—It wasn’t exactly news when the board at San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) said it had rejected the $5.7 billion hostile takeover offer from Swiss drug maker Roche. Now Wall Street’s arbitragers are placing their bets on whether Roche can prevail. The most intriguing news about the deal, however, came from The Wall Street Journal, which revealed potential conflicts of interests with Illumina’s key adviser, Goldman Sachs.

—A new molecular diagnostics startup stepped into the light in San Diego. Applied Proteomics named Peter Klemm as CEO, and disclosed it raised $22.5 million in venture capital last summer from Vulcan Capital and Domain Associates. Applied Proteomics also said it moved to San Diego last June from the Los Angeles area, and double its staffing over the next year.

—San Diego-based Tocagen and Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics disclosed a partnership that will begin with Siemens’ support of clinical trials Tocagen has planned for its viral gene therapy treatments for primary brain cancer. Siemens said it will help provide companion diagnostics that are intended to help doctors decide the best course of treatments for patients, based on their unique genetic characteristics.

—San Diego’s OncoSec Medical, which was created out of a reverse merger less than a year ago, is beginning mid-stage trials of a treatment that combines electroporation and immunotherapy in patients with three types of skin cancer. Electroporation is a technology that causes cancer cells to take up higher concentrations of anti-cancer drugs by administering pulses of electricity directly to the cancer cells. OncoSec is trying it on patients with metastatic melanoma, Merkel cell carcinoma, and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.

—Brooks Life Science Systems, a Poway, CA-based division of Brooks Automation, (NASDAQ: BRKS), said it had established a development and commercialization partnership with The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Brooks plans to manufacture and commercialize a microplate imaging system under an exclusive licensing agreement with the biomedical research institute.

—San Diego-based Prometheus Laboratories Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical and diagnostic company, said it signed a research and collaboration agreement that provides its proprietary cancer diagnostic technology to an unnamed global pharmaceutical. Financial terms were not disclosed. Prometheus said its technology can detect the activation of specific cancer pathways with high levels of sensitivity and specificity.

—San Diego-based Synthetic Genomics and Ipswich, MA-based New England Biolabs (NEB) said they signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement allowing NEB to commercialize the “Gibson Assembly Master Mix,” a one-step, isothermal approach to enable the rapid assembly of multiple DNA fragments. The companies said Daniel Gibson and colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) developed the technology as part of a program sponsored by SGI. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Funding for clean technology startups has increased substantially in recent years, with 323 U.S. companies raising a total of $4.3 billion in 2011, according to the recently released MoneyTree Report. In the San Diego area, the same report shows that four cleantech startups raised $78 million last year, including $15 million that went to SG Biofuels in the fourth quarter.

But sometimes it’s not enough to be green. Many cleantech startups face a basic challenge in competing against existing products that might not be as environmentally friendly, but are nevertheless well-established—even commoditized—in their respective markets.

In San Diego, sustainable design architect (and Xconomist) Robert Noble has led the development of clean manufacturing methods and technologies for manufacturing a green replacement for medium density fiberboard (MDF) structural panels—a standard material used in building construction and other industries. Noble says the proprietary process makes panels from any kind of fibrous, cellulosic material, such as recycled paper, cardboard, wood chips, corn stalks, and even cow manure. The big difference is that the replacement product, which Noble calls 3-D Engineered Molded Fiber (3DEMF), requires no petroleum-based glues or addititves, or vapor-emitting chemicals.

Ecor samples

Now Noble Environmental Technologies, a company he founded in 2005, is overseeing installation of a 3DEMF factory, showroom, and design lab in downtown San Diego to manufacture the company’s Ecor brand panels. “The tide has turned for sustainable materials,” says Jim Torti, the company’s chief operating officer.

After personally funding the company through 2009, Noble says he now has about 15 individual and institutional investors, and he’s in the process of raising another $4 million to help equip the 10,000-square foot factory and to provide some cash flow. Noble adds that he has no plans to seek venture capital. He says the time required to build large-scale manufacturing and their primary market—the building industry—”doesn’t easily fit the venture capital model for a quick exit,” which is an issue for many cleantech businesses.

Torti and Noble say they wanted to establish the company’s first production plant in an urban, mixed-use setting—an apartment building is across the street—to demonstrate … Next Page »

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Yo, is there a ballplayer in the house? Well, there is a House playing ball—professional basketball, that is.

At the age of 33, Adam House, a serial entrepreneur (and shooting guard) who has successfully built and sold three companies—his most recent startup, Velocitude, was acquired by Akamai in 2010—has at least temporarily put aside the tug of entrepreneurship for his love of hoops. More specifically, House has decided to uproot his family from Boston to upstate New York to join the Rochester Razorsharks, a professional basketball team in the Premier Basketball League. Here is his player page).

