Connect, the San Diego nonprofit group for innovation and entrepreneurship, says it has selected three finalists in eight categories for the region’s 24th annual Most Innovative New Product (MIP) Awards competition. The 24 finalists were culled from more than 140 nominations submitted, according to a statement from Connect. The finalists in each category are evaluated by San Diego experts and business executives in that category. Winners will be announced at an awards luncheon, set for Dec. 9 at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines.

The finalists in each category are:

Clean Technology

Genomatica, for Process that produces high-volume industrial chemicals from renewable feedstocks.

Noble Environmental Technologies, for proprietary ECOR process to produce environmentally friendly building materials.

Wildcat Discovery Technologies, for electrolytic process that makes environmentally friendly materials.

Communications and IT

Ethertronics, for its Ether 1.2.1 technology for embedded antennas in mobile devices.

Kyocera Communications for Kyocera Echo, a dual-touchscreen smartphone.

Swarmology for Swarm.it, real-time contextual search and marketing technology.

Life Science – Diagnostics and Research Tools

Biocept, for OncoCEE-BR diagnostic screening technology to detect circulating tumor cells.

Life Technologies, for Ion Personal Genome Machine, technology for semiconductor-based DNA sequencing.

Targeson, for ultrasound contrast imaging of VEGFR2 receptor on lining of blood vessels.

Life Science – Medical Products

Hypnoz Therapeutic Devices, for Jaw Elevation Device used to maintain open airway during medical procedures.

IOS Technologies, for technology that enables dental professionals to create digital impressions and 3-D models.

Optimer Pharmaceuticals, for fidaxomicin (DIFICID), a new antibiotic treatment for C. difficile.

Software

FICO, for Falcon Fraud Manager 6 Analytics, used to detect payment card fraud.

MOGL for MOGL, online restaurant mobile rewards program.

SwoopThat, for online technology that helps college students find cheapest online price for every book they need to buy.

Hardware and General Technology

Aculon, for Aculon AL-X and Aculon H1-X products, nano-scale films and coatings for a variety of survaces.

LifeProof, for LifeProof case for the iPhone 4.

Memjet, for high-speed inkjet printing technology.

Action and Sport Technologies

Hydroflex, for flexing surfboard design.

KVA Stainless, for technology to produce seamless stainless steel tubing, pipes, stamping, and forming.

TaylorMade Golf, for R11 Driver with movable weight than enables golfers to customize to their swings more precisely.

Aerospace and Security Technologies

Geodetics, for positioning and navigation technology for dynamic platforms offering a variety of processing, global positioning system (GPS) and inertial measurement unit (IMU) options that can be configured to cover a broad performance spectrum.

Langford & Carmichael, for ScenGen, a software program that generates all possible scenarios for a given situation at a very high speed.

MicroPower Technologies, for MPT2500 Rugged-i, solar-powered wireless video surveilance camera technology.

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You could say that the institution of the startup incubator has gotten its chance to shine this year. One way we can tell? Our third annual Xconomy Guide to Venture Incubators has nearly doubled in size from the 2010 version.

The big boom wasn’t a total surprise, given that this year politicians and the like have caught onto something that the innovation community has known all along: seriously fostering startup growth is a pursuit worth focusing on.

Last year’s incubator guide boasted 34 listings, up from 20 the year before, which was the first year we put the guide out. This year we added a total of 37 new startup incubator programs, and removed seven that had changed their models, stopped operating, or rolled into other organizations.

For each program listing in the guide, we include information on how you can apply, what the programs look like, what companies have come out of them, and what you’ll have to give up in return. Click the image below to see a sample listing: you’ll get 64 of those snippets if you buy the full guide for $149 (which you can do here).

Click image to view full size.

Some programs offer equity funding and others mentorship and serious networking connections, but all provide more than just office space with Internet access and a kitchen. There are a diverse bunch of programs in the guide, touching every region of the U.S. Many follow the Y Combinator and TechStars models of mentoring companies full-time over a few months and providing roughly $20K in exchange for a small amount of equity. Other incubators, such as Seattle’s Accelerator, foster a smaller group of startups over much longer periods of time. And some focus largely on creating co-working environments and educational programming (look for General Assembly in New York). We also highlight startup incubators focused on specific industries like gaming, cleantech, and health IT.

Intrigued? Pick up a copy of this year’s guide to see which of the 64 incubators could be the right fit for the startup you’re working on or the entrepreneurs you’re mentoring. And if there’s a new incubator you think belongs in next year’s guide, let us know about it at editors@xconomy.com.

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As if there weren’t already enough reasons to be looking forward to the June 16 Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, today we’re adding a thin, shiny reason with HD video and front and rear cameras. We’re going to throw the names of the first 50 folks to register in June for XSITE 2011 into a drawing for a limited edition Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, provided by Google.

