Venture Capital News
Deloitte Launches Greater Washington, D.C. Tech Venture Center
Representatives of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP announced Thursday that it has unveiled a Deloitte Tech Venture Center (TVC) at its McLean, VA offices. Deloitte's network of TVCs is designed to create communities of leading service providers contributing to the success of venture capitalists and growth-oriented companies in the TMT and life sciences markets.
The opening of Deloitte's third TVC signals the firm's commitment to the Greater Washington area venture capital market at a time when other consulting firms are backing away from support of this important economic resource. Like its sister offices in the Silicon Valley and the Boston area, the Greater Washington TVC will offer a host of services, activities and amenities to qualifying entrepreneurs. Deloitte TVCs typically include meeting space and office services, as well as facilitating a network of venture capitalists and service providers through organized social and educational events.
Deloitte will tap its vast pool of intellectual capital, offering assistance in areas such as audit readiness and other in-depth programs to venture capitalists and select corporate executives. In addition, to ensure the TVC remains on the cutting edge of services, it will create a Board of Advisors drawn from a wide range of thought leaders, including venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, association executives, media and academicians.
Deloitte held orientation sessions earlier this year for select organizations in order to perfect its model. Reviews of these early meetings have been extremely positive.
The Greater Washington TVC will be supported by more than 100 Deloitte professionals serving technology companies in its two Washington, D.C. area offices. In addition, Deloitte's Emerging Growth practice, a group of more than 20 partners dedicated to providing audit, tax and advisory services to early stage companies will drive many of the TVC's initiatives.
Deloitte invites qualified mid-Atlantic area venture capitalists, start-up companies, academics and media to inquire about access to the Greater Washington TVC.
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Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity Acquires Grupo Convermex From J.P. Morgan Partners
Representatives of Grupo Convermex, S.A. de C.V. ("Convermex") announced Thursday that Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity ("MLGPE") has acquired them from J.P. Morgan Partners, LLC ("JPMP") and other investors.
Convermex is Mexico's leading producer and distributor of plastic disposable tableware products. The Company uses proprietary technology to manufacture expanded polystyrene ("EPS") cups and containers. In addition, the Company manufactures and sells an extensive variety of thermoformed cups, foamed and hard plates, trays, containers, as well as matching lids. Convermex has 5 manufacturing plants, 18 distribution centers and serves retailers, wholesalers and institutional customers nationwide.
The market for disposable tableware in Mexico has been growing at attractive rates driven by favorable macro and socio-demographic trends. Convermex's growth strategy is centered on expanding its product portfolio through acquisitions or organically through the development of innovative products, such as Graphicup, a hybrid product that provides the insulation characteristics of EPS cups by combining foam and paper, reducing the amount of plastic resin used on the manufacturing of disposable cups and containers while enabling superior quality graphics.
In connection with this transaction, Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Securities acted as exclusive financial advisors to MLGPE and JPMP, respectively.
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Houston Technology Center Announces Three New Gulf Coast Region ETF Grant Recipients
The Houston Technology Center (HTC) and Gulf Coast Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization (Gulf Coast RCIC) for the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) announced that Carbon Nanotube Acceleration Project (CNAP), NanoComposites, Inc. (NCI) and Nanospectra Biosciences, Inc. have been awarded ETF grants and have also joined HTC as Client companies.
Awards for the three Gulf Coast region companies were officially announced by Lt. Governor David Dewhurst at the Houston Technology Showcase event held September 27, 2006 in Houston.
Carbon Nanotube Acceleration Project (CNAP), an operating division of Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc. (CNI), was awarded $975,000 to help bring to the market a new fuel cell technology that is expected to power the next generation of portable and wireless electronic devices. The technology was developed by the late Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, Professor Rick Smalley, at Rice University. The Houston-based company will use the grant as matching funds for a $975,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology. More than $2.7 million in private and public sector investments have already been made in the technology to help bring it to market by early 2007. The ETF grant is expected to help leverage an additional $10 million in strategic investments. CNI has been collaborating with Rice University and assisted by the Economic Development Alliance for Brazoria County.