True, it isn’t the NBA—but House describes the league as very competitive, with most players having come from Division 1 college teams, and several going on to the NBA’s D-League (development league) or playing pro ball overseas. So it’s pretty cool. I caught up with House by phone when he was with the team in Michigan, where they had finished a two-game sweep of the Lake Michigan Admirals. Here is a quick overview of his version of Hoop Dreams…

House grew up in Birmingham, MI, about 25 miles northwest of Detroit. He played basketball for nearby Brother Rice High School, a well-known Catholic school attended by the offspring of many of the Detroit area’s business leaders or auto execs.

But House also had a passion for entrepreneurship. He worked at Rock Financial, a Quicken Loans company, and was able to learn from Dan Gilbert who is now the main owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. So, bitten by the business bug, he left college (Centre College, a small liberal arts school in Kentucky) after his freshman year at age 19 to work for a direct marketing firm in Florida. He quit that after one year, and in 1998 formed a startup to do direct marketing for financial services companies with $500 of his own money. He built that into a multi-million-dollar business (an Internet lead generation startup he also founded merged with the company) and sold it in May 2007. A few years later, House launched his third startup, Velocitude, a mobile services platform company that enabled delivery of video and other content to mobile devices. He built that up as well, and sold it to Akamai in mid-2010 for undisclosed terms.

But let’s get back to hoops. As part of the Akamai deal, House and his family—wife and now three sons—moved to the Boston area. Among other things, he joined CommonAngels, the angel investor group that is the lead investor in Xconomy. After leaving Akamai, House was not quite ready for the grind of another startup, so he decided to train for a triathlon. “I saw myself in bike pants and a helmet, and I just looked in a mirror and said, … Next Page »

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Applied Proteomics hasn’t exactly been operating in stealth mode since it was founded five years ago. Co-founders David Agus, a cancer specialist at USC, and Danny Hillis, the MIT-trained computer scientist, gave TedMed talks about the startup’s technology, which provides a 40-gigabyte snapshot of all the proteins circulating in a drop of blood. By pure coincidence, I watched John Stewart’s Feb. 2 interview with Agus last night on “The Daily Show.”

“Danny and David had the foresight to build the tool before trying to use the tool,” says John Blume, a molecular biologist who joined API in 2008 as chief scientific officer. “Although the company wasn’t in stealth mode, the first several years were spent in taking the time to make it right, and then to use it and avoid some of the stumbling blocks.”

Now Applied Proteomics is raising the curtain on several steps that mark its progress beyond a seed-stage startup that was incubating at Applied Minds, an industrial think tank that Hillis founded in Glendale, CA, with a colleague from Disney Imagineering. After moving the headquarters to San Diego late last year, Applied Proteomics is today naming a new CEO—Peter Klemm, a veteran in molecular diagnostics and the former CEO of Lexington, MA-based Predictive Biosciences.

Danny Hillis

The company known as API says it also secured $22.5 million last June in Series B funding from Domain Associates (San Diego partner Jim Blair joined the board), Seattle’s Vulcan Capital, and returning angel investors. Klemm tells me the company raised $4 million from angel investors (who prefer to go unnamed) in what amounted to API’s Series A round in 2007.

David Agus

API’s goal, Klemm says, is nothing less than to “elevate molecular diagnostics to another level beyond the genome” by measuring the proteins made by genes—a long-sought technology that is expected to help doctors improve medical care for individual patients. Because proteins carry out most cellular functions, the company says a snapshot of all the proteins circulating in the body at a given moment represents “the most powerful source of information” in terms of understanding a patient’s health status.

Quantifying all the proteins in the body, Klemm says, can help doctors optimize the course of treatment for individual patients by making it easier to identify the specific drugs that would have the greatest effect on blocking specific proteins or signaling pathways, which can vary dramatically from person to person.

In a statement from the company, Hillis says, “For the first time, we can look at all the proteins in the body with remarkable specificity and sensitivity and use proteomic technology to create … Next Page »

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We’re starting to see fresh signs of life among the Internet software startups in San Diego. Check out this news.

—During a visit last week, TechStars CEO David Cohen talked with the leaders of San Diego’s grassroots Web startup community about the factors that help to create and sustain entrepreneurial communities. One crucial issue confronting San Diego is a crying need for savvy and experienced Internet entrepreneurs who are willing to “pay it forward” by mentoring a new generation of startups.

—A dozen seed-stage companies moved into the new EvoNexus incubator in downtown San Diego. EvoNexus, which was founded by the CommNexus non-profit industry group, will continue to operate its original incubator in University City, where eight startups are taking root. In both locations, EvoNexus provides office space, utilities, and other services free of charge and with no strings attached.

—Sigma Partners led a $10 million round in venture funding for San Diego-based MOGL, a Web startup that has developed a comprehensive customer loyalty program for restaurants and bars, to fuel its expansion into San Francisco and New York. San Diego’s Avalon Ventures and Austin, TX-based Austin Ventures joined in the round.