Our own Wade Roush, well known to have a certain, shall we say, fondness for Apple products, deemed this 10.1 inch Android tablet to be a worthy rival to the iPad. And for the Google geeks among you there’s a special bonus: The machine is one of only 5,000 made for last month’s Google I/O Developer Conference and has a custom back imprinted with Google’s “bug droid” logo. Also, did I mention it’s shiny?

We’ll be pulling the lucky winner’s name out of a hat at XSITE 2011, so you have to be there, on the Babson College campus, to claim your prize. (You also have to have a paid, non-student registration to qualify to enter the drawing.) But of course who wouldn’t want to be there? This year’s program features 40-odd speakers—including legendary serial entrepreneur and super angel Desh Deshpande; Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, co-founder of the uber-hot Gilt Groupe; Edward Jung, former software architect of Microsoft and co-founder of Intellectual Ventures; and many many more.

So sign up soon to make sure you’re one of the next 50 49 48…probably best to sign up now. We look forward to seeing you on June 16—and perhaps introducing you to your new Galaxy Tab.

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Busy day for company financings, as everyone gets ready for the holiday weekend (and unofficial start of summer).

It’s worth noting the step up in dollar amounts as you go from Internet software and social media ($5M), to nanotech/materials ($22M), to cleantech and energy ($57M), to biotech/pharma and life sciences ($91M). Yes, biotech and energy companies require a lot more money than some other fields. Here’s a quick rundown of today’s deals:

—Crimson Hexagon, a Cambridge, MA-based social media monitoring and analysis startup, has raised $5 million in Series B financing from Charles Dolan, founder and chairman of Cablevision Systems (NYSE: CVC). Crimson’s relatively new CEO, Patricia Gottesman, is a 28-year veteran of Cablevision. Xconomy’s Erin Kutz spoke with Gottesman shortly after she took over as CEO in February. I spoke with her predecessor, Scott Centurino, last fall. And our colleague Wade Roush wrote about the Harvard spinoff back in 2008, here and here.

—QD Vision, a Watertown, MA-based developer of nanomaterials for displays and lighting applications, has raised $22 million from North Bridge Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, In-Q-Tel, and DTE Energy Ventures, as well as new investors Passport Capital, Novus Energy Partners, and Capricorn Investment Group. Xconomy wrote about the MIT startup’s quantum dot technology last year. You can read more about QD Vision’s latest stuff in this Technology Review story from last week.

—Harvest Power, a Waltham-based cleantech and waste management firm, topped off its recent Series B round with an additional $6 million from new investor SAM Private Equity, bringing the total round to $57.7 million. The startup’s other investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Waste Management, Munich Venture Partners, TriplePoint Capital, DAG Ventures, Keating Capital, and Generation Investment Management (Al Gore’s firm).

—Radius Health, a Cambridge, MA-based biotech firm targeting osteoporosis (bone loss), raised $91 million in a third round of financing to be used to complete pivotal Phase 3 clinical trials for its drug candidate. The company’s investors include MPM Capital, BB Biotech Ventures, MPM Bio IV NVS Strategic Fund, the Wellcome Trust, HealthCare Ventures, and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, as well as new investors Brookside Capital, Saints Capital, Nordic Bioscience, and Ipsen Pharma. To give a sense of the scale of investment, Radius had previously raised $106.5 million in total. Xconomy profiled Radius back in 2008, when a clinical trial of its drug, BA058, had just started.

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Seventeen companies in 18 years. That’s about as prolific as any entrepreneur-VC partnership in history. And when you’re talking about an MIT Institute Professor (and his collaborators) and the co-founder of Polaris Venture Partners (and his colleagues), that adds significant weight to the achievement.

Earlier this month, Bob Langer from MIT and Terry McGuire from Polaris treated Xconomy and our “VC65” event audience to a discussion of their collaboration over the years. They talked about their formula for creating and building life sciences companies based around six elements: platform technologies, tangible products, pioneering science, patents, real data, and a collaborative team environment. (You can also check out video of an earlier in-depth chat with Langer and McGuire, moderated by my colleague Wade, for more on how the duo goes about building companies.)

McGuire also presented a series of slides that captured the history and impact of the two-decade collaboration (see below). Call it the Langer-Polaris family tree—it shows their 17 startups in roughly chronological order (newer ones at the top), with branches that signify contributions from key collaborators and founders such as MIT’s Michael Cima (MicroCHIPS, TransForm, T2, Taris) and Ram Sasisekharan (Momenta, Cerulean, Visterra), and Harvard’s David Edwards (AIR, Pulmatrix).

“To be clear, I am not the only Polaris person to work with Bob, and some of the branches of the tree lead to companies where Bob is not the principal founder (such as Cerulean),” McGuire told me via e-mail. “Still, they all started with the relationship to Langer.”