NanoComposites, Inc. (NCI) was awarded $1.5 million to commercialize its proprietary process for the functionalization of carbon nanotubes. In 2007, NanoComposites will be producing uniquely enhanced elastomers for use in mission critical seals used in upstream oil and gas drilling operations. NanoComposites, Inc. has been working in collaboration with Rice University and assisted by the Greater Houston Partnership.
Nanospectra Biosciences, Inc. was awarded $1,250,000 to fund the clinical development of its AuroLase Cancer Therapy. Nanospectra's primary focus is the development and commercialization of AuroLase which is broadly applicable to virtually all solid tumors. Other potential applications of AuroShell microparticles in development include the detection of disease and bio-warfare agents through Raman-based substrates and immunodiagnostic assays and the development of laser eye protection for military use. Nanospectra Biosciences, Inc.'s collaboration partners are Rice University, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, UTMB at Galveston and the Greater Houston Partnership.
HTC has been selected to serve as the Gulf Coast RCIC for the ETF, collaborating with the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP), Economic Development Organizations (EDO) within its 32-county region, area universities, and community volunteers. The Gulf Coast RCIC and the other seven centers are responsible for processing all funding applications and supporting emerging technology companies in their regions.
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Mark Hoover Joins Woodside Fund as Venture Partner
Representatives of Woodside Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm, announced Wednesday that Mark Hoover has joined the Redwood Shores-based firm as venture partner. Prior to joining Woodside Fund, he was the co-founder and president of Acuitive, Inc., a consulting firm that worked intimately with entrepreneurs at many early-stage technology companies to formulate winning product and market strategies. Some of the Acuitive clients that went on to become high profile contributors in the industry include Alteon WebSystems, Brocade, NetScreen, StratumOne, and Maverick Semiconductor.
Earlier in his career, Hoover was a senior executive at Synoptics/Bay Networks and also served in engineering and management roles at AT&T Bell Labs and AT&T Computer Systems. Hoover's relationship with Woodside Fund stretches back almost eight years and emerged from an Acuitive consulting engagement with HotRail, a Woodside Fund portfolio company that he helped position in the networking market prior to its acquisition by Conexant for $400 million. Acuitive will be winding down active operations by the end of 2006 and Hoover will split his time between individual consulting and serving as a venture partner at Woodside Fund. He will join the team of six partners, which include Vincent Occhipinti, Robert Larson, Daniel Ahn, John Occhipinti, Thomas Shields, and Rick Shriner -- who each bring unique technology, entrepreneurial, operational, and investment experience to the team.
Currently, Hoover is a board member at Covelight Systems, the field-proven leader in online fraud and identity theft solutions.
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Reva Secures Cisco Systems and SAP Ventures Investments
Reva Systems, an emerging leader among radio frequency identification (RFID) network infrastructure providers, announced $13.5M in second-round venture funding that includes a capital contribution and technology standards collaboration with Cisco Systems, Inc.; a capital investment and strategic relationship with SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG; and follow-on investments from Reva's original venture backers and individual investors, including North Bridge Venture Partners and Charles River Ventures.
The announcement brings Reva's total funding to $20M including the original Series A financing in April, 2004. The investments will fund Reva's growth in a time of intensifying global RFID market expansion. The company is well-positioned with a robust RFID appliance to satisfy network management and scalability challenges that the RFID community now recognizes as the key to widespread RFID deployment.
Data from RFID readers is delivered to business applications with location and workflow awareness combined with data formatting and buffering capabilities. As the volume of RFID-generated data begins to inundate enterprise networks, Enterprise Applications such as those from SAP stand to gain from the increased reliability and streamlined management of Reva's scalable RFID network solutions.
Reva's approach and its product development is aligned with Cisco's expectation of the proliferation of RFID and the resulting demand for innovative solutions and network management to support RFID deployments.
Reva is leading industry standards committees to help define network-to-reader protocols and other standards that will streamline RFID network integration, and its approach is becoming the practical model for managing readers and collecting data across any RFID implementation.
Reva was one of the first RFID vendors to deliver a certified integration with SAP's Enterprise Services Auto-ID Infrastructure (SAP AII), announced in September, 2005. This week's announcement builds upon that integration with capital funding that will further develop RFID business potential in the industry.