—San Diego’s MicroPower Technologies named two new board members after raising $6.5 million in Series C funding in a deal that was led by Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and joined by an undisclosed private fund. MicroPower Technologies, which uses wireless networking technologies to create low-cost surveillance capabilities, named PacketVideo CEO Jim Brailean and former DivX CEO Kevin Hell to its board. Hell, who is now chairman of San Diego’s EvoNexus incubator, will join as MicroPower chairman.

—San Diego’s StockTwits said it has established a partnership with Toronto’s Q4 Web Systems, which provides … Next Page »

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How are companies spying on each other these days? One of the surprising ways I’ve heard about recently is through the webcam in boardrooms.

That’s right, apparently it’s easy to hack into some companies’ video conference systems, because they lie outside typical security measures. Companies sometimes set up video conferences so they can be accessed directly on the Internet—leaving the door open for eavesdroppers to listen in on meetings, or even remotely monitor a conference room via the camera.

One local software company is helping organizations guard against this threat—and many others. Boston-based Rapid7 is one of the leaders in the growing cluster of IT security companies around town. Rapid7’s approach is complementary to firms like NitroSecurity (recently acquired by Intel/McAfee) and Q1 Labs (bought by IBM), which help organizations guard against security threats in their computer networks and systems.

What Rapid7 does is help organizations find security flaws throughout their IT infrastructure, and then test whether they’ve been corrected. To fuel its growth, the company raised a $50 million Series C round from Technology Crossover Ventures in November—one of the largest tech venture rounds in the Boston area lately. (Rapid7 has raised $59 million to date.)

“There’s a lot of cyber-espionage going on in business,” says Mike Tuchen, Rapid7’s CEO (see photo, left). The activity ranges from stealing sales plans, financial information, and intellectual property, to the aforementioned boardroom eavesdropping, he says. And, of course, it’s not just companies spying on each other; it’s governments and nation states as well, all trying to get their hands on everything from Citibank credit card numbers to the special sauce in Apple’s iPad design.

What’s a CEO to do? If you’re Mike Tuchen, you take a promising company and try to make it better. Tuchen joined Rapid7 as chief executive in 2008. (The company has been around since 2000.) Previously he worked at Microsoft as a group program manager and general manager of SQL server marketing. An engineer by training, he also worked at Sun Microsystems and co-founded Paramark, a dot-com-era online advertising startup.

When he arrived at Rapid7, brought in by Bain Capital Ventures (the firm’s original VC investor), Tuchen saw a company that had “a great engineering and sales team” but not much else. He says he didn’t have to tear up the company, just bring in some key additions: marketing, channel partners, new processes, and a broader product roadmap, including a more international market focus.

So far the effort seems to be paying off. The company has grown to about 240 employees (about half in Boston), and Tuchen says revenues … Next Page »

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…or really just one great one: Xconomy needs your help. We’re busy cranking out terrific tech and life sciences journalism and putting on stellar events across the six cities in our network, and we’re looking for a kick-ass marketing coordinator to help us get the word out about all of it.

Full details are here, but in a nutshell: This is a full-time position in our Cambridge, MA, headquarters, ideal for somebody who is happiest when juggling a bunch of diverse projects. We need a person who enjoys figuring stuff out as s/he goes along, and has just enough of the old OCD to pull it off without too many embarrassing typos. Some main areas of focus will include marketing our events, managing our social media efforts, and marketing reprints and premium products.

If doing all that in an extremely collegial, slightly wacky startup environment sounds like your idea of a good time we want to hear from you at jobs@xconomy.com.

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—San Diego’s Amylin Pharmaceuticals says Bydureon, its new once-a-week drug for treating Type 2 diabetes can hit the market as early as next month, after the FDA cleared Bydureon. The FDA rejected the Amylin’s drug twice before. An estimated 26 million people in the United States, or roughly 8 percent of the population, have type 2 diabetes.

—San Diego’s life sciences sector has expanded since 2009, with employment increasing by more than 5,550 jobs, or 15 percent, over the past two years, according to a new economic report from Biocom, the local industry group. The comprehensive study counted more than 1,700 life sciences companies with a total of 41,937 employees throughout San Diego County in 2011, and says those numbers are expected to grow over the next two years.

—The FDA gave its approval to Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX), which has substantial operations in San Diego, for a new drug called Ivacaftor (Kalydeco), developed to treat a rare form of cystic fibrosis. The twice-a-day pill targets about 4 percent of the 30,000 patients in the U.S. with cystic fibrosis.

—Johnson & Johnson’s reorganized R&D operation in San Diego, now known as Janssen Healthcare Innovation, is trying an experiment in innovation by creating an incentive prize challenge. Janssen is offering a total of $250,000 for technology that helps improve care for patients who have just been discharged from a hospital.

—The folks who produce the quarterly MoneyTree report on venture capital funding just released a deeper dive into the details of life sciences investments. The survey shows that VC funding for life sciences increased 21 percent nationwide in 2011, with a total of $7.5 billion going into 785 deals. San Diego ranked third among metropolitan regions in terms of capital invested in the fourth quarter. The top five are Bay Area ($498 million), Boston ($384 million), San Diego Metro ($193 million), NY Metro ($98 million), and Orange County ($97 million

—Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OPTR) CEO Pedro Lichtinger outlined his plans for expanding the market for the company’s first product, the antibiotic fidaxomicin (Dificid), as a preventative therapy for hospital patients at risk for a nasty intestinal infection called C. difficile. San Diego-based Optimer is planning a clinical trial to prove the drug can help prevent severe diarrhea in patients undergoing bone-marrow transplants.