From what I can tell, all the companies are either still in business or have been acquired—which is impressive in itself. Still, it’s hard to say if there has been a home run among the companies yet (we’re willing to give them a little more time). Some of the bigger financial hits have included AIR (bought by Alkermes for more than $100 million in 1999), Momenta Pharmaceuticals (IPO in 2004), and TransForm Pharmaceuticals (bought by Johnson & Johnson for $230 million in 2005).

Here are three snapshots of the company tree: The first shows the scientists and Polaris VCs involved with each company; the second shows the types of therapy they’re developing; and the third shows the companies’ potential impact on patient populations (a total of more than 1 billion lives potentially affected).

Companies and founders:

Primary therapeutic areas:

Potential lives touched (estimates of patient populations, in millions):

And below is a full list of the 17 companies, with links to our coverage:

Acusphere (NASDAQ: ACUS)

AIR (Advanced Inhalation Research, acquired by Alkermes in 1999)

Arsenal Medical

BIND Biosciences

Cerulean Pharma (formerly Tempo Pharma)

Kala Pharmaceuticals

Living Proof

MicroCHIPS

Momenta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MNTA)

Pervasis Therapeutics

Pulmatrix

Selecta Biosciences

Seventh Sense Biosystems

T2 Biosystems

Taris Biomedical

TransForm Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2005)

Visterra (formerly Parasol Therapeutics)

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Every startup, at some point in its maturation, needs to put up or shut up. EnerG2 is starting to enter that phase when it’s time to find out if it can really do what it said it was going to do.

The Seattle-based company, founded in 2003 with technology from the University of Washington, started to talk big when it raised $8.5 million from OVP Venture Partners and Firelake Capital in the fall of 2008. EnerG2′s technology idea was to create synthetic carbon powders with properties that make them highly efficient at storing energy. The business, as CEO Rick Luebbe told my colleague Greg Huang then, was all about using these novel carbons to power new ultracapacitors for industry, and eventually better batteries for cars, tools, and mobile computing devices.

EnerG2 hasn’t said a whole lot about those myriad applications since, but yesterday it issued a statement that—without naming names of customers or providing financial terms—suggested it’s starting to make some headway. The company said it is working on putting its synthetic carbon powders into lead acid batteries, lithium ion batteries, next-generation lithium batteries, ultracapacitors, and natural gas storage technologies. EnerG2 said it is working with industrial, academic and governmental customers. While the company isn’t profitable, it is generating revenue from sales of carbon products for ultracapacitors, which is supporting a broader push into the new market segments, Luebbe said yesterday.

The overall market for its carbon products could reach $15 billion to $20 billion over the next 20 years, he says.

“We are solving a real need, and enabling these technologies to advance more quickly,” Luebbe says. “We’re the only company that can make these carbons.”

While EnerG2 is technically an eight-year-old company, it spent several years in R&D mode, and is still in relatively early days as a true commercial enterprise. The company has about 30 employees. EnerG2 can only make small quantities of its synthetic carbons now, but a big step ahead is being planned for October, when the company plans to open a factory in Albany, OR. That plant, which will be staffed with another 35 workers, is supported with a $21.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Rick Luebbe

Much still needs to be proven in terms of how EnerG2 operates on a commercial scale, and whether it can penetrate even a small percentage of the big market it envisions.

There’s no question there’s a huge demand for the kind of carbon EnerG2 seeks to make. Carbon, of course, is everywhere in today’s world in solid forms like graphite and diamonds, and yes, various gases in the atmosphere. But carbon is also an essential ingredient in batteries. Most of that carbon comes from natural sources that are chock-full of organic carbon—things like coal, wood, oil, and specific forms of biomass like pecan shells and coconut husks, Luebbe says.

Those “natural precursors” usually get cooked at something like 800 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit to peel off all the unnecessary oxygen and hydrogen atoms to leave a form of “activated” or highly porous carbon that is what eventually goes into all of the industrial uses mentioned above. The problem, Luebbe says, is that you get a lot of impurities when you do things this way. Coconut husks, for example, are a popular source for carbon that goes into ultracapacitors, but the carbon that comes from that source has a lot of iron attached to it, so you get a lot of iron impurities along the way. And, Mother Nature being fickle as she is, coconut husks grown in various countries with various climates have highly variable … Next Page »

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Global health innovators have a rich new venture capitalist to turn to—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Seattle-based nonprofit, the world’s largest philanthropy with $36.4 billion in assets, made its first direct equity investment in a for-profit biotech company last week when it pumped $10 million into Research Triangle Park, NC-based Liquidia Technologies. While the foundation has made grants to companies for years, and has linked its support to specific programs with clear global health goals, this is the first time the foundation has structured a deal to take equity ownership, and have board-level oversight of a startup’s work, much like a venture capital firm.

It took more than a year to sort through the technical, financial and legal issues before the Gates Foundation was comfortable enough to make the Liquidia investment a reality. But it could provide a template for a new financing approach, which seeks to balance the focus and discipline of a venture investment with the nonprofit mission of fostering global health innovation, says Doug Holtzman, a deputy director on the infectious diseases team at the Gates Foundation.

