After 27 years as an unobtrusive specialist in satellite-based communications, Carlsbad, CA-based ViaSat (NASDAQ: VSAT) is acquiring a much bigger footprint.

While ViaSat has experienced plenty of success over the years, the company’s business has been focused mostly on its low-profile military and intelligence-agency customers. But that began to change in 2011 with the successful launch of ViaSat-1, the world’s highest capacity communications satellite, which provides commercial broadband Internet service (at 140 gigabits per second) in key U.S. regions. Carlsbad announced plans to build ViaSat-1 in 2008, and acquired WildBlue Communications, a suburban Denver company providing high-speed Internet service, for $568 million in 2009.

Mark Dankberg, ViaSat’s chairman and CEO, laid out his grand strategy for me a few years ago, and the results were evident in record financial results reported last week. For the fiscal year that ended March 29, ViaSat said its new commercial Exede Internet services—which are still based in suburban Denver—have become the biggest factor driving the company’s growth.

“We are closing out the year with revenues surpassing the $1 billion mark, coming [in] at $1.1 billion for fiscal 2013, which reflects a $256 million increase [30 percent] over the prior year,” Shawn Duffy, ViaSat’s chief accounting officer, told investors and analysts in a conference call.

ViaSat-2 Satellite (artist's concept)

ViaSat added about 44,000 subscribers in the quarter, ending March with a total of 512,000 subscribers for its satellite-based Internet service—including nearly 300,000 subscribers on ViaSat-1, with an estimated total capacity of 1 million subscribers. That’s a big jump since March, and to boost subscriber growth even more, the company unveiled long-awaited plans to build and launch a second satellite, ViaSat-2, through an expanded partnership with Boeing.

Using new technology architecture, ViaSat says the second satellite would provide enough capacity for an additional 2.5 million subscribers—and cover seven times the geographic footprint of ViaSat-1. The new satellite, which is scheduled for launch in mid-2016, would cover North America, Central America and the top of South America, and all of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean—as well as the primary airline and maritime routes between the U.S. and Europe. ViaSat already has established partnerships to provide satellite-based Internet service for United Airlines and JetBlue, with ViaSat-1 service for JetBlue passengers beginning this summer.

Internet service could be a particularly attractive added value on trans-Atlantic flights. As Dankberg told analysts and investors: “Everybody with a mobile device would use it…We can take advantage of our bandwidth effectiveness to drive the cost down to … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

In groups of twos and threes, the constituents lined up to take potshots at the assembled city officials.

“Just about any fifth-grader could do it better,” said Yan Digilov, speaking of the city’s request for proposals process. “We just hope to retire a lot of fax machines.”

In the audience, Houston Mayor Annise Parker gamely sat through the zingers, smiling and taking notes. Digilov and his colleagues were offering solutions along with their barbed commentary as part of Houston’s first citywide Hackathon on Saturday. Nearly 300 professional and amateur software developers gathered over the weekend to help city officials make their online services more efficient, or to create new apps and websites that would better serve residents.

For Houston leaders, the assembled techie brainpower—ready to work for free—is a boon for the city. Like many large American cities, Houston is strapped for resources. Bruce Haupt, the city’s deputy assistant director at the finance department, says his team often devises plans to help make city functions more efficient. But implementing such plans is difficult: “The bottleneck is always at IT,” he said.

Over the weekend, the 26 teams tackled projects that would help commuters know which routes were congested due to construction, provide a comprehensive list of the city’s bike trails, and give residents a better way to seek out and pay for permits for parades.

One group created an online database for up-to-date restaurant inspections named after Marvin Zindler, the famed Houston broadcaster who became known for his on-camera inspections and his signature phrase: “Slime in the ice machine!”

The hackers spent Saturday huddled in conference rooms at the Houston Technology Center. They ranged from those with streaks of gray in their hair to a trio of Taylor High School students joining a hackathon for the first time.“We thought it would be pretty cool to solve a problem, to make things happen,” said Jonathan Zong, a junior, who along with his classmates was trying to create an open-source platform for residents’ feedback. “We would really enjoy seeing an idea come to life.”

Ultimately, the top prize went to a program that simplified the search process related to obtaining required permits for construction, parades, and other activities. That project—as well as an open-source map and data search to find potential and existing green spaces in the city, and a location-aware mobile map to view bike lanes and trails around the city—will be presented to Parker and other city officials in about a month.

Many of the hackers—though, we’re assuming, not the underage students—had begun work the night before following a beer-fueled happy hour. “There are a lot of people who love Houston and want to make it an even better place to live,” said Jeff Reichman, a consultant who runs technology consultancy January Advisors and was one of the hackathon’s organizers. “And it’s really exciting that the city has a new way to engage the community.”

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

I’m on the phone with Andy Miller, and I don’t know where to begin.

Ask him about working with Steve Jobs at Apple? About how Leap Motion may or may not be the next Apple? Or what about how that $348 million deal to buy the Sacramento Kings went down?

Miller is driving in his car. It’s Friday, and the mayor of Sacramento, CA, is about to announce that the contentious deal to sell the Kings to a group of California tech investors—including Miller—has been signed. The sale, which the NBA is expected to approve officially this week, means the Kings aren’t moving to Seattle, where a competing bid was made by a group led by hedge fund manager Chris Hansen and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The battle has played out publicly since January.

Miller is known in the Boston area as the guy who co-founded and led Quattro Wireless, a mobile-ad startup bought by Apple for $275 million in early 2010. (He’s also a member of the “m-Qube mafia,” though that list needs updating.) Miller worked on Apple’s mobile advertising business for a couple years, reporting directly to Steve Jobs. Then he went off and joined Highland Capital Partners, a Quattro investor, before taking a job with San Francisco-based Leap Motion (another Highland company) as president and COO last year.

So how did he get involved in one of the biggest sports deals of the year?

“It’s been a long saga, and it’s pretty amazing,” Miller says.

Here’s the back-story. Miller loves sports and grew up wanting to play baseball. When he realized that wasn’t going to be his career, he says, “I set a goal that I wanted to buy a team and run a team.”

When Apple acquired Quattro, Miller moved from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area and got involved with a professional sports team. He bought into the Modesto Nuts, a Class A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies baseball team, as a co-owner. He says he learned a lot about the business of sports teams and “wanted to get involved with a major league club.”

Meanwhile, like a lot of Boston sports fans who move West, Miller says he “wasn’t sure what team to root for.” The NBA’s Golden State Warriors were trendy, but he says, “I love the underdog.” That would be the Kings, who haven’t been good since their heyday of the early-to-mid 2000s. Plus their fandom was “kind of like Boston,” he says. “It’s gritty, it’s not front-running, it’s so passionate.”

