In the short week after Memorial Day, we got a little European literature with tips on bootstrapping, Medsphere got some venture funding, and Good Technology got a San Diego startup, among other interesting news.

—At the San Diego Venture Group’s panel discussion on bootstrapping a business, MaxLinear’s CEO Kishore Seendripu talked defining bootstrapping, which he sees as a process of supporting a business without external help. That is what happened when Seendripu and seven other semiconductor veterans started MaxLinear in 2003 and funded the startup from their consulting work.

—How can a company slide from a 28 percent share of the U.S. market in 2002 to less than 10 percent now, when at the same time it still has almost 40 percent of the global market? That’s the question for Finnish cell-phone maker Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and its CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who argued at the D7 conference in Carlsbad, CA, that Nokia’s San Diego engineering and design facility is the key to its comeback in the U.S.

—Phone-service company Leap Wireless (NASDAQ:LEAP) revealed it’s raising more than $1.1 billion to refinance some of its debt. Leap, which operates Cricket throughout the country, also raised $264 million through a private stock sale. The deals set off some merger speculation.

—San Diego’s KESDEE is an all-digital, web-based eLearning company that is moving its financial courses business to mLearning, or mobile learning on mobile phones. “We want to become a dominant niche player in this market. Not Wal-Mart, but Nike,” says CEO Swarna Srinivas. Her company already has created 700 accredited interactive courses for the Federal Reserve Board, Citigroup, Standard Chartered Bank, and others.

—Carlsbad, CA-based Medsphere has raised $1.9 million of a $15 million secondary venture round. CEO Michael Doyle says they have $6 million worth of commitments. Previously the start-up has raised $50 million from Azure Capital Partners, Epic Ventures, and Thomas Weisel Partners to commercialize its electronic health-record system, which was developed decades ago for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

—Good Technology (now wouldn’t that be some idea?), based in Redwood City, CA, acquired San Diego’s social-networking firm Intercasting, although terms of the deal were not disclosed. Intercasting established the social media site Rabble for mobile phones in 2004, and has created the popular Anthem platform.

—And finally, San Diego’s lovable little digital-net creature, Chumby, raised $3 million through debt and security offerings. Chumby Industries previously raised a total of $20 million in venture funding.

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Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says San Diego plays a key role in the Finnish mobile phone giant’s plans to stage a comeback in the U.S. market. Kallasvuo was questioned by Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital D7 conference in Carlsbad, CA, about Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) decline with U.S. carriers. Nokia operates a handset engineering facility in San Diego specifically for the U.S. market and Kallasvuo said, “I’ve been working on this for a long time. And it’s kind of interesting, the idea that we’re in San Diego now; we have about 2 or 2.5 years ago started to make U.S.-market-specific products right here in San Diego.”

Back home in Finland, Kallasvuo famously said in 2006 he wouldn’t sleep until Nokia had improved its position in the United States. Nokia lost its No. 1 rank in the U.S. after missing the trend for clamshell phones and thinner designs. The Finnish company now has approximately 9 percent of the U.S. market, while globally the company’s market share is 35-40 percent. This week Nokia took flak after the debut of its Ovi application store flopped. (Ovi is Finnish for ‘door’)

Nokia cut its workforce in San Diego from 1,100 to 500 in late 2006 when the company retreated from its CDMA operations. Nokia’s San Diego operation focuses only on North America, so there would be handsets designed for the U.S. that exist nowhere else. That is an exception in the company’s global strategy. Last year, Nokia and San Diego’s CDMA giant Qualcomm settled their legal disputes, and in January the two former rivals announced they were cooperating in the development of U.S. mobile devices.

Kallasvuo was showing Nokia’s new flagship phone, the N97, at the D7 conference yesterday. But the N97 does not have a U.S. carrier, and it costs $699.

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In Finland I am a reporter for Ilta-Sanomat, Helsinki’s second-largest newspaper. I write about Finland’s Nokia a lot, so I may have a different perspective on Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipset maker.

For us Finns, Nokia is a larger-than-life, close-to-home success story. We speak the same strange language and it’s our only global giant. In the United States, which is the leading market for mobile phones, Nokia lost its No. 1 ranking in cell phone sales when the clamshell design and thinner cell-phones became popular. Then came the iPhones. Nokia wants to change this situation and resume its leadership position in the U.S. market.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) got new hope to fulfill its ambitions last month, when Qualcomm and Nokia announced a joint “Plan to Develop Advanced Mobile Devices.” A statement issued by the two companies on Feb. 17th didn’t provide many details about this collaboration. Qualcomm’s Steve Mollenkopf says in the statement, “This new level of cooperation would bring exceptional leaps in mobile performance to people around the world.”

Only last year Nokia and Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) settled a nasty patent fight. In Finland, Qualcomm was viewed by many as being very aggressive in its licensing demands. But this new collaboration benefits both organizations: Qualcomm gets its first deal with Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones; Nokia gets a fresh opportunity to reclaim its leadership in the U.S. market. Their mutual goal is to research and make the next-generation phones, which means iPhone killers.

One place where this collaboration may be playing out … Next Page »

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