“This was not a decision made with the snap of a finger,” Holtzman says. “We explained our charitable intent, as a slightly different kind of investor in the company. We don’t want to interfere with their ability to make money, but we do have an expectation they’ll make this technology available for (global health) product development.”

The Gates Foundation has been thinking about new ways to structure its support for innovation in global health for quite some time. Tachi Yamada, the executive director of global health at the foundation, has spoken about how venture capitalists and biotech entrepreneurs haven’t done enough to support the cause.

The foundation’s interest in Liquidia emerged about a year ago when Holtzman saw the company’s chief medical officer, Frank Malinoski, at a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Holtzman—a scientist with experience working at biotechs like Icos, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and Microbia (now Ironwood Pharmaceuticals)—says he was intrigued by what Malinoski had to say about Liquidia’s potential for new vaccine development.

Doug Holtzman

The Gates Foundation certainly isn’t the first group to see potential in Liquidia’s work. The company already had significant venture backing, including a $25 million Series C venture round last April from Canaan Partners, Pappas Ventures, Morningside Venture Investments, New Enterprise Associates, PPD, and Firelake Capital.

Liquidia has attracted the interest in a technology for creating specific 3-D shaped particles that can be made to look like an invading virus does to the human immune system. Getting the proper shape is critically important, because it could coax the immune system to mount a defense against a particular invader. Even more importantly, Liquidia’s technique can be used to make these precise shapes, make them consistently, and do it in a scalable fashion, Holtzman says. Those are essential factors any company must figure out to make … Next Page »

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Shocking Technologies, a five-year-old startup in San Jose, CA, that’s developing polymer dielectric materials that help electronics manufacturers deal with electrostatic discharge, has raised $5.2 million out of a potential $6 million in a sale of equity, according to a regulatory filing. Investors in the round weren’t identified, but previous Shocking Technologies investors include Arch Venture Partners, ATA Ventures, Hercules Technology Growth Capital.

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I’ve got Frank Sinatra on endless mental replay today and I’ll tell you why: I’m looking for a stellar journalist to start spreading the news about innovation in New York, New York. (Look, nobody’s groaning louder than me about that one.  Let’s move on…)

My Xconomy colleagues and I are fascinated by the stories emerging from New York’s startup and venture capital scene, its burgeoning life sciences sector, and, of course, its formidable digital media and finance industries. We’re looking for a journalist on the ground to help us tell those stories and more.

The ideal candidate will be a resourceful reporter, fearless interviewer, and swift writer with blogging and business news experience and the chops to produce breaking news stories and longer features and profiles on a daily schedule. The ability to work independently (but in close coordination with a world-class team) is key, a sense of humor is nonnegotiable, and experience with Web publishing tools and social media will score you some serious bonus points.

If this sounds like you, write us at jobs@xconomy.com. Tell us about yourself, your knowledge of the New York innovation scene, and why you think you’d be a great fit with Xconomy—and don’t forget a resume and clips. Compensation is competitive and commensurate with experience.

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Lots of nice deals to report this week from New England’s tech and life sciences sectors.

—E-mail archiving provider Sonian indicated to the SEC that it had raised $4 million in an equity offering that could total $9 million. Previous backers of the Needham, MA-based firm include Prism VentureWorks and Summerhill Venture Partners.

—BG Medicine of Waltham, MA, set the targeted price range for its proposed IPO at $13 to $15 per share. With 4.75 million shares in the offering, that means the diagnostics firm could raise up to $71.25 million.

—Cambridge, MA-based Semprus BioSciences, an MIT spinoff out to commercialize new coatings for medical devices, raised $18 million in Series B equity financing. SR One and Foundation Medical Partners, both new investors, led the deal, which was joined by existing backers 5AM Ventures and Pangaea Ventures.

—Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO), the Waltham-based provider of research tools and services, agreed to shell out $2.1 billion in cash for the outstanding shares Sunnyvale, CA-based Dionex (NASDAQ: DNEX).

—French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis extended its tender offer for the shares of Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) until January 21. Genzyme has repeatedly said that the unsolicited $69 per share offer, worth $18.5 billion in total, undervalues the company and its pipeline of drugs.

—Woburn, MA-based video game developer 8D World closed a Series B financing round worth $5.25 million. Japan’s Mizuho Capital and return backers Spark Capital and Gobi Partners participated in the deal.

—Nano-Terra of Cambridge raised $17.2 million in an offering of equity and rights. The round appears to be the biggest one yet for the 5-year-old nanotech development firm, which is out to commercialize technology from the lab of Harvard chemist George Whitesides.

—Rive Technology, also of Cambridge, raised $25 million in a Series C financing round led by new investor Blackstone Group and joined by Charles River Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Nth Power. The cash will help Rive do commercial tests of its MIT-developed catalyst technology, which is designed to let oil refiners get more useable fuel out of crude oil.