When the Kings ownership situation broke early this year, Miller says he “started talking to people.” He went to Sacramento and talked to the mayor, Kevin Johnson—yes, that Kevin Johnson, the former NBA all-star point guard who played in Phoenix and Cleveland. Miller also talked to Mark Mastrov, the founder of 24 Hour Fitness, who was also interested in buying the Kings and keeping them in Sacramento.

Mastrov was close to Vivek Ranadivé, the founder and CEO of Tibco Software, who leads the new Kings ownership group. (You can read Q&As with Ranadivé by my colleague Wade Roush on pattern recognition and basketball, and real-time information and prediction.) “We were on standby as a little group,” Miller says. Once the Seattle bid went through, Mayor Johnson gave them a call to action.

“One thing led to another,” Miller says, and Ranadivé brought in the Jacobs brothers of Qualcomm fame, and others. All told, the new Kings ownership group includes about eight general partners (counting the Jacobs brothers as one) and more than 20 limited partners, including former Kings star Mitch Richmond.

Their deal is for a 65 percent controlling stake in the Kings, acquired from the Maloof family, with the team valued at $535 million (not counting a proposed new stadium downtown).

“It’s a huge deal for Sacramento,” Miller says. “It’s a one-team town. It’s part of their identity. We want to invest a lot of money in downtown, build out restaurants and hotels, and really rebuild downtown Sacramento.”

With owners from Tibco, Apple, Qualcomm, and Facebook, “we are a tech owner group,” Miller says. “Technology will be forefront in how we interact with fans.” That means everything from using cutting-edge Web and mobile platforms to enhance the fan experience (at home and in the stadium), to extending the Kings and NBA brands to the rest of the world—in particular, India, where Ranadivé originally hails from. (He’s speaking at Xconomy’s Napa Summit on June 3-4, on “Solving World Problems While Going to the Hoop.”)

For his part, Miller will serve as chair of the technology committee for the Kings. And he says, “I definitely want to get my hand in the basketball operation.” So, how much of his time will the Kings take? He laughs, saying his wife has the same question. “I have no idea,” he admits.

But his day job is keeping him plenty busy. Leap Motion is developing a new kind of motion-and-gesture-tracking interface that Miller says could be a “touchscreen killer.” Imagine controlling your desktop or mobile … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

When Astellas Pharma shuttered the labs of OSI Pharmaceuticals last week, no one felt that loss as acutely as the residents of Long Island, NY. OSI, famed for its lung cancer drug erlotinib (Tarceva), had shown that it was possible to create a large pharmaceutical company on Long Island. Not only was it the anchor tenant in the Broad Hollow Bioscience Park, a complex on the Farmingdale State College campus that gives prospective startup biotechs a place to conduct experiments, but it was also the backbone of a tiny, evolving cluster known as the Route 110 Bioscience Corridor.

That was all wiped away when Astellas, which acquired OSI for $4 billion in 2010, announced plans to shut it down on May 13. But a group consisting of an ex-politician, a few venture capitalists, and some local research institutions is trying to prove that when one door closes, another opens. They have banded together to form an initiative called Accelerate Long Island, with a big plan in mind—creating an innovation ecosystem on the island.

Mark Lesko, executive director of Accelerate LI

“You can’t really understate the importance [of OSI],” says Mark Lesko, the executive director of Accelerate. “But you do now have an opportunity to grow companies in that space that could become the next OSI.”

For those unfamiliar, Long Island contains a few of the key elements to bring such a thing together. It has large, well-known research institutions (the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Stonybrook University) that have produced a number of biotech spinouts, and VC firms (Canrock Partners and Topspin Partners) on its home turf, not to mention a close proximity to the financial muscle of New York City. But OSI, which employed more than 100 at its research center, according to Newsday, was its biotech anchor.

That makes the task all that much harder for Lesko, who has been at the forefront of a movement to spur the innovation in Long Island for some time and became Accelerate LI’s executive director in September. Previously the supervisor of Brookhaven, New York state’s second largest town, Lesko says he, like many other politicians, “pounded the table” several times trying to galvanize an effort to build a Silicon Valley-type cluster in Long Islanders’ backyard.

“As you well know, that is not anywhere close to as easy as it sounds,” he says.

Even so, Lesko is giving it his best shot. While he was still the Brookhaven supervisor, he brought together the main regional business, research, and institutional leaders, hired a bunch of consultants from Silicon Valley, and spent about a year to try to figure out a strategy to develop an innovation-based economy.

The plan they came up with was to create an overarching, non-profit, regionally focused organization that would commercialize the research out of Long Island’s major research institutions, and help the area join the national movement of developing entrepreneurial ecosystems, according to Lesko.

So the presidents of Stonybrook University, Hofstra University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, CA Technologies, and a local venture firm (Canrock Ventures), law firm (the Farrell Fritz Law Firm), and even a foundation (the Rauch Foundation) and auditing firm (Ernst & Young)] came together in January 2011 and created Accelerate LI.

The number of different players involved reflects the sheer size of Accelerate LI’s undertaking. Lasko and his group are trying to do everything: seed funding the startups without taking an equity stake; mentoring prospective entrepreneurs; bringing the entrepreneurial community together; and getting prospective company creators in contact with the area’s biggest business leaders.

The funding, for example, was its own challenge. One of Accelerate LI’s co-founders, Canrock managing director Mark Fasciano, started a private, $750,000 seed fund called the Long Island Emerging Technologies Fund, and Accelerate LI added to that by securing a $500,000 grant from the state of New York through from one of Governor Cuomo’s Regional Economic Development Councils, public-private partnerships focused on helping grow the state’s economy. The plan is for both funds to put matching amounts, up to $100,000 total, into each startup that they decide to invest in—without grabbing any equity. The companies would use that cash to protect their intellectual property, hire staff, conduct early-stage experiments, or rent out office space, depending on the business model. Those two funds are the first two funds in the history of Long Island targeted towards early-stage technology, according to Lesko.

“The notion behind Accelerate was to create a neutral non-profit whose sole goal would be to service entrepreneurs, not have an economic stake in the company,” he says. “We think that’s important. It’s such an early stage out here that I think it’s really important to have the entrepreneurs see a neutral regionally focused entity so there’s a trust factor.”

With the funding in place, Accelerate’s next goal was to … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Biotech industry conferences are happening, somewhere on this green Earth, every day. If you’ve been around a while, and you’ve attended a few, chances are you get invitations, or marketing pitches, that ask you to attend a different meeting every day.

