Venture Capital News
Biosciences Raises $30 Million Series B Financing to Advance Therapeutic Proteases
Representatives of Catalyst Biosciences, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company focused on engineering and developing novel therapeutic protease products, Thursday announced it has raised $30 million in its Series B financing.
The investment was led by Morgenthaler Ventures. Also participating in the financing was HealthCare Ventures and all of Catalyst's previous investors, including Sofinnova Ventures, Burrill & Company, RCT BioVentures and Novartis Venture Fund. In connection with the financing, Dr. Ralph "Chris" Christoffersen of Morgenthaler Ventures and Augustine Lawlor of HealthCare Ventures will join the Catalyst Board of Directors.
Proteases are naturally-occurring, protein-degrading enzymes that have been used against their normal physiological targets as safe, effective therapeutic agents for over fifteen years (for example, Genentech's Activase and Eli Lilly's Xigris). Catalyst is focused on significantly expanding the therapeutic application of proteases through high-throughput protein engineering. The company's product discovery platform includes methods to rapidly create and optimize tailor-made protease drug candidates, called Alterases, applicable across a broad spectrum of clinical categories.
Catalyst Biosciences is developing the next generation of biopharmaceuticals by harnessing the catalytic power of proteases. Catalyst's product discovery platform includes methods to rapidly create and optimize tailor-made protease drug candidates, called Alterases, applicable across a broad spectrum of clinical categories. Catalyst has focused its product development efforts in the areas of inflammation and cancer, where it has clearly demonstrated the advantages of protease therapeutics for important classes of disease targets.
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Newport Media Closes $25 Million
Representatives of Newport Media, Inc.,an innovative fabless semiconductor company providing mobile TV receivers, announced the closing of a $25 million Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners. Previous investors, Benchmark Capital, Venrock Associates, Global Catalyst Partners and Pinnacle Ventures, joined Oak in this round. Newport Media has raised over US$36 million to date.
Newport Media is one of a handful of companies developing highly integrated, system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions that support all major mobile TV standards. Those standards include Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H), Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB), Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) and MediaFLO. The company's goal is to give mobile consumers a significantly better viewing experience using small form factor, more power-efficient and less expensive technology. Realizing that goal will enable mobile TV service providers to accelerate their rollouts worldwide.
Newport Media is a fabless semiconductor company that develops and sells highly integrated solutions for emerging digital audio and mobile TV broadcast standards. Newport Media has assembled a management and development team with comprehensive system semiconductor experience in wireless handset and digital set-top box industries. Newport Media's development team leverages its collective experience in these converging industries to develop broadcast multimedia architectures and IC implementations with unprecedented performance, power consumption, size and cost.
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Tagged Inc. Secures $7 Million in Venture Capital Funding
Representative of Tagged Inc. announced Thursday that the company has raised $7 million in its first venture capital funding effort. Led by Mayfield Fund, a respected, early-stage investor with deep domain experience in consumer internet technology, the new funding will enable the company to expand the services and features of its rapidly growing social-networking portal for teens -- Tagged.com. With more than two million registered teens today, Tagged is poised for leadership in the competitive online teen marketplace.
Unique to Tagged is the management team's expertise in building highly successful online businesses. The executive team includes co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng, co-founder and CTO Johann Schleier-Smith, COO Karen Cassel, Vice President of Sales, Business Development and Legal Affairs Duncan Haberly, Vice President of Information Technology Jim Rodriguez, Vice President of Engineering Gordon Kass and General Counsel Louis Willacy. The company's Board of Directors includes internet pioneer and industry leader Reid Hoffman, known for his PayPal and LinkedIn success, as well as Scott Banister, co-founder and Vice President of Corporate Strategy for IronPort. Raj Kapoor and Allen Morgan, both managing directors at Mayfield, have also joined the Tagged Board of Directors in connection with the Mayfield investment.
Today's teens are unlike any other generation in American history. The millennial generation has been exposed to, and grown up with, a multitude of ever-advancing communications technologies; from cell phones to instant messaging, these technologies have become a fundamental and essential part of teen life. However, unlike any other medium or technology, the internet has changed not only the way this generation shops or obtains information, but the means by which they interact and socialize.
More teens are online now than every before. A July 2005 report issued by the Pew Internet and American Life Project entitled "Teens and Technology" found that nearly 9 out of 10 teens, or nearly 25 million teens, are online today. This represents an increase of 24% in the past four years. In addition, the report stated that more than 50% of teenage internet users go online daily, up from 42% in 2000.
This significant increase in teen internet-usage, combined with the fact that teens will spend and influence over $400 billion in purchasing this year including their own cash and their parents money (according to The TRU Study, the nation's premier teen marketing and lifestyle survey published by Teenage Research Unlimited), confirms Tagged is clearly targeting the right market segment, at the right time.
Membership on Tagged.com continues to grow rapidly and exponentially, reaching 1 million in the first 12 months of operations, but requiring only 3 months to attain the second million members. More impressive are the statistics relating to unique visitors, pageviews, and the time spent on Tagged.com. According to comScore's Media Metrix Internet audience ratings measurements, Tagged.com achieved 2.4 million unique visitors and 391 million pageviews in December 2005, with members spending 2.5 million hours on the site.
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Industry Veteran Joins Silicon Optix Board of Directors
Representatives of Silicon Optix, Inc., a leading supplier of advance video-image digital processing integrated circuits (ICs), announced Thursday the addition of Paul Vais to the Company's Board of Directors. Vais replaces Alex Wong who retired from the Board upon leaving Apax.
Currently a partner at Apax Partners, one of the world's leading private equity investment groups, Vais co-leads the Tech & Telecom Group in the United States. He brings over ten years of investment experience in a variety of industries including semiconductor, infrastructure, software and telecommunications. Prior to joining Apax in 1997, Vais was a Vice President with Enterprise Partners Venture Capital where he was responsible for spearheading investments in early-stage technology companies. Before Enterprise Partners, Vais was a manager of systems engineering with Apollo Computer and later with NeXT Computer, Inc. Additionally, he has consulted in the United States and abroad for IBM, Olivetti and numerous early-stage companies, providing expertise in strategic marketing and technology development.
Vais serves on the board of directors of JAMDAT Mobile, Inc. (Nasdaq:JMDT). He is also on the boards of private companies Innovalight and TvHead. Additionally, Vais is vice chairman of the Entrepreneurs Foundation (EF), a nonprofit organization that facilitates philanthropic activities by venture backed companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Vais previously served as a director of Oblix, Inc., until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in March of 2005, and Rendition, until its acquisition by Micron Technology Inc. in June of 1998.
Vais received a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.
