Newswire Top Stories

Limbo 41414, a Burlingame, Calif. company that offers auctions of goods, and is focusing on mobile phone users, has raised $8 million more in venture capital backing.

The company is different because winners of its auctions are those who offer the lowest unique bid. The idea is that lots of people will offer a low 1 cent for goods, but then they won’t be the only one bidding that price, and so will be disqualified because they aren’t “unique.” Thus, they’ll tend to bid higher. Presumably, Limbo will have to give away a lot of goods at a loss before the company gets enough bidders to make this worthwhile. It hopes to draw masses of people to the bidding process, and thereby to make money through advertising (so that losing money on each auction is a worthwhile loss-leader).

The new financing comes from Azure Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and New Enterprise Associates. It follows an earlier investment of $9 million (our earlier coverage). See the company’s latest statement here.

The statement is somewhat misleading, with one investor suggesting the service reaches 230 million mobile phone users, when in reality that the size of the entire market, only a sliver of which Limbo 41414 has cracked:

“Limbo 41414 offers a compelling, effective medium for advertisers to reach the more than 230 million mobile phone users in the United States and Canada,” said Peter Sonsini, of NEA who will also join Limbo 41414’s board of directors.

The statement does go on to say Limbo 41414 has attracted “hundreds of thousands of unique mobile and online users.” It has had 650 auction winners and over $530,000 in prizes.

VentureBeat will attempt to follow up with the company, to get more insight into how it is doing.

Limbo 41414 raises $8M for quirky auction site

LanzaTech NZ Ltd., an Auckland, New Zealand company that uses bacterial fermentation to convert carbon monoxide into ethanol, said it has raised $3.5 million (US) in a first round of funding, led by Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures.

The technology will contribute to the cellulosic biofuels business by converting syngas produced through gasification into ethanol, the company said. The company wants to produce ethanol from steel mills, turning carbon emissions into fuels — a market as large as 50 billion gallons of ethanol worth over $50 billion per year.

Two existing New Zealand investors participated.

This funding will support further technology development, establishing a pilot plant, engineering work to prepare for commercial-scale ethanol production, the company said.

From the statement:

“We have proven in our laboratories that the carbon monoxide in industrial waste gases such as those generated during steel manufacture can be processed by bacterial fermentation to produce ethanol,” said Dr. Sean Simpson, Chief Scientist and Founder of LanzaTech.

Doug Cameron, Chief Scientific Officer for Khosla Ventures, will join the company’s board.

The company was co-founded in 2005 by Richard Forster, former Chief Scientist of AgriGenesis BioSciences Ltd., and Sean Simpson, former leader of the biofuels initiative at AgriGenesis Biosciences

Khosla backs LanzaTech, carbon monoxide-to-ethanol company, with $3.5M

Alien Technology, the company in Morgan Hill, Calif., that failed in its audacious effort to go public last year, has raised another $33 million in financing.

Alien filed to go public last year, while losing money on every sale of its radio frequency identification (RFID), and was forced to withdraw when markets wouldn’t support it. See our coverage here. Mark Perry, partner with NEA, a backer of Alien said in November he hoped to raise $50 million for the company, so the latest round raises questions. Its IPO filings showed that from January through March 2006 alone, the company burned through $15.7 million in cash.

Alien couldn’t convince new investors to help it. The latest round of financing came from insiders: Advanced Equities and Sunbridge Partners led the round, which also included Rho Ventures and NEA. The company has raised more than $291 million in its 13 year history, and has yet to make money.

RFIDs are radio tags that can transmit data to a receiver, and are often used to place on products for more efficient supply-chain management.

Alien Technology, struggling radio tag company, raises $33M more

Newswire Venture Capital

Cellerant Therapeutics, a San Carlos, Calif. developer of stem cell therapeutics for things like sickle cell disease treatment, has raised $4.4 million in a second round financing. It was reported by VentureWire (sub required), which cited a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Cellerant previously raised $25 million towards its Series B funding, having last added $9 million to the round in September 2005. Before that, the company also raised a $10 million funding in May 2003. Cellerant’s investors include Camelot Ventures, Eminent Venture Capital Group, Amgen Founder George Rathmann, Novel Bioventures, CX Venture Group, MPM Capital, Allen & Co. and BD Ventures.

Cellerant Therapeutics raises $4.4M for stem-cell therapeutics

Vocera Communications, a Cupertino, Calif. company that allows mobile workers to communicate through a wireless network by talking to a wearable badge, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Motorola.

See the statement here.

The company says hospitals are using the badge to help workers become more efficient. The badges are small devices that workers wear on their clothing, and push to talk into. Their communications are carried over a local WiFi network.

The company has now raised more than $50 million from a group of investors including Avalon Ventures, Cisco, Granite Global Ventures, Ideo, Intel, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, RRE Ventures, Vanguard Ventures and Venrock

Motorola backs Vocera, maker of wearable badge for wireless communication

Ponte Solutions, a Mountain View company that sells software aimed at helping chip makers make more efficient designs for the manufacturing process, has raised raised $7.5 million in a second round of funding.

The Mayfield Fund led the investment, which included U.S. Venture Partners and other private investors.

The company has now raised $17 million. Here is its statement

A snippet:

“Ponte (Italian for ‘bridge’) is all about building the bridge between design and manufacturing,” said Buehler-Garcia. “Fabs speak about the manufacturing process in terms of physical components and chemical reactions, and view products as layers; while designers speak about electrical circuits and layout polygons, and view products hierarchically. The Ponte platform translates physical, chemical, and layer-based manufacturing process variability into deviations from original design intent, something designers understand. At the same time, Ponte’s strategy is also to help fab engineers account for a range of design intent when developing and optimizing manufacturing processes and recipes…”

Ponte raises $7.5M more for chip design software

Solidcore Systems, a Palo Alto, Calif. provider of technology that tracks and controls changes across a company’s IT systems, has raised $10 million in a fourth round of venture capital financing.