If you’re new to the business, you may not be on all the lists. But if you want to advance, you want to network with the big fish who attend these meetings. You want to find out where the action is, and where it’s going.

So then the question becomes: Which conferences should you attend?

Before I dive into my own calculus on meetings, let me just say there’s a good reason for all this activity. Even though the Internet has created a historic advance for connecting people and ideas, it’s not enough. Human beings still have to meet each other face-to-face to form the relationships we need to understand each other, and do business. So we agree to carve time out of our busy schedules, spend some dough, and sometimes get on airplanes for a few industry conferences every year.

Each person has to have their own specific criteria for what makes an event worthwhile. But I think Stewart Lyman, a frequent  contributor to Xconomy, spoke for a lot of people when he said a couple years ago “when I go to meetings, I want to learn something new, gain a wider perspective, and do a little networking.”

Simple, right?

Now, if you’re a biotech CEO or a chief financial officer, you are probably on the road constantly in search of money at one banking conference after another. I don’t really know the differences between the various conferences put on by UBS, Cowen, or Goldman Sachs, so I won’t try to size them up.

But I do make it my business to go to a lot of conferences each year to stay current on who’s who and what’s what in biotech. I have my own personal set of questions I ask to help me sort through them. Will I learn something new there that will help me gain insight? How many people will be there? Are there going to be a lot of newsmakers there that I already know and want to stay in touch with? Are there newsmakers there that I haven’t met, and want to meet? Will I have to travel far? How much time and money is this going to take? Will it fit into my schedule? How many competing media outlets will be there? If there are too many, that’s bad, because I don’t want to be just another guy writing the same story that 10 other outlets have. One of my credos is that man can’t live on commodity news in the Internet age.

So how does this play out in reality? I figured it would be fun to do a quick rundown of a few major conferences on the calendar, with a short explainer on why I chose to attend it, or skip it.

Here goes:

JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. This convention is held in San Francisco’s Union Square every January. This is the granddaddy of all biotech industry conferences, having been around for more than 30 years. All the top executives in biotech and Big Pharma are there, along with the major venture capitalists, fund managers, Wall Street analysts, and media. You spend marathon days inhaling facts, claims, aspirations, wishful thoughts, and half-baked predictions. Then you spend all night socializing on the cocktail party circuit (inside tip: drink lots of water, not wine, unless you want to keel over from dehydration). I go every year, and would never consider skipping it.

American Society of Clinical Oncology. Many readers will be shocked to hear this, but I haven’t personally attended the ASCO meeting since I was for working for Bloomberg News in 2007. I cover cancer news aggressively, and this is the biggest single event for cancer news of the year, held every June. But it’s also a hype-a-palooza dominated by other media who have been around longer, and have more readers, than Xconomy. I figure I can spend four days of time and $2,000 of hard-earned money roaming Chicago’s McCormick Place to compete in a massive echo chamber, or I can selectively cover a few ASCO stories from my office, do them as best I can, and use the rest of the time to zig when other media zags, giving my readers something they won’t find anywhere else.

Life Science Innovation Northwest. This conference is the biggest biotech industry conference in the Northwest, held in July in Seattle. It’s local, so this one is easy to attend. I always make sure to say hello to my existing contacts, meet some new people, and squirrel away a few story ideas that I can publish later. Readers who think Seattle is Timbuktu might want to take a closer look. The region is going through a biotech slump, for sure, but there’s more here than many realize.

OME Precision Medicine Summit. This event was assembled at UC San Francisco earlier this month, and led by chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann. I had a chance to attend part of this, but skipped it, because of travel and schedule conflicts. I’m kicking myself for missing it, because this looks like it was a great meeting, full of interesting people pushing hard to advance meaningful reforms to the way drugs get developed, and treatments get tailored for patients.

Xconomy events. Duh, these are a must-attend. Need I say more?

Biotechnology Industry Organization convention. BIO’s annual convention is always a mixed bag for me. I skipped it this year for a few reasons. One, it was … Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

For cities to truly thrive in this economy, fresh ideas must be cross-pollinated from beyond their borders—and New York offers its share of honey to lure in startups. This international gateway can be the place for companies to break into the U.S. market, meet new collaborators, and tap the resources of well-heeled investors.

A panel drawn from the city’s innovation scene, venture capital community, and mayoral administration gathered Thursday to discuss “What’s Next for the New York Ecosystem.” This was part of a daylong event presented by the Worldwide Investor Network, which helps international technology startups find funding and other support to enter the U.S. Addressing an audience of largely international entrepreneurs, it was a chance to hear how startups from abroad can be part of the city’s growth.

The panel comprised David Aronoff, general partner with Flybridge Capital Partners; Jessica Lawrence, executive director of New York Tech Meetup; and Benjamin Branham, chief of staff with the New York City Economic Development Corp.

Aronoff heads up Flybridge’s New York office, which opened a bit more than a year ago. He said the firm, though headquartered in Boston, is rather familiar with the innovation community here. Aronoff and some other members of the Flybridge team were with Greylock Partners during the prior tech boom. “[Greylock] started investing in the New York tech scene with DoubleClick,” Aronoff said. “At the time, the Internet was nascent and the idea of investing in a tech company in Manhattan was really a strange concept.”

Though the first tech bubble burst, he said he did not stop coming to New York. “There was something that started then, this kernel that has really continued to blossom,” Aronoff said. Starting about six years ago, partners from Flybridge spent more and more time in New York, he said, and in 2010 the firm’s deal flow here began to rival its deals in Boston. “Now more than half of our deal flow is in New York,” he said.

Benjamin Branham, Jessica Lawrence, and David Aronoff discuss New York's technology ecosystem.

The various efforts to train more homegrown engineers over the next decade are changing the city, Aronoff said. “The mayor’s legacy is going be transforming New York into a true tech center,” he said. “That’s the reason why we’re back.”

New York Tech Meetup’s Lawrence has been championing not only the monthly tech demos hosted by her organization but also the local innovation community’s presence. She said NYTM’s membership has grown from 15,000 in April 2011, when she became part of the team, to currently more than 32,000. “The trajectory has been insane,” she said. “I feel like I joined the organization right at that point when tech industry and community in the city was really taking off.”

The idea of community, she said, plays a substantial role in the growth of the tech industry in the city. Lawrence said members of NYTM turn to each other to find resources and advice. Each month New York Tech Meetup lets innovators demo ideas in front of an always-packed theater of some 800 people, with more watching remotely via video simulcast. The organization’s influence extends far beyond the monthly presentations. “Our meetup has led to a lot of others,” she said. “There are over 650 tech-related meetups in the city.”