—Boston’s SensorLogic, a provider of cloud-based platforms for deploying applications across multiple devices, raised $5 million from existing investors. Sevin Rosen Funds and Boston Millennia Partners led the deal and UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund and Covera Ventures joined in.

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Nano-Terra appears to have taken in its largest round of financing in the five-year history of the nanotechnology development firm. The Cambridge, MA-based startup has raised $17.2 million in an equity and rights funding round, according to an SEC filing. (CB Insights previously posted this news on its blog.)

Nano-Terra‘s CEO, Myer Berlow, and its vice chairman, Carmichael Roberts, did not immediately reply to an e-mail this morning about the financing. In April 2009, Berlow, a former America Online executive, told Xconomy that most of the $3 million that had been invested in the firm had come from Berlow and Harvard chemist George Whitesides, the co-founder and chairman of the company, whose inventions have been licensed to the firm. Roberts, who is also a co-founder of the firm, is a partner at North Bridge Venture Partners in Waltham, MA, yet the venture firm does not list Nano-Terra among its portfolio companies on its website (for what it’s worth).

The company, founded in 2005, has been working on developing micro- and nano-tech innovations for industry partners—but Berlow has said that the company has considered developing products of its own. Thus far, the firm has revealed development deals with Exide Technologies (NASDAQ: XIDE), a battery and energy storage device maker, the German chemical and pharmaceutical firm Merck KGaA, the pet products division of Swiss consumer products giant Nestle, and Pentair (NASDAQ: PNR), the industrial equipment provider.

We’ll update this story once we learn more details of Nano-Terra’s latest funding round.

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NanoBio has its sights set on developing a new generation of vaccines against the flu and other pathogens, and this past week the Ann Arbor, MI-based company showed the first real evidence in human beings that its approach might work.

An initial study of 199 healthy adults, presented over the weekend at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, showed first off that NanoBio’s nanoparticle flu vaccine candidate, NB-1008, was safe. But importantly, this formulation didn’t require any injection. And even more significantly, the formulation was able to trigger an immune response against the virus in the bloodstream and also in the mucosal membranes like those that line the nose, where people usually first breath in pathogens. This two-pronged form of immunity hasn’t been shown before in conventional flu vaccines that are injected into a muscle, or with the currently available nasal spray flu vaccine (FluMist).

“We did extensive testing, mice, ferrets, rabbits, so this study was a really a proof of concept for us in man,” says David Peralta, NanoBio’s chief operating officer.

NanoBio, founded in 2000 by Jim Baker Jr. at the University of Michigan, has pulled together more than $90 million in government and private financing over the years for its various nanotech projects. I wrote about one of those, a new preventive treatment for cold sores, back in July. But one of NanoBio’s other high priority projects has been to create a flu vaccine that can trigger strong protection against the virus for people who would rather avoid getting stuck with a needle.

What NanoBio did in this case was take a commercially available flu vaccine, and combine it with a nanoparticle designed to interact with so-called antigen presenting cells in the mucosal lining. These cells are known to process bits of a foreign invader, like flu, and present them to other cells to spark a vigorous immune defense. NanoBio made this formulation into a liquid that was delivered by a health care professional to adults in five drops, and researchers followed up … Next Page »

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Palo Alto, CA-based Nanosys, the nanotechnology startup that has struggled to regain altitude after a high-flying debut in 2001, is switching on the afterburners this week.

To finance a move to a larger facility where it will have more space to manufacture its nano-engineeered materials for lighting and digital displays, the company is about to close a $25 million Series E venture round, with $5 million more potentially to follow by October 1, CEO Jason Hartlove told Xconomy on Monday.

Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, is supplying $15 million of the new equity investment through its affiliate Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. The rest is from the company’s existing investors, and the $5 million second tranche is reserved for new investors. [Correction: In an earlier version of this paragraph, the second tranche amount was listed as $10 million.]

At the same time, Nanosys is announcing two other agreements with Samsung. There’s a multi-million-dollar licensing deal that will give Samsung access to Nanosys technology that could help it manufacture more efficent thin-film solar panels. And Samsung will also fund work at Nanosys to develop new quantum-dot crystals—the core of the startup’s technology for lighting enhancement—that don’t contain cadmium, a toxic element whose use is restricted in Europe and other regions.

The deals are critical ones for Nanosys, which wandered for years without a commercial product and brought in Hartlove as a turnaround CEO in 2008 (see this July 21 profile). The agreements give the startup more resources to expand into the two markets—displays and batteries—where Hartlove believes it can most quickly commercialize its own work, while at the same time allowing it to cash in on unexploited parts of its patent portfolio, particularly in solar technology. “This is a strategically important deal for us,” Hartlove says.