The round was led by JAFCO Ventures, and included existing backers Matrix Partners, Menlo Ventures and Sevin Rosen Funds. Total financing to date is $40 million and, according to a statement by the CEO to VentureWire, the latest round saw a valuation increase of 20 percent.

JAFCO Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture arm of the Japanese publicly traded venture capital company, will help the company expand in Asian, the company said. Two of its competitors are Tripwire and Active Reasoning.

Solidcore, in a statement, reported the following:

• More than four-times year-over-year revenue growth
• New customer successes that include Los Angeles World Airports, NEC and Motorola

Solidcore raises $10M for tracking changes across IT systems

BoomTown launches….again

boomtown.jpgThe Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher wrote the BoomTown column during the dot-com boom. It faded after the bubble burst. Now she's back with a BoomTown blog. With the Dow breaking the 13,000 barrier at new highs, and the technology-strong Nasdaq creeping steadily upward since 2002, this may indeed be an appropriate name.

Her blog is part of the All Things Digital site, just launched with Walt Mossberg, the well known reviewer of personal technology.

Swisher is a talented writer, and this should be fun to watch. She starts with a piece about ... » Continue reading

MySpace, armed with as much as $100M, goes to China

myspacechina.jpgMySpace, the fast-growing social networking company, will enter China by launching a trial version of new local site as early as today.

The move comes after MySpace launched a Spanish edition of its site earlier this week. The move to China, however, has been much more deliberate, because of the huge stakes involved. China is now the second largest Internet market, and is on track to become the largest in a few years.

Other U.S. players, from Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay have stumbled there, facing obstacles such as cultural misunderstandings, tough competition from ... » Continue reading

Vflyer offers mobile classifieds

vflyer.bmpVflyer, the San Francisco-based classifieds company, today adds a new mobile service to distribute and manage classified ads on mobile devices.

It looks particularly useful for real estate agents, who are always on the go. The offering gives them a way of quickly sending classifieds listings information to their prospective buyer clients via email or SMS. Those clients can then access the information via the Web, or SMS or email on their phone. See the helpful tour here. A screenshot is below.

Previous VentureBeat coverage on Vflyer, a company that is moving quickly, ... » Continue reading

Going, a networking site for urban events

goinglogo.jpgGoing.com, a Boston-based networking site centered around urban events, has grown rapidly since it launched in June of last year.

The site, which tomorrow changes its name to Going (away from HeyLetsGo.com), says it has 220,000 unique monthly visitors to the site. The numbers, while not mind-blowing by any stretch, are enough to look around and ask why other sites haven't sewn up this events area. Going lists events in three cities; it launched in Boston six months ago, and more recently New York and San Francisco. It tries to mobilize a community around ... » Continue reading

Payscale, providing useful info on compensation

calc.jpgPayScale, a Seattle start-up that shares salary information with Web users who share their own, has just released some useful tools for job searchers.

First, there's the widget pictured here, that folks like us at VentureBeat can place on their job boards (we're considering doing this). Even more useful is their new feature that pops up salary information about specific jobs as searchers scroll over job listings. See below for an example of a pop-up when you scroll over a listing for a software engineer.

PayScale, a Seattle start-up with about $10 million ... » Continue reading

Gordon Murray, of McLaren fame, launches green car venture

murray.jpgRespected Formula One car designer Gordon Murray is working on a secretive car company, and the from the few clues we're getting it will use shape and materials design to make cars more efficient.

The company, based in a suburb an outside of London, UK, is called Gordon Murray Design Ltd., and has gotten more than $10 million in a first round of financing. The money comes from Silicon Valley firm Mohr Davidow Ventures and the U.K's Caparo Group, with which Murray is affiliated. Mohr Davidow has been active supporting other types ... » Continue reading

Siminoff back in the game, joins Venrock

siminioff.jpgIt may take them a while, but the fabulously wealthy from Dot-com boom eventually realize they miss the action.

David Siminoff, the Silicon Valley investor who made billions in the late 1990s by making early investments in America Online, Yahoo and eBay, is the latest to return. The Capital Research investor retired after the boom, and practiced his golf game. Siminoff has dabbled only slightly in the latest Internet wave, backing for example 4INFO, a mobile search service. Now, he's returning to join Venrock as a general partner, as part of that firm's new $600 ... » Continue reading

Roundup: Jobs misled, VoIP on Blackberry, Zude, Twitter grows, more

fredanderson.jpgApple's Steve Jobs dealt setback -- Former Apple finance chief Fred Anderson now says Apple chief executive Steve Jobs misled him about stock option accounting. Story here, and statement by Anderson here. Question: Will this bring down Jobs?

Ram Shriram weighs in on FCC vote on wireless rule changes -- See the Google investor's VentureBeat column, where he advocates the FCC should take the first step toward opening wireless standards and access when it meets later today (Wed). He says the innovation gap will grow, if it doesn't. Separate but related: India ... » Continue reading

Note on RSS feeds

rsspolicy.jpgCouple of housekeeping notes:

1. VentureBeat now has a separate feed for David Hamilton's VentureBeat Life Sciences. It is here.

2. Today we inadvertently mixed our Newswire stories into the main feed. Apologies. They are now separate again.

Southern Cal overtakes New England in start-up activity

northeastsocal.jpgIt's official. Southern California has overtaken New England as the nation's second largest center of start-up activity.

Venture capitalists invested $1.122 billion into Southern California companies during the first quarter, compared to only $984 million into the Northeast companies centered around Boston, according to VentureOne/Ernst & Young. See chart below

Several times over the years, venture capitalists have pumped more money into Southern California than New