Perceptions of the city have evolved, Lawrence said, as more tech talent gathers here. “We started a list of companies being engineered in New York to combat the … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Clarification 5/17/13, 2:05 pm. See below.] Right on the same line with the original lede so you don’t waste space on a carriage return…Antibody drugs seemed to be the topic of the week for San Diego’s life sciences community. We have the latest updates from RuiYi, AnaptysBio, and Optimer Pharmaceuticals, along with other developments.

—Ambit Biosciences’ (NASDAQ: AMBI) stock price fell by 61 cents, or almost 8 percent, in its first day of Nasdaq trading—after the San Diego biotech cut the price of its IPO to $8 a share from an estimated range of $13 to $15 a share. Ambit still managed to raise about $65 million in its debut by increasing the number of shares offered from 4.6 million to 8.1 million. Ambit’s venture investors include OrbiMed Advisors, Aisling Capital, Apposite Healthcare, Forward Ventures, GIMV, GrowthWorks, MedImmune Ventures, and Roche Ventures.

—Senté, a San Diego skin care “cosmeceutical,” said it raised $2.1 million in a Series B round of financing that included new and existing biotechnology investors. Proceeds from the financing will help Senté expand its development capabilities and commercial operations, and extend its product line of medical grade skincare products. In a statement, Senté co-founder and board member Kleanthis Xanthopoulos said, “Our new investors share our vision of creating unique science based dermatological products that will have profound impacts on the skin.”

—San Diego-based RuiYi, a biotech founded in 2007 as Anaphore, laid out what a spokeswoman described as a  “ménage a quatre” (household of four) collaboration to advance its … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

All eyes in the biotech world will soon turn to the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago, but for now, the industry keeps humming along. This week’s news was highlighted by partnerships, product launches and big name hirings—and lowlighted by the closure of the long time anchor of Long Island’s biotech scene.

—Former Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer offered a glimpse into what he’s doing in this next chapter of his career, in a two-part interview with Xconomy’s national biotech editor, Luke Timmerman. The man who turned Genzyme into a multi-billion dollar success went into great detail about what fuels him to stay active in biotech, drug prices, and the lessons he learned during his last days at the company.

—Just weeks after raising $265 million for its latest fund, Cambridge, MA-based Atlas Venture has formed what it calls “corporate strategic partnership” agreements with Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) and Novartis (NYSE: NVS). Through those agreements, Atlas, Amgen, and Novartis will essentially work together to build new biotech startups. The alliance is the latest example of Big Pharma and venture capital firms teaming up to foster the development of life sciences startups. Merck/Flagship Ventures and Polaris Partners/Johnson & Johnson are some other recent examples.

—Three years after paying $4 billion for OSI Pharmaceuticals, Japan’s Astellas Pharma shuttered its Long Island, NY-based subsidiary’s lab as part of a global R&D shakeup that affects 200 jobs across the U.S. OSI became a success on the back of lung cancer drug erlotinib (Tarceva) and is the anchor tenant for the Broad Hollow Bioscience Park, a not-for-profit partnership between Farmingdale State College, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Research Foundation of the State University of New York, that offers research space to early-stage life sciences startups.

—Cambridge, MA-based Tokai Pharmaceuticals raised $35.5 million from Apple Tree Partners, Novartis Venture Funds, and other undisclosed investors to help bankroll the ongoing mid-stage clinical trial of its prostate cancer drug, galeterone. Tokai has been shaken up recently. Martin Williams, its previous CEO, left the company in March “to pursue other career opportunities” and has been replaced by Jodie Williams, its former COO and vice president of clinical affairs.

— Cambridge, MA-based Radius Health’s most advanced drug program may be its injectable osteoporosis drug, BA058, but CEO Michael Wyzga told me that its biggest value driver is a follow-up version of the drug administered through a skin patch. Radius will unveil the results from a mid-stage clinical trial for the patch in September, after which time it will likely evaluate its deal options. Radius pulled a potential IPO in November.

—It’s been a big few weeks for Boston-based Third Rock Ventures. In March, Third Rock raised $516 million for its third fund, bringing its total assets under management to about $1.3 billion. And it built on that momentum on Tuesday, adding two well-known life sciences veterans to its ranks. Alnlyam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) CEO John Maraganore joined Third Rock as a venture partner, aiding the firm with advice for its portfolio companies. Maraganore—who is keeping his day job at Alnylam—used to work at Millennium Pharmaceuticals along with Third Rock’s founders Robert Tepper, Kevin Starr, and Mark Levin. Third Rock also named James Geraghty, a Genzyme executive for two decades, an “entrepreneur-in-residence” that will help Third Rock create companies targeting rare diseases.

—Speaking of Third Rock, Cambridge, MA-based Ninepoint Medical—the only medical technology startup Third Rock has formed to date—began selling its first product, the NvisionVLE Imaging System, this week. Ninepoint CEO Charles Carignan told me that the company is in the midst of raising $35 million for a Series B round that will help it roll the system out across the U.S. and Europe, among other things. The NvisionVLE’s selling point is that it can look deep into tissue and see large areas very quickly, creating a more efficient way for doctors to identify a disease.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Science news often falls into the trap of becoming “infotainment” designed to generate ratings, and little else. As one essayist in The Guardian recently put it, “freaky copulation techniques in the animal kingdom,” heart-warming tales of miracle cures for kids, or creepy sci-fi robots are often what pass for science news when so many media outlets are struggling to survive in the digital age.

As anyone who works in science knows, these stories bear little resemblance to the truly fascinating work that many committed science writers seek to explain every day.

That’s why I’m jazzed about an opportunity I’ve been given this morning to be a guest on KUOW 94.9 FM, the highly regarded NPR affiliate in Seattle. The radio station is trying out what it envisions as a regular 15-minute segment on science news during the “Weekday” show hosted by Marcie Sillman at 9 am.

The folks at KUOW recognize there are a lot of great science stories here in the Northwest, and nationally, that often don’t get the coverage they deserve. So they’ve put together a rotating cast of Seattle-based science writers—Alan Boyle of NBC News Digital, freelancer Sally James, and myself—to make regular appearances on “Weekday” to talk about what’s new in science.

James made the first appearance on the show last Friday. She talked about the latest pandemic flu concerns from Asia, the potential impact of federal budget cuts on the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and a science crowdfunding initiative led by a local high school girl. If you missed it, you can go to the KUOW Weekday archives here. James’ segment starts at about 19 minutes into the show.

I’m planning to discuss some recent stories about cancer immunotherapies, genomic diagnostic tests, and new screening tests that can accurately spot Down syndrome in a fetus based on a simple blood draw from the mom in the first trimester. All of these technologies have shown promise to improve healthcare, but each advancement also presents a host of economic and ethical challenges that our broader society needs to wrestle with.

