with Hewitt in recent years to pioneer development of comprehensive models that tie such human resources metrics as talent attraction, retention, and engagement to shareholder value, creating what Hewitt calls its Human Capital Foresight.

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Seattle-based DocuSign announced today it has received a strategic investment from Second Century Ventures, the VC fund of the National Association of Realtors. The amount was undisclosed, but the cash will be used to speed up and extend DocuSign’s efforts with residential and commercial real estate customers. DocuSign was founded in 2003 and makes software to automate and control the process of electronic signatures.

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Swipely, a Providence, RI-based startup that was quietly launched earlier this year, has raised $875,000 of a planned $1 million equity financing, according to an SEC document filed last week. Angus Davis—a co-founder of the voice-based Internet search and services provider Tellme Networks, which was sold to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and became a subsidiary of the Redmond, WA-based software giant in 2007—is listed as an executive and director of the startup. Davis told Mass High Tech in a story this morning that First Round Capital, of Philadelphia and San Francisco, led the financing in Swipely. He declined to describte to MHT, or when reached by phone this afternoon, what his startup is doing.

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