—A tweet from Bob More of Frazier Healthcare Ventures prompted Luke to delve into the importance of character among life sciences leaders in his BioBeat column. “Politics pretty similar to backing CEO’s,” More said. “Newt may be smart and a good debate guy. But Newt=Smug. Never back smug,”

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When it comes to tech startups—especially in Internet software and app development—San Diego has been adrift in the horse latitudes. That’s the term Spanish mariners had for the waters where the trade winds died out for days and even weeks at a time. Becalmed sailors desperate to gain some headway would heave their horses overboard to reach the New World.

It hasn’t reached that point yet in San Diego, but you would never know that software was once a thriving entrepreneurial community here. Even now, the software sector accounts for more than a third of San Diego’s private technology companies. But as I’ve written previously, it feels as if the local software companies speak different languages. In contrast to the flourishing tech hubs in Seattle, Boston, and New York—not to mention Silicon Valley—San Diego’s software scene is sleepy and indifferent.

Still, there are signs of a freshening breeze.

David Cohen last week at UC San Diego

Scores of new seed-stage startups have begun to emerge throughout the region, including a dozen that just moved into the new EvoNexus incubator in downtown San Diego. These emerging companies are led by young entrepreneurs who view San Diego’s innovation establishment as old-school and irrelevant. They are turning out instead for informal “hackathons” and “meetups.” They tell me they’re yearning for real mentoring by real tech entrepreneurs, and for access to real tech investors who are really investing.

Last week, more than 200 people turned out to hear David Cohen talk at U.C. San Diego about TechStars, the early stage fund and accelerator program for Internet startups that he co-founded with three partners in Boulder, CO, six years ago. Cohen is the CEO, and by any measure, the startup program has been wildly successful.

TechStars enrolled its first 10 Internet startups in 2007, providing as much as $18,000 in seed funding and an intense, three-month mentorship program for each company in exchange for a 6 percent stake. Since then, TechStars has expanded to … Next Page »

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Seattle-based Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN) said today it has named John Johnson to the position of president and CEO, succeeding longtime CEO Mitchell Gold. Johnson was previously the CEO of East Brunswick, NJ-based Savient Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SVNT).

The appointment comes after a difficult run for Dendreon. In 2010, the company won approval for sipuleucel-T (Provenge), the first in a new class of immune-boosting therapies for prostate cancer. But the product has been slow to take off, causing the company to fall short of Wall Street expectations. On January 5, Dendreon surprised investors by announcing that it sold $228 million of the drug in 2011—better-than-expected results—but it hasn’t been enough to sway shareholder sentiment.

Today’s news was welcome on Wall Street. “I am very pleased to hear this morning about Dendreon’s succession plan for its CEO and Chairman,” wrote shareholder activist Brad Loncar in a statement.” In August, Loncar sent a letter to Dendreon chairman Richard Brewer expressing concerns about poor management at the company. “After joining together and asking for this change, this is a big win for Dendreon’s shareholders and for corporate governance in general.”

Dendreon’s shares rose 6 percent to $14.40 in pre-market trading.

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Here’s a quick update on the agenda for Mobile Madness 2012: Total Mobility, the annual half-day mobile conference we are organizing here at Xconomy Boston. The event is taking place on the afternoon of March 14 at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge, MA. We are looking forward to a packed house and some outstanding talks, discussions, and networking.

I’m pleased to announce a few more startup participants:

—Apperian founder and chief strategy officer Chuck Goldman will join us for a discussion of mobile business strategies, along with Mobiquity founder and CEO Bill Seibel. Goldman is a former Apple exec who leads Apperian’s strategic and business development efforts in enterprise mobile apps. Seibel, for his part, was a founding partner at Cambridge Technology Partners and went on to lead ZEFER, Demantra, and Gumball; he currently leads Mobiquity’s efforts to help businesses develop mobile strategies.

—Fiksu CEO Micah Adler joins us to talk about his company’s approach to marketing mobile apps. My colleague Erin recently wrote about Fiksu’s consumer-facing service, which lets people try out apps from various brands and stores for free.

—Paydiant co-founder Chris Gardner will be on hand to discuss his vision for the future of the mobile wallet—banking, shopping, and e-commerce via your smartphone.

Other confirmed speakers include Jason Jacobs of RunKeeper, Chris Lynch from Vertica/HP, Chuck Kane from One Laptop Per Child, and Seth Priebatsch from SCVNGR. We’ll also have a special panel of Boston’s “mobile mafia,” including Lars Albright (Quattro Wireless, Session M); Mike Baker (Enpocket, DataXu); Tom Burgess (Third Screen Media, Linkable Networks); Jeff Glass (m-Qube, Bain Capital Ventures); and Ryan Moore (GrandBanks Capital investor in Enpocket, Where, and Nexage, now with Atlas Venture).