I’m sure a lot of regular Xconomy readers already listen to KUOW, but I hope these stories will appeal to you, and also resonate with a broader group of radio listeners around the Northwest. If you like what you hear on the show, and think it beats the usual “infotainment,” please let the folks know at weekday@kuow.org.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

It’s been almost two years since Paul Grayson was named as CEO of San Diego’s Anaphore—more than enough time for the former Fate Therapeutics CEO to put a new strategy in place.

The company unveiled the first element of its new plan in October—shifting the focus to developing new biologic drugs in China, changing its corporate name to RuiYi, and acquiring worldwide rights to a novel monoclonal antibody for treating rheumatoid arthritis. Earlier this week, RuiYi revealed a deal with CMC Biologics (based in Bothell, WA, and Copenhagen, Denmark) to develop a cell line for producing the monoclonal antibody, dubbed RYI-008.

Today, the San Diego-based biotech says it has entered into a third partnership with Shanghai-based Genor Biopharma to advance development of RYI-008 through clinical trials in China. Details about milestone payments and other terms were not been disclosed.

Grayson explained by phone yesterday that the deals encompass a globe-spanning, four-party partnership (among RuiYi, arGEN-X, CMC Biologics, and Genor BioPharma) that has set out to collectively commercialize novel biologic drugs in China to treat autoimmune diseases and cancer. At a time when most biopharmas in China are focused on developing generic drugs and biosimilars, Grayson says RuiYi has taken a riskier approach by targeting wholly new biological and molecular compounds.

RuiYi’s predecessor company was founded in San Diego in late 2007 to advance new technology for creating genetically engineered protein drugs, with the potential to bind more tightly than traditional antibodies do with their cellular targets. But Grayson said it became clear … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Corrected on 5/16/13, 9:11 a.m., see below] Fresh off raising $265 million to bankroll its ninth fund, Atlas Venture has forged strategic partnerships with Amgen and Novartis to help supply the bigger companies with innovative new drug candidates. The deals represent the latest in a string of alliances that is bringing venture firms and Big Pharma closer together than ever before.

Cambridge, MA-based Atlas announced today that it has struck what it calls “corporate strategic partnership” agreements with Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) (through its VC fund, Amgen Ventures), and Novartis (NYSE: NVS). According to Atlas partner Bruce Booth, both pharma giants are “significant” limited partners in Atlas’s latest fund, Atlas IX, which is expected to create at least 15 biotech companies.

Through those agreements, Atlas, Amgen, and Novartis will essentially work together to build biotech startups without locking them into transactions that cap their value.

Here’s how a partnership for a theoretical company would work, according to Atlas’s Booth. Atlas would scout out an interesting drug development platform or therapeutic from academia and seed finance it with around $500,000—or more, with the financial help of Amgen and Novartis—to validate the academic findings. If Atlas is convinced after a six to 12-month period that the technology works, it would put together a $10 million to $15 million Series A round to turn the idea into a company and pursue the next set of experiments needed to gather convincing evidence to support the platform, or various new drug candidates. Amgen or Novartis could be part of that financing round if they choose, but have no contractual obligation to do so.

Amgen and Novartis, in fact, won’t get any specific transactional rights or equity stakes in the companies that get created. Instead, they will give advice and feedback during the creation process and get the closest seat to watch those companies grow. Amgen and Novartis can then decide, as the startups mature, to eventually license a product if there’s a piece they like, or bid to acquire the entity altogether down the road.

“During that whole time Novartis and Amgen would really have a close proximal view of the scientific progress of those companies and at some point may say, ‘You know what? We like that enough that we’d like to integrate that into our R&D portfolio,’” Booth says. “That would certainly be a successful outcome for us and for [them].”

Atlas has between six and 10 seed-stage companies in Atlas IX already, all of which the firm has been actively communicating with both Amgen and Novartis about. The idea from here is to “cherry pick the ones” that are worth progressing into fully-invested companies, according to Booth.

The partnership is the latest in an … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Just a little over a month to go before our fifth annual flagship conference, XSITE 2013 (Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, & Entrepreneurship) at Babson College. The date is June 19, the theme is “Boston’s Tech Revival,” and the agenda is here.

You can still register for the event (be sure to note our student and startup rates, if they apply).

I’m pleased to tell you about a few more high-profile speakers who will be joining us.

—Jeremy Hitchcock, the CEO and co-founder of Dyn, is speaking on the “Founders’ Stories” breakout panel that also features Diane Hessan of Communispace and Mike Baker of DataXu. I’m sure Jeremy has some pretty good stories about bootstrapping Dyn to profitability with the rise of the Internet.

—Jason Jacobs, the CEO and co-founder of FitnessKeeper (RunKeeper), will also join the “Founders’ Stories” panel. Jason brings a consumer/mobile and healthtech perspective to the discussion. This session is always popular, as it features founders of top companies being brutally honest about the challenges they’ve faced in building their businesses.

—Meredith Flynn-Ripley, the CEO of HeyWire, will speak on a plenary panel moderated by Olin College President Rick Miller. Called “Serial Entrepreneurs Club,” the discussion will touch on the need to innovate across sectors such as mobile tech, big data, social marketing, and sustainability. The other panelists are Ash Ashutosh from Actifio, Roy Rodenstein from TrueLens, and David Berry from Flagship Ventures.

—Bob Frankston, a member of CommonAngels and co-creator of VisiCalc, will talk about the interplay between opportunity and innovation. Let’s just say Bob has some provocative views on existing models of tech and business innovation, and how things can be done very differently for the betterment of society.

—Sarah Hodges, co-founder and managing director of Intelligent.ly, will talk about the state of talent and training in the Boston-area innovation community. Sarah has her finger on the pulse of education for students, young entrepreneurs, and transitioning executives, and she has some important suggestions for how New England companies can develop their talent base.

—Naomi Fried, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, will join the healthtech breakout entitled “Clinics, Corporations, and the Cloud.” The rest of the health IT panel includes Jeremy Delinsky from Athenahealth, Chris Boyce from Virgin HealthMiles, and John Walsh from CareCloud. Naomi will bring a much-needed perspective from the hospital side to the discussion of emerging technologies and business models aimed at improving healthcare.

—Our “startup Xpo” will feature about 10 seed-stage (or earlier) companies that we are hand-picking for their diversity of approaches and sectors. Emceeing the session will be Meredith McPherron, director of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. Meredith helped change the face of the HBS business plan competition this year, and she brings a fresh perspective to startup strategy in the Boston area (and beyond).