Gearing up to move to new quarters has been one of Hartlove’s highest priorities. The company has won a contract to supply the quantum dot phosphors inside the “QuantumRail,” a component that increases the brightness and efficiency of LED backlights for mobile device displays, to Korea’s LG Innotek, and is pursuing additional customers. That means it now has to make the phosphors in industrial quantities. But in its current location—tucked into a Palo Alto office park with burgeoning Web and software companies such as Facebook a stone’s throw away—the startup is “basically out of capacity, really footprint-limited and fire code limited,” says Hartlove.

The company will use the growth capital round to open a new facility in a larger industrial park. “It’s here, still, within the Bay Area,” Hartlove says. “We haven’t announced a site yet, but that’s what the new capital is for, the capacity expansion to meet our 2011 revenue goals.”

The next problem is an environmental one. Manufacturers of smartphones and notebook computers can use the QuantumRail technology to tune the frequencies emitted by the LED backlights in their liquid crystal displays, resulting in a far richer range of colors. But there’s a downside—the quantum dots, which are actually nanocrystals made of cadmium selenide. Cadmium is a … Next Page »

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I am fairly certain that I have yet to peak as a golfer, and equally confident that I never will.

As I’m on the verge of ignoring the golfing gods (and worshipping the startup gods) for yet another full summer, my confidence in the previous statement is growing. To appease the golfing gods, I used some time-tested golf maxims to convey the lessons (read boulders) that the startup gods have recently thrown at me.

My body is here, but my mind has teed off. (Unknown)

From the age of 10, when I first started playing golf, until I left for college, I spent the majority of my waking moments on a golf course or thinking about golf. If you are a founder, the best question you can ask yourself is: “Do I feel this way about my business?” If the answer is “yes,” then you have a chance to succeed. If not, I would start looking for your next move.

I don’t exaggerate—I just remember big. (Chi Chi Rodriguez)

Chi Chi was best known for waving his putter like a sword in celebration of every putt he made. He was one of the best showmen the game has ever known. As a result, he always had a huge gallery. Why? Because Chi Chi knew how to celebrate his accomplishments in an endearing way.

Knowing how to tout your company’s exploits in an endearing way is a vital challenge for entrepreneurs. We have all met the founders who have the world conquered. Nothing is a problem. They are “going to crush it.” When I meet founders like this, I immediately move to suspicion. I become more of an adversary than a fan. Conversely, there are those founders who we all root for. Their passion, like Chi Chi’s, is evident. Rather than trying to ram their success down your throat, they implicitly ask you to see how neat their product or service is. They build a fan base.

When I die, bury me on a golf course so my husband will visit. (Unknown)

I went to Summit Series in May, an unbelievable event, and had a chance to hear Mark Cuban and Ted Leonsis speak on balancing relationships with startups. I left thinking that both men are super impressive and equally insightful.

Mark Cuban stated, and perhaps the quote’s author would agree, that there is no room in a founder’s life for a relationship when launching a business. Ted Leonsis respectfully … Next Page »

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Jason Hartlove has a name and a rakish mug worthy of a soap-opera star, a resume that any Silicon Valley engineer would envy, and a bit of swagger as a turnaround CEO. He co-invented the optical mouse at Hewlett-Packard, ran a 3,000-employee manufacturing operation for HP spinoff Agilent in Malaysia, and set South Korea’s struggling MagnaChip Semiconductor on its current path to an IPO. “One of my investors said this—so I won’t claim it for myself—but I am a technology MacGyver,” Hartlove says. “If you give me some piece of technology, I can really figure out what to do with it.”

But at Palo Alto, CA-based Nanosys, where he took over as CEO in October 2008, Hartlove may be facing his biggest challenge yet. With an impressive portfolio of patents based on work at MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and other institutions, the nine-year-old company has repeatedly been described as one of the most promising in a batch of nanotechnology startups that emerged around the turn of the millennium. In its early years, it investigated areas like solar cells and display electronics where it was thought that nano-engineered materials could lead to higher power output or greater efficiencies. But real commercial applications for nanotechnology insights have been slow to emerge, and Nanosys has yet to bring a single product all the way to the market (the first is set to appear in the fourth quarter of this year, if all goes according to plan).

“The clock is ticking for Nanosys…since its financial backers are counting on a return on investment in another three to five years,” wrote Technology Review magazine. That was in 2004—just a few months before Nanosys called off a planned IPO that still hasn’t happened.

Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove

After the pulling the plug on the IPO, “the company sort of struggled a little between 2005 and 2007 about what exactly its mission was,” Hartlove told me earlier this week. “It continued to do some directed research but didn’t really have an eye toward commercialization.” The shakeup year was 2008: CEO Calvin Chow was let go, former Symyx Technologies CEO and Venrock partner Steve Goldby became the company’s interim leader (he’s still chairman today), and the board recruited Hartlove to find Nanosys some real products.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Hartlove’s tactics since 2008 MacGyveresque, and so far, he hasn’t even used a Swiss Army knife. He has focused the company on the two research programs that seemed most likely to produce marketable products in the near future. And he has pushed forward one of them, a “QuantumRail” component that increases the brightness and efficiency of LED backlights for mobile device displays, to the point that the company is earning “real revenue from real paying customers,” in Hartlove’s words. The first customer is LG Innotek, which plans to use the QuantumRail in 5 million phone-sized displays by the end of 2010; its purchases recently contributed to Nanosys’s first break-even month.

Demand for the nanocrystals that go into the QuantumRail, as well as the high-capacity anode material that Nanosys is developing for the lithium-ion battery industry, is growing fast enough that the company will soon need to find larger quarters outside Palo Alto, Hartlove says. And within 18 months, he says, the company hopes to be in a position to restart the IPO process. “We’ll have display products on the market, battery products on the market, a track record of revenue and profitability,” he says. “Those are the milestones.”

At least one Nanosys investor, Lux Capital, seems to buy into Hartlove’s optimism. “Things have really accelerated and they’re on a rapid path to success,” says Josh Wolfe, a managing partner at the New York-based firm, which contributed to a … Next Page »

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NanoBio has spent a decade of R&D working on nanotech formulations that might help drugs and vaccines be better absorbed, more effective, or more convenient. Now the Ann Arbor, MI-based company is plowing ahead with its first big application—for the treatment and possibly the prevention of cold sores.

This story has been unfolding for some time, but NanoBio gained some additional cash and credibility for the idea last December when it formed a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. London-based Glaxo, the world’s fourth-biggest pharma company by revenue, makes the only FDA-approved topical over-the-counter treatment for cold sores, docosanol (Abreva). The deal provided NanoBio with $14.5 million in upfront cash, plus milestone payments worth as much as $40 million, and a single digit royalty on sales if the new drug reaches the marketplace.

There’s both business strategy, and some cool science, to explain how the startup and the drug giant came together. For one thing, Glaxo’s patent expires on its existing drug in 2014. If things break right in the development plan for NanoBio’s NB-001, then Glaxo could be in position to sell a “new and improved” treatment for cold sores a year earlier, in 2013, says NanoBio chief operating officer David Peralta. Having cold sores isn’t a life-threatening condition that puts people in the hospital, and Abreva doesn’t generate enough sales to show up on Glaxo’s quarterly earnings reports. Still, an estimated 136 million people in the U.S are said to get herpes simplex virus-1 infections (cold sores). The Abreva pump sells on drugstore.com for $16.99, so even if Glaxo only captures a small slice of the market, there’s real money to be made.

But besides the business, there’s some interesting science at work here. For starters, NanoBio is led by CEO James Baker Jr., the prolific inventor and director of the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences at the University of Michigan. Baker’s team wondered if it could come up with a localized, dab-on lotion for cold sores that would work better than traditional oral pills that circulate through the entire bloodstream. Topicals often haven’t worked well in the past, because older formulations didn’t penetrate deep enough into the nerve where the herpes simplex virus resides, Peralta says. The nanotech formulation that NanoBio developed is designed to penetrate deeper, and kill the pathogen before it can replicate and cause the fever blister that’s the visible symptom of a cold sore, he says.

It took a long time to get the particle size right, so it’s not too big or too small to do the job, Peralta says. What NanoBio has settled on, after a battery of animal tests and a pair of controlled, mid-stage clinical trials, is a lotion that can be dabbed onto the spot of infection as many as five times a day for 10 days, or until the sore is healed, Peralta says.

The NanoBio drug “definitely accelerates healing” when compared with a placebo, based on the clinical trial results thus far, Peralta says. A less definitive, but intriguing … Next Page »

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XG Sciences, a Michigan State University spinout that makes graphene nanoplatelets that can be used as additives in a number of products to give them special properties, received $1 million today in a deal with Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group. XG’s technology involves a fast and inexpensive process of separating layers of graphene into nanometer-size stacks. When tailored with special surface chemistry, the graphene can give polymers improved strength or increased electrical and thermal conductivity. Initial funding for XG came from MSU and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s 21st Century Jobs Fund. Hanwha produces chemicals, munitions, plastics, and similar materials for aerospace, automotive and consumer goods industries.

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Today Starbucks begins providing free Internet in their stores. To me, this means that Howard Schultz has just provided 11,000 free offices for startups. To an entrepreneur, having tables, chairs, free Internet, and access to food and coffee is a golden opportunity. To a professional who provides support services to startups (e.g. marketing, design, business planning, business development), the local Starbucks just became a sales office. To a recent graduate or a talented programmer looking for her next big opportunity, Starbucks just became a productive hang out.

In the Entrepreneur’s Census, we observed that 42 percent of startups with commercial office space in New York were not paying any rent. These entrepreneurs have found free office space with potential clients, later-stage startup companies, and incubators. In each environment, startups benefit from both cost savings and strategic benefits.

Those startups that find space with a potential client enjoy a great opportunity in the product development phase to get immediate feedback. My company, for example, is testing its educational course management system this summer at a school that may eventually buy our software. In addition to free work space, we receive invaluable feedback from teachers and students as we move through our testing phase. As if having a free testing environment were not enough, we also get access to the decision makers that may eventually sign our purchase orders.

Space with a potential client is great; but, there is value to being housed with virtually any business. Some startups receive free office space from larger businesses or later-stage startups. These businesses can provide an entrepreneur with advice on funding, lawyers, staffing, growth strategies, etc. Many decisions are industry agnostic. Further, lean startups can avoid one of the biggest challenges faced by any entrepreneur: loneliness.

Incubators are a slightly different case, as they can be free (e.g. DogPatch Labs), subsidized (e.g. NYUPolyTech), or equity-based (e.g. Betaworks, TechStars, Y Combinator). Regardless of format, incubators provide a community for entrepreneurs in which to share ideas, form partnerships, meet investors, and connect with needed talent. In some cases, they provide the platform on which good ideas become great businesses. At the least, they provide space and community for entrepreneurs. Xconomy and an entrepreneur in Philadelphia, Robert Shedd, provide lists of incubators around the country.

In addition to these programs, several universities are now launching “proof of concept centers.” A recent New York Times article details how these centers match ideas with “investors and business people interested in developing them further and exploring their commercial viability.” At Yale University (my alma mater), the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute provided an early home for YouRenew and PaperG, two startups that have received venture funding and made significant progress in the last few years. Private investors, university endowments, and the U.S. government are all pushing these centers as a means to get ideas to market. Students should research opportunities at their universities and startups that are not directly affiliated with universities should look for ways to get involved.

“You get what you pay for.” This old saying applies to many things in life. For startups, though, free or subsidized office space often provides some type of community which in turn, occasionally, brings invaluable additional resources. And at the minimum, it’s, well, cheaper.

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There has been plenty of tech-business news in the past week to put Seattle on the national radar. But it takes years to understand the innovation community here; I’ve only scratched the surface so far. So, in honor of my colleague Thea’s first week on the job, I thought it would be useful to look back at some of the more interesting stories I wrote (if I do say so myself) in Xconomy’s first six months in Seattle, back in 2008—and to think about what they mean now.

The stories span software and IT, advanced materials, energy and cleantech—and coffee. Many of you didn’t see them the first time around, but perhaps they’ve become more interesting with a couple years of hindsight. Here they are in chronological order:

1. Modumetal Grows Nanotech Metals for Military, Aiming to Make Parts for Your Car

This Seattle company has burst onto the scene in the past couple of years, with a method to produce a new kind of metal that could potentially disrupt the steel industry. Modumetal continues to grow, accumulate new customers and partners, and just closed a second round of venture funding this month.

2. With Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold Out to Create “Invention Capital” Industry—and Reinvent Invention in the Process (Part 1)

My first sit-down with Nathan Myhrvold for Xconomy was an eventful one. He laid out his plans for Intellectual Ventures in great depth, showed me the company’s new lab, and talked about everything from the physics of ping-pong and quantum cosmology to “invention capital,” global expansion, and a nuclear power project (what would become TerraPower). In part two of the interview, he spoke for the first time about his team’s far-out approach to stopping hurricanes—and about new kinds of malaria intervention, and geo-engineering to combat global warming.

3. Tableau Raises $10M in Second Venture Round, Wants To Be the Adobe of Data

This is one of the fastest-growing and most successful startups that people around town need to know about. Tableau makes data visualization and analytics software for companies, organizations, and consumers, so they can make sense of increasing amounts of data and pull out useful trends and patterns. CEO Christian Chabot told me the story of the company and where it’s headed. So far, he’s been pretty much on target.

4. Second Avenue Partners’ Keith Grinstein Dies at Age 48

Obviously this was not one of our favorite stories. Nevertheless, this tragedy is part of the fabric of the innovation community, and we need to report this kind of news with urgency and sensitivity. Nick Hanauer and Michael Butler wrote in with their thoughts on Keith Grinstein’s passing.

5. Founder’s Co-op Gets Warm Reception, Wants Startups That Will Survive Cold Recession

An increasing amount of early-stage tech startup activity these days is centered around Seattle-based Founder’s Co-op, started by Andy Sack and Chris DeVore. In 2008, Sack told me about the goals of the group, and its plans to invest in small companies and provide mentorship to … Next Page »

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Two Ann Arbor, MI, companies have been given tax credits from the state of Michigan in exchange for commitments to expand and hire more workers over the next five years. Biopharmaceutical company NanoBio received tax credits valued at $434,378 to be used for a planned $1.4 million expansion and to hire 32 more people on its vaccine research staff. Grand River, an e-commerce company, plans to use its $361,376 in tax credits for a $1.1 million expansion and to hire 48 more people.

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