There are more announcements to come, and I will be posting the detailed agenda soon, so stay tuned. Meantime, you can still grab the early bird rate if you register today.

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Bonnie Ramsey said three years ago that a cystic fibrosis drug from Vertex Pharmaceuticals was a huge medical advance in the making, and would end up being an achievement on par with putting a man on the moon, at least for her patients.

Yesterday, she says, was the day it truly felt like she was part of a team that reached the moon-shot goal. The good news came when the FDA approved Vertex’s ivacaftor (Kalydeco) as the first drug of its kind to work by treating an underlying genetic defect for cystic fibrosis.

“It’s a really big day,” says Ramsey, a leading CF physician/scientist at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington. “Even though it’s for a small subpopulation, the treatment paradigm has completely changed. It’s no longer about just treating the symptoms, it’s about treating the genetic defect. That’s a real game-changer.”

The drug from Cambridge, MA-based Vertex (NASDAQ: VRTX) is now FDA approved for patients age six and older who have what’s known as a Class 3 gene mutation called G551D. This mutation is found in about 4 percent of the 30,000 patients in the U.S. with cystic fibrosis. The disease, the result of various mutations to a gene called CFTR, causes the poor transfer of water and salt across cell membranes, which leads to the buildup of thick, sticky mucus in the lungs, and poor absorption of nutrients. It means patients have to endure hours a day of treatment their entire lives, and the median life expectancy is about 39 years. Doctors currently treat the symptoms of the disease, through things like inhalable antibiotics, but Vertex’s drug is the first FDA-approved therapy that works by altering an underlying disease-related protein.

Bonnie Ramsey of Seattle Children's Hospital

Ramsey has had an instrumental role in developing this drug since its infancy. As the executive director of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Therapeutic Development Network, back in 2000 she began collaborating with the drug’s original developer, San Diego-based Aurora Biosciences (later acquired by Vertex.)

Ramsey was the lead investigator of a pivotal study of 161 patients, known as Strive, which yielded results in February that laid the foundation for yesterday’s FDA approval. The study showed that patients age 12 and older on the twice-daily pill from Vertex had about a 10.6 percent absolute improvement in their ability to force out air from their lungs in one second—compared with a placebo. The effect held up over the full 48-week course of the study. Researchers also saw significant improvements in being able to gain weight, while also reducing cough, sputum production, and the incidence of pulmonary exacerbations. Side effects included headache, and upper respiratory tract infections, researchers said, although more patients dropped out of the placebo group than the drug group. A second study verified the effect in younger patients, age six and above.

What excites scientists is that the drug has a compelling foundation in biology. It is designed to … Next Page »

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When Doug Orr first moved up to Google’s Seattle office in mid-2010, he found a lot to like. The infrastructure expert isn’t a California guy—he came to Google by way of Ann Arbor, MI—and found Seattle’s culture, and even its climate, a little more familiar than Silicon Valley’s. “People are pretty laid back here, and there’s a lot of interest in beautiful green things,” Orr says.

One thing that was missing, however, was a large contingent of Googlers working on the networking side of the business. “I spent six months doing video conferences in a very small room, eight hours a day,” he says with a smile. “That was not a pinnacle fulfillment experience. But it worked OK.”

Things have picked up since then. As we first reported last month, Orr is the new Seattle site director for Google, giving him a senior management role with the Mountain View, CA-based web advertising and search titan. He replaces former director Brian Bershad, who is now on a new assignment in Russia for Google. Orr works closely with Scott Silver, a manager in Google’s advertising unit who has been director of Google’s Kirkland office since mid-2009.

Google Seattle

The pair oversees more than 1,000 employees for the growing office, which is expanding further on its Fremont neighborhood campus in Seattle as it takes over space previously occupied by Getty Images. Googlers in the Seattle-Kirkland offices work on a large swath of high-priority projects, including the network user connections within Google Plus, the company’s new social service, and Hangouts, the video-conferencing service that’s also part of Google Plus.

Orr retains major responsibilities in Google’s infrastructure unit, where he’s in charge of the systems that manage, monitor, and plan capacity for the traffic that flows through Google’s vast network. In addition, Orr is closely involved with Google’s moves into the retail cloud-computing market—a market that crosstown tech giant Amazon.com has revolutionized with its Amazon Web Services division. Google’s offerings include a cloud storage service, a relational database service, and Google BigQuery, which lets developers analyze huge sets of data.

“The infrastructure team is definitely growing here. It’s incredibly important to me, and the projects are actually completely awesome. I’m very excited about what we’re doing here,” Orr says. “Between the networking and other infrastructure stuff I do, I have connections with all the major offices, and it’s a great source of interesting diversity.”

While Orr downplays his appointment as a pretty simple case of filling a need, Google Kirkland site director Scott Silver—who’s been in his job since mid-2009—says Orr’s ability to tackle big projects is well known.

“The process by which Doug became the site director here wasn’t just like he raised his hand and there was no one else raising their hand, or something like that,” Silver says. “Doug actually has an excellent track record at Google about building consensus among disparate interests, someone who can build a community out of a bunch of parts that don’t all look the same at the beginning.”

Site directors serve as the semi-public faces of Google’s Seattle-area operations. That means they play key roles in finding possible acquisitions, building connections with the University of Washington’s computer science department, and recruiting new Googlers to the team.

“The majority of our time is spent working in the areas in which we make software. But at the end of the day, the site needs an identity based on the projects it works on,” Silver says. “It’s really important, in concert with the recruiting team, to have people who are passionate about building stuff to attract people to work on their teams.”

The past few years have seen a flood of Silicon Valley tech companies, big and small alike, heading to the Seattle area to fill their rosters with talented people from Microsoft, Amazon, the University of Washington, and the startup scene. The grizzled veteran of that pack would have to be Google, which first established an engineering office in the region in 2004.

Even though recruiting in the area is a lot more competitive now, Google is still growing quickly. Along with the expanded Seattle offices, there’s a new facility up in the Bothell area, which GeekWire found could hold more than 800 workers. To visitors, the company is eager to show off its bright, colorful offices with all the tech-company bells and whistles you’d expect: Game rooms, massage therapists, full cafeterias, snacks everywhere, and even rentable kayaks hanging on a wall.

“We’re out there aggressively growing. You wouldn’t hear about space coming online if we didn’t want people to work in that space,” Silver says.

For his part, Orr says the range of skills on display in the Seattle area has been a pleasant surprise, with smart people running the gamut of experience from gaming and interactive media to hard-core infrastructure and systems backgrounds.

“There’s really kind of a shocking diversity,” Orr says. “And there are a lot of people that have overlap with the kinds of problems that we do. So we’ve had a lot of good luck in terms of getting very high-quality talent.”

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San Diego’s StockTwits is developing a bit of a Canadian accent, eh, through a partnership being announced today with Toronto-based Q4 Web Systems, which provides online investor relations services for publicly traded companies throughout North America.

StockTwits is an online social media network that enables traders and shareholders to share their market insights, ideas, charts, and news in real time via Twitter. The startup structures financial and investor-related information from its Twitter feed by stock, user, reputation, and other criteria. StockTwits also enables users to save the stocks they follow to their own portfolios and to limit the comments tweeted about each stock to trusted sources.

As I reported last summer, the four-year-old startup has determined that its chief source of revenue also lies with the investor relations and public relations units of publicly traded companies.

By introducing a ticker tag symbol for publicly traded stocks, $(ticker), StockTwits makes it possible for public companies to sign up for a higher level of StockTwits’ Web service and to “claim” their stock tickers. Once claimed, a company’s IR and PR teams can use the ticker tag to distribute corporate information over the Web in real time.

By partnering with Q4, StockTwits plans to integrate its services with the subscription-based services that Q4 provides its corporate customers. Q4 says its website services include more than 30 IR “best practices” modules that help companies properly provide information and other services to investors and shareholders.

“We’re working with them to make it easier for people to use both of our products,” says Francis Costello, StockTwits’ chief operating officer. He tells me StockTwits has more … Next Page »

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San Diego’s MOGL, a Web-based customer loyalty and rewards program for restaurants and bars, says it has raised $10 million in venture funding to fuel its expansion into San Francisco, New York, and other markets.

The Menlo Park, CA, office of Sigma Partners led the Series B round, which was joined by San Diego’s Avalon Ventures and Austin, TX-based Austin Ventures. That brings total funding for MOGL to $12.4 million, according to a statement from the company. Entrepreneurs Jon Carder, Jarrod Cuzens, and Jeff Federman started MOGL in 2010.

The Internet startup offers its customers multiple incentives for returning to member restaurants and bars, using a mixture of technology, games, and psychology. The incentives include a 10 percent cash back each time a customer returns to eat at participating restaurants. A contest  offers monthly cash prizes to the top three most-frequent customers at each locale. Customers also can automatically donate a meal to someone in need every time they spend $20.

MOGL Homepage Screenshot

MOGL says it provides customer analytics and return-on-investment data for participating bars and eateries. In a statement from the company, Sigma partner Peter Solvik says, “The MOGL team has generated an explosive response from both consumers and restaurant partners, while effectively positioning itself as the most innovative loyalty platform of its kind.”

Since it was launched last April, MOGL has signed up nearly 350 Southern California-based eateries and bars, donated more than 27,000 meals to Feeding America, and has rewarded its members with more than $350,000 in cash back to date.

The company also offers a location-based mobile app for iPhone and Android, so MOGL members can easily locate participating restaurants while on the go. The mobile apps also help customers track their cash rewards and jackpot opportunities, as well as the number of meals donated in their name.

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Serial entrepreneur Angel Gambino has every right to be arrogant—as people with resumes like hers often are—but she’s as down-to-earth and polite as they come.

Sure, a casual question about which local gym she prefers reveals that she’s currently training to be an Olympic soccer-team liaison, the Olympics’ most senior volunteer role and one which oversees every aspect of the team’s participation in the international games, but the answer is delivered in such a gradual, casual manner that it’s hardly bragging. (She’s awaiting confirmation from the Olympic Committee whether she’ll be overseeing the American, English, Italian, Australian, Brazilian, or Argentine men’s team.)

Trust me when I say Gambino’s life is way more interesting than mine and probably yours. She helped develop Gameplay.com, an early gaming site that eventually had 900 employees in nine countries; was instrumental in helping to popularize the social network Bebo, which was sold to AOL Time Warner in 2008 for $850 million; helped oversee the BBC’s expansion into mobile, broadband, and on-demand platforms; and helped launch social and video-on-demand platforms for Viacom channels such as MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central.

Gambino is still a co-owner of Sonico, the third largest social network in Latin America—Gambino describes it as “the Facebook of Latin America before Facebook became the Facebook of Latin America”—as well as Spoonfed Media, a popular website that directs Londoners to upcoming arts and entertainment events.

So what the heck is she doing in Detroit?

Gambino and her partner, Scott Griffin (more on his story later), purchased a massive building on Rosa Parks Blvd. for $270,000 in September, which they plan to turn into retail, restaurants, and space for local startups, the first step in a plan to further revitalize the Corktown area so it attracts not only the suburban visitors that are already coming in droves to eat at the neighboring Slow’s Bar-B-Q, but also to send the message to entrepreneurs around the globe that Detroit is the place to be.

“Detroit is a city of tremendous opportunity—I don’t know any other cities like it in the world,” Griffin says. Responding to the question of why two people as worldly as he and Gambino would choose Detroit as their base of operations, Griffin says, “I wonder why there aren’t more of us here already. I don’t understand why there aren’t a thousand of us here competing for these deals.”

Gambino was actually born in Detroit, though she spent her formative years in the suburbs outside of the city. Even in her youth, she says it was obvious to her that there were a lot of things lacking in Detroit.

“I knew Detroit was famous for sports and music, but not much else,” Gambino says. … Next Page »

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—Peter Clarke of EE Times reported that San Diego’s Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) has acquired Andover, MA-based Pixtronix, a startup founded in 2005 to develop Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) display technology. Qualcomm, which confirmed the deal with EE Times but provided no details or press release about the deal, reportedly spent between $175 million and $200 million for Pixtronix. The Massachusetts company founded by Nesbitt Hagood raised more than $53 million in venture funding, athough the Pixtronix technology has not yet been introduced to the market. Qualcomm has spent years working to refine its own MEMS-based display technology—known as Mirasol.

—More than 200 entrepreneurs turned out to hear TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen talk about the startup accelerator program he helped to launch in Boulder, CO, in 2007. Cohen told the rapt audience during a San Diego Tech Founders meetup that the Internet software community in Boulder “is just totally on fire” compared to five years ago. This was the night after Cohen met with local tech leaders to discuss the steps that helped boost the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Colorado college town. Xconomy San Diego arranged the dinner discussion, and I plan to have more about our conversation later this week.

—Meteorologist Stephen Bennett and investor John Plavan founded San Diego’s EarthRisk Technologies in mid-2010 with the idea of creating predictive analytics technology that could extend the range of weather long-term forecasts from two weeks to 30 or 40 days. They are now providing their Web-based technology to commodities and energy-trading firms on a subscription-basis. Bennett told me the core business at EarthRisk Technologies is focusing on extreme weather events—heat waves, frigid cold snaps, and storms because extreme events are the ones with the highest impact.

—Mark Heesen of the National Venture Capital Association gave a good-news, bad-news presentation to the San Diego Venture Group last week. Among the interesting bright spots: Corporate venture capital is growing and San Diego-based Qualcomm now ranks as the nation’s second-largest corporate venture outfit. The bad news? U.S. VC firms invested $28 billion in startups last year, but only … Next Page »

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“It is the ‘silver’ age of VC/entrepreneurship. It would be the ‘golden’ age if we could fix the liquidity issues.”

Those are the words of Michael Greeley, general partner of Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston and treasurer of the National Venture Capital Association, referring to the very tight IPO market that is limiting capital-raising options for emerging growth companies. It is also an issue Greeley intends to explore this Wednesday afternoon, at Xconomy’s conference: New York’s Venture Emergence.

That’s because Greeley will be the moderator of a keynote chat with Barry Silbert, CEO and founder of SecondMarket, the hot New York broker-dealer that is doing its share to fix the aforementioned liquidity issue, in large part by creating ways to trade shares of privately held companies.

The chat between Silbert and Greeley is just one part of a fantastic afternoon of discussion and stories from some of New York’s—and the country’s—leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, including Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, the Gilt Groupe founding team, 1stdibs CEO David Rosenblatt, RRE Ventures’ Eric Wiesen, Internet advertising pioneer Dave Morgan (now CEO of startup Simulmedia), Todd Dagres of Spark Capital in Boston—and a whole lot more.

If you don’t have your tickets already, get them fast—time is running out, and space is limited.

Greeley says he is really looking forward to his chat. Some questions he intends to ask Silbert include:

—What is the future of stock exchanges, and how companies raise capital and generate shareholder liquidity?

—What does Second Market look like in five years?

—What are the greatest risks to the business going forward?

—What regulatory issues do companies like Second Market face, and what should the government do?

And last but not least, says Greeley (who remember is from Boston): Who will win the Super Bowl? (I personally feel it will be the Patriots’ revenge).

There will also be time for you to ask Silbert a few questions of your own. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday afternoon. Register here.

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Newt Gingrich comes across on TV as someone who radiates smugness. It’s that sense that he’s not just confident in his own abilities, but extremely satisfied with his talents and his utter superiority over mere mortals like you and me.

I’m no political pundit, nor a psychologist, so I’ll let others analyze whether Newt is presidential material. But good old Newt got me thinking this past week about this specific character trait, and other unappealing elements of personality, that we often see in leaders of the life sciences industry. Bob More, a veteran venture capitalist with Frazier Healthcare Ventures, inspired me to delve into character this week with one recent comment on Twitter.

“Politics pretty similar to backing CEO’s. Newt may be smart and a good debate guy. But Newt=Smug. Never back smug,” More wrote on his Twitter account (@Bobmorevc).

Given how often people harp about the need to find superb management teams for developing new drugs or devices, I followed up with More to hear his thoughts on character traits to back, and to back away from, in life science entrepreneurs.

The No. 1 character trait to look out for, according to More and his mentor Jim Blair at Domain Associates, is trustworthiness. Dishonesty, to them, is the king of all deal-breakers. For example, More says he once worked for six months scrutinizing every imaginable aspect of a prospective investment for Domain, which he was quite excited about. Then at the last minute, the entrepreneur mentioned a slight change to the term sheet.

Bob More

“It felt like one of those things where a real estate agent comes in at last minute, and says ‘Oh, it’s just another $6,000 fee for the house,’” More recalls. He left that meeting with doubts about the executive’s credibility in other situations. When he asked Blair for advice, the response was memorable: “Kill the deal. Life is too short to deal with people like that,” More recalls Blair saying at the time. (Blair confirmed the story, and added that it wasn’t the only time he’s stopped an investment because of character concerns.)

This is tricky stuff, because all kinds of dishonesty unfortunately passes for standard procedure in business—ever hear of an executive resigning to “spend more time with family?” But the honesty thing is worth harping on in this specific context, because it strikes me that life sciences has more than its share of spinmeisters, hypesters, smoke-and-mirrors actors, and worse. One of the sure tests of honesty, More says, is to ask whether an executive will be candid and forthright about bad news in private, so that board members or advisors can work together constructively to solve the problem.

“You can deliver good news whenever, but delivery of bad news should be pretty quick. If you’re hiding bad news or hoping it will go away, it’s not a good trait,” More says. “When people are forthright, it builds trust.”

Then there’s smugness, that arrogance or sense of superiority. Developing innovative new drugs or devices requires a strong ego, high IQ, stamina, an inspiring personality that attracts other people, and other things. Often, that combination spills over into smugness or arrogance. More says he watches for a lot of the same cues that his sister, a teacher, watches for … Next Page »

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It’s that outlook time of year, and Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), was in San Diego earlier this week, talking about the 2012 outlook for venture capital. Today he’ll make a similar presentation to the New Jersey Technology Council. Next week,  John Taylor, the NVCA’s director of research is set to talk in Florida about the 2012 outlook.

Heesen began his presentation in San Diego by saying, “Be prepared for a roller coaster ride here, because that’s where we’ve been for the past year—and that’s where we’re going.”

In a conversation with Xconomy yesterday, Heesen talked about some of the broader trends he’s charting throughout the United States. Here are some of the takeaways from our talk, and from Heesen’s presentation in San Diego:

—The VC industry continues to contract. Venture capital investments in U.S. startups peaked in 2000, when VCs sank $99 billion into emerging companies of all kinds. There were 1,022 venture capital firms at that time, and they were collectively managing $220 billion worth of invested capital. In 2010, VCs invested more than $20 billion into startups of all kinds. The number of VCs had plunged by almost 55 percent—to 462 VC firms with $177 million under management.

—VCs are raising more capital from their limited partners, but it isn’t enough to sustain current investment levels. In 2011, U.S. venture firms raised a total of $18 billion. That was up significantly from the $14 billion that VCs raised in 2010—but it falls $10 billion short of covering the $28 billion that VC firms invested in 2011. As a result, Heesen says he expects venture investments in U.S. technology and life sciences companies to decline in 2012.

—A handful of VC firms accounted for … Next Page »

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