The full agenda is still evolving, and we’ll have more speakers to add, but I wanted our readers to see what’s in store for XSITE on June 19. It should be a fantastic rallying point for people who want to shape the future of Boston-area technology and business. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Carlsbad, CA-based Sorenson Media CEO Peter Csathy tells me he’s left Sorenson to become CEO of Manatt Digital Media Ventures, a venture fund and digital media business created by the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm in Los Angeles.

The venture will operate as part of Manatt Digital Media, making the California law firm a one-stop shop for full-service legal and business consulting services for clients in entertainment, advertising, and digital media industries. Csathy, a serial entrepreneur and one-time media lawyer “will draw upon his experience as a successful operator and media industry executive to provide strategic business counsel, mentoring, deal-making, and evaluation of potential opportunities,” according to a statement from the Manatt law firm.

Csathy’s move might lead to good things for Sorenson, though. Csathy says he will continue to serve on the board of Sorenson Media, and is actively involved in the search for a new CEO. The founder and former CEO, Jim Sorenson, will serve as interim CEO during the search.

Manatt Digital Media plans to leverage its industry relationships with clients that range from entertainment industry “superstars” and public media companies to startups and growth-stage technology companies. Manatt says its clients “will benefit from the firm’s unrivaled access to artists, deal-making prowess and proven litigation experience, focused on protecting innovation, defending brands and mitigating risk.”

Before joining Sorenson, Csathy led several high-growth digital media ventures, including SightSpeed (acquired by Logitech in late 2008), MusicMatch (acquired by Yahoo in 2004), and eNow (acquired by AOL-TimeWarner in 2006).

Streaming media has grown exponentially in recent years, and providers of online video technology have shifted to providing cloud-based online video platforms. Sorenson has grown under Csathy—the company now has strategic partnerships with Shutterfly, Sony, Avid, and RealNetworks. But such rivals as Brightcove, Ooyala, and Kaltura continue to account for a big share of an increasingly crowded market.

While Sorenson operates its own successful managed video hosting and delivery technology, Csathy has written that it is only one component of Sorenson’s overall business model, which is focused on providing comprehensive video encoding and transcoding for enterprise customers.

“Think of us as a video-focused Accenture,” Csathy wrote in a 2011 Sorenson blog. “Enterprise customers come to us with real significant and challenging problems; we are consultative in our approach; we listen; we hear; we propose a solution to meet those needs; we build it; and we manage and service it; THAT is who we are.”

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

In a city where people know people who know people, Richard Blakeley sits at the heart of a web that connects New York’s tech community.

That enviable position stems in part from his annual Webutante Ball. While preparing for next Thursday’s big gala, he spoke to Xconomy about the city’s evolution into a place not only to be seen, but to create new innovation.

Blakeley held the first Webutante Ball in 2009 and the event has grown into a casual, yet high profile way to meet the local who’s-who in tech. It also shows, from a social perspective, the diversity that makes up the city’s innovation scene.

“Take any industry from around the world that is based in New York, add tech to it, and that’s exactly what’s happening,” he says.

More than just a social butterfly, Blakeley is known largely for his prior editorial work at Gawker and Thrillist and does not expect the local innovation community to evaporate any time soon. “When Google has a massive space in Chelsea, Facebook is here, Twitter has an office here, and everybody else that’s a big name on the West Coast has an office here, it’s legit,” he says. “There are a lot of things happening that will solidify New York as a high-tech hub for many years to come.”

Since its inception, the Webutante Ball has been held in the midst of Internet Week New York, an annual spring series of programs to showcase Web-based companies and ideas being developed here. Blakeley calls Webutante an excuse for hackers to dress up (or not) and mingle with their peers—and possibly run into such people as Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley or David Karp, founder of Tumblr.

The festivities include the crowning of a king and a queen of the ball, chosen from the tech community by online vote. This year’s nominees for queen are:

Callie Schweitzer, director of marketing and communications at Vox Media.

Maura Johnston, founder of Maura Magazine.

Sarah Austin, star of Bravo’s “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley.”

Jenna Wortham, technology reporter with The New York Times.

Rachel Sklar, co-founder of The Li.st.

The nominees for king are:

Michael Martin, editor-in-chief of Time Out New York.

Josh Gondelman, co-creator of Twitter’s Modern Seinfeld.

Ben Hindman, co-founder of SplashThat.

Omri Mor and Colin Hodge, co-founders of Bang With Friends.

Jeremy Fisher, co-creator of Days App.

Webutante brings out New York's tech community.

A native of Northern California, Blakeley had a front row seat for the West Coast boom and sees a different dynamic coming together in New York. “In California, the tech scene happened because people were around electronics and working in their garages,” he says. “Here, people are close, connected, and solving real-world problems.”

The urban culture and lifestyle in this city, Blakeley says, spurs the development of technology that might not emerge elsewhere. “When I started [the ball], I didn’t think Foursquare could work outside of New York,” he says. “It was a great test bed for location services because people [here] don’t drive. They constantly meet up with friends after work and we have an amazing public transportation system.”

New York is saturated with networking parties for the tech scene, Blakeley admits, that have cropped up in recent years. It is rather common to see hackers and their ilk gather after work with laptops still strapped to their backs. He wanted to create a big, splashy event that stood out in the crowded landscape.

Naysayers might think the New York tech community is more concerned about partying than writing code, but Blakeley believes it’s a healthy way to bring developers and founders together. “Everybody can use a break once in a while,” he says.

The growth of the Webtutante Ball, which Blakeley says typically sells out its usual home at the Marquee nightclub in Chelsea, is a bit of reflection of the city’s efforts to firm up its innovation ecosystem. “As the tech scene’s flourished, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg helped create, it is interesting to see this mature and going strong as he leaves office,” he says.

[Blakeley is offering Xconomy readers a discount (as long as tickets are available) if they use the code XCON13 to register online.]

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

A prominent leader in the tech-startup community is moving on.

Walt Doyle, the longtime CEO of Where, which was acquired by PayPal in April 2011, has left the company as of today. Doyle served as general manager of PayPal Media Network after the acquisition. It has been two years since the deal, so Doyle’s departure is not surprising.

I’ve reached out to Doyle and the local PayPal office for comments and an update on the company’s local progress and strategy.

There are two real stories here, and this isn’t one of them—they have yet to be written.

One is what Doyle (pictured below) will do next. He has been very active in the entrepreneurial community, serving on the boards of Celtra, EverTrue, and other companies, and serving as an advisor to other firms like Leaf and Auction Holdings. He is one of the Boston area’s leading experts in mobile technologies and payments, but more broadly he has strong business instincts in areas such as consumer products, media, and publishing.

The other story is about the future of PayPal in Boston. From what I’ve heard, a lot of PayPal’s mobile strategy is being driven locally. With Doyle’s departure, the local office is led by David Chang, the chief operating officer of PayPal Media Network. Chang originally joined Where as vice president of product back in 2009. Like Doyle, he is steeped in Boston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem (his previous experience includes TripAdvisor, m-Qube, and Mobicious) and is involved with a bunch of startups.

Another Where alum, Mok Oh (who served as PayPal’s chief scientist after the acquisition), left PayPal in October and is now working on a consumer-focused photo organizer startup called Moju Labs.

Where (originally called uLocate) was started in 2003 and relaunched in 2007 as a location-based mobile services platform. The company built its software business around local search and discovery, deals, and an advertising network, and became nicely profitable. The price tag for PayPal’s acquisition was about $135 million.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

It’s that time of the year again when Boulder startups open their doors to the community, recruit new talent, or just talk about tech and their products, all while having a bit of fun.

Boulder Startup Week begins Wednesday morning and runs through Saturday. The four-day long event features open houses, workshops, hackathons, and parties and is part showcase, part conference, part networking event, and part party.

Startup Week has been a very informal event that has showed the Boulder entrepreneurial scene’s “do-it-yourself” mindset in an effort to highlight all that’s going on. It’s been very successful bringing together entrepreneurs and the people behind some of Boulder’s top tech companies.

That remains the philosophy, but this year organizers want to broaden its scope, said Casey Hopkins, a member of the team of organizers.

“Startup Week isn’t just for startups anymore. It’s for anyone interested in tech and interested in Boulder,” Hopkins said. “This is an event for absolutely everybody.”

That means reaching out to partners and taking ideas from other successful events, such as the Boulder International Film Festival.

“This is the first time we’re trying to push beyond the startup ecosystem to the arts community and the downtown community,” Hopkins said. The hub of the event will be a tent on the Pearl Street pedestrian mall.

A schedule is on the website and almost all the events are free, but people do need to register for events in advance.

The week starts Wednesday morning bright and early, with breakfast-time events, including the Boulder Open Coffee Club, and morning yoga on the schedule. The big evening event is Ignite Boulder, a night of geek-centric presentations at the Boulder Theater. As usual, the event has sold out—for the 21st consecutive time.

On Thursday there will be a startup crawl through downtown with more than 20 startups opening their offices and offering beverages from some of Colorado’s best known craft breweries. It starts at 1:30 p.m. with free drinks and appetizers at Shine.

The crawl ends at 6 pm at the Absinthe House and will be followed immediately by the Boulder Beta gathering.

Events continue through Friday and wrap up Saturday night with a closing party at the Lazy Dog.

During work hours, there are dozens of events hosted by local startups that will offer tips about how to launch a startup and how newcomers can get integrated into Boulder’s startup world and discuss tech trends.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

After President Obama signed the JOBS Act more than a year ago, Ethan Senturia says he studied the provisions for crowdfunding startups under Title III, and came to the conclusion that it would be more trouble than it was worth.

Today crowdfunding boosters are still waiting for regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission to devise the rules needed to make investor crowdfunding work. Meanwhile, Senturia and computer scientist Russell McLoughlin are building Dealstruck, a San Diego startup that serves as a kind of Kickstarter for business debt.

Instead of crowdfunding by raising investment capital, however, Dealstruck operates an online marketplace that matches qualified small-to-medium businesses with lenders made up of rich people who meet the qualifications of individual accredited investors. The investors are basically providing loans instead of making equity investments. With the Dealstruck online exchange, Senturia contends that profitable and growing businesses can get affordable loans on fair terms, with a minimum of administrative hassles. At the same time, individual investors can earn attractive returns while putting their money to work in the local economy, he says.

Ethan Senturia

“We looked at Title III pretty closely,” says Senturia. “There’s a lot of friction and costs associated with it. You have to get your financials audited by a [certified public accountant], and you have to make certain disclosures to the SEC. We said, ‘Let’s try to create a framework that operates under existing rules and regulations, and that doesn’t come with the regulatory burdens of the JOBS Act.’”

Senturia and McLoughlin started Dealstruck last year, and made an auspicious showing in the fall at the San Diego Tech Coast Angels’ Quick Pitch competition (winning the “best pitch” award) and as a semi-finalist at the San Diego Venture Group’s 2012 PitchFest. Dealstruck already has counted $1.5 million in commitments from more than 40 individual investors, Senturia says. The first loan request to be posted on the Dealstruck website, for a $250,000 business loan, was funded in five days, with 21 individual lenders participating.

Angel investors also provided Dealstruck’s startup capital, although Senturia would not say how much has been raised so far.

The startup faces some stiff competition, however. Aside from traditional banks, (which are ready to be disrupted, according to Senturia), Dealstruck must differentiate itself from … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Yesterday, we ran the first part of a wide-ranging interview with Henri Termeer, the legendary biotech entrepreneur and former CEO of Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme. He spoke about what kinds of startups he likes to get involved in, the trend toward drug companies working on rare diseases, and efforts to repair pharma’s damaged reputation.

Today, he speaks in more depth about specific lessons from his final days at Genzyme.

Xconomy: I’d like to switch gears here for a second. Now that you’ve had some time to reflect, a couple of years have gone by since you left Genzyme, have you spent time reflecting on what happened to the manufacturing at Allston? Were there any lessons learned there, which you are taking forward?

Henri Termeer: Yes. The lessons learned, when this happened, we were short on manufacturing capacity because we were having very early success with a product called Myozyme for Pompe disease. A deadly disease, and it got approved very broadly, very early. In Europe, we utilized excess capacity we had in one plant while we were building new plants. While we were putting more through that one plant, we created a condition that reduced the provision of inventories for other products, and also quality concerns. We had too many things happening at one time. There was too much stress on the plant. In the middle of that, as inventories were low, we were hit by a virus. It was difficult.

You’re probably familiar with the Black Swan concept. It was our Black Swan. We had never had a virus in our plants. We hadn’t calculated that in, in terms of the need for inventories we’d need to recover from such a condition. When it hit, and we had to close down the plant, it was extremely painful. The second part was just as painful. Not only did we have to close down the plant, we had to take it apart. When we took it apart, we, of course, had to put it back together. And the productivity at the plant was very slow in coming up to the productivity we had before we closed it down.

Henri Termeer

When we recovered, we recovered very slowly. The plant just didn’t come up the way we had hoped. The new plants, meanwhile, were being completed. A new plant in Framingham, MA was completed shortly after Sanofi took over. Currently, we see Genzyme recovering in a very important way. It’s very interesting. Genzyme had that interruption, in a marketplace that was connected very closely, passionately, to Genzyme. But we couldn’t support all patients with the appropriate dose.

Competition came in during that period of time. The competition was in the process of coming for decades before this happened. You would have thought that Genzyme would have lost all its market share. It certainly would have been the case with some broad-based products. Generic products tend to take over very fast when they come in, on price. But Genzyme didn’t lose its market share. Last week when Sanofi announced its results for Genzyme, they were up 25 percent. They are regaining, continuously, in the market.

X: Are you still upset about what happened? Would you still be the CEO of Genzyme if this virus hadn’t hit Allston?

HT: I don’t speculate. Sanofi’s interest was of a strategic nature. That interest would have been there, independent of this. I can’t predict what would have happened without it. But the lesson here is if you get a condition of this kind, where you have products coming to market very early, manufacturing is something that has to keep up. Things can happen that may never have happened before. It happened to us. It was a setback.

X: How has that experience influenced you, and how might it affect the advice you provide to other entrepreneurs going forward?

HT: I know of many risks out there. This is part of what you do, you manage risk. The unexpected risk makes me very aware that amazing things can happen. You can think ahead to build in some protection. In this case, it would have been inventories.

X: Any chance you’ll take an operating role again in a biotech company?

HT: I kind of doubt it, because … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Henri Termeer could have easily faded away into obscurity a couple years ago. The biotech pioneer could have relaxed at his oceanside home in Maine, played a little golf. Or, if he wanted, he could have made loads of money at a private equity firm.

Certainly, he didn’t need to mess around with hungry little biotech startups nobody has ever heard of.

At 65, Termeer had more money than anyone could reasonably spend, thanks to the more than $100 million fortune he amassed at Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme. His place as one of the key mover/shakers in biotech history was secure. He will always be known as the guy who figured out how to build a great business by making drugs for rare diseases. Legions of his protégés had moved on to lead other companies, greatly extending his influence. Genzyme grew to 10,000 employees under Termeer’s watch.

While he could have stopped there, Termeer also had reason to write a different closing act to his career. The final days at Genzyme had taken a toll. The company he built and loved was caught flat-footed in a manufacturing crisis in Allston, MA, that erupted in June 2009. That disaster created shortages of Genzyme drugs that people depended on, sparking an angry backlash among patients and shareholders who saw irresponsible, or arrogant, corporate behavior. The crisis prompted the FDA to levy a $175 million fine for the manufacturing deficiencies it saw at Genzyme. Competitors exploited the opening. Genzyme’s sagging stock price made it vulnerable to an unsolicited takeover, which ended in a $20 billion sale to Sanofi in February 2011.

Two years later, Termeer sounds like a man who’s come to terms with the Allston disaster, and is mapping out a second career. He’s landed on a bunch of boards, allowing him to provide advice and insight, without having to shoulder all the day-to-day operating burdens of a CEO. He’s on the boards of MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, and gets his biotech fix on the boards of Verastem (NASDAQ: VSTM), Abiomed (NASDAQ: ABMD), and Aveo Oncology (NASDAQ: AVEO). More recently, he joined the board of privately held Moderna Therapeutics, shortly after it inked a $240 million upfront cash partnership with AstraZeneca. He’s advised a few startups, and gave away $10 million to Massachusetts General Hospital to start a personalized medicine initiative.

Henri Termeer

The guy clearly still has a lot of energy, and isn’t ready to walk away from biotech.

Last week, I spoke with Termeer by phone for a wide-ranging interview about his latest startup pursuits, and thoughts on some of the biggest issues facing the industry. Here’s the first part of the conversation. Look for the second half here tomorrow, as Termeer reflects more specifically on the turmoil at the end of his run at Genzyme.

Xconomy: You joined the board of Cambridge, MA-based Moderna Therapeutics a couple weeks ago, right after it got a huge deal done with AstraZeneca for its messenger RNA drug technology with $240 million in upfront cash. What attracted you to this company?

Henri Termeer: I was familiar with the company because I have worked with Stephane [Bancel, the CEO of Moderna] before. From the beginning, a year and half or two years ago when I got introduced to it, it was a very fascinating possibility. It kept on proving itself. It’s a different way to introduce proteins into the body through synthetic RNA. For me, it was about the people involved, the possibilities, the early-stage nature of it, the significant financial muscle behind it, and the local part. I do a lot of things in Cambridge. I can really be involved without having to sit on planes.

X: I saw you spoke to the Boston Globe a couple months ago, and you said something about how you’re free now and can get a lot more done. What do you mean by that?

HT: When you run a company, and build a company, you have many balls in the air. It’s similar to what I have going on currently. But you have the structure and discipline of a company when you’re responsible for it. It ties you down. You just have to do the work. You have to do the quarterly things. You are very intimately involved with any transactions. It’s an enormous, 24/7 kind of activity. Genzyme was continuously in motion. It was intense for 30 years.

I always had interest in the outside world. I was part of the Federal Reserve, and MGH and MIT and other places. But I did much less. I’d go to board meetings and would run some meetings, but it was different. I didn’t have any time then. Now, I have all the time, and I don’t need … Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

Eight seed-stage tech companies were selected late yesterday to be the first class of startups from San Diego to be admitted to the 10-week business technology accelerator program established by Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play Tech Center.

Every company admitted to the Plug and Play Startup Camp is eligible to get a $25,000 investment as part of the initiative, which was organized late last year by San Diego’s StartupCircle and Alex Roudi, a San Diego real estate investor.

The Plug and Play Tech Center, which Xconomy’s Wade Roush profiled in December, has been considering an expansion in San Diego for several years. Saeed Amidi, the founder and CEO, says he came close to acquiring a building here several years ago to serve as a tech incubator for Southern California. More recently, though, Plug and Play has simply expanded its recruiting efforts beyond Northern California, offering startup capital, business mentoring, and exposure to Silicon Valley VCs to startups willing to participate in its program. Amidi told me yesterday he had recently returned from a recruiting trip that included Berlin and Switzerland.

The inaugural San Diego Startup Camp will begin with once-a-week business mentoring sessions in San Diego, followed by a 10-week program at the Plug and Play headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. The camp culminates with a “Demo Day” that enables startups enrolled in the program to pitch their businesses to scores of venture capitalists.

More than 70 companies applied for the program, and 16 finalists were selected to make 3-minute presentations yesterday, according to Startup Circle’s Gabriela Dow. She confided that organizers were unsure whether any San Diego companies would be … Next Page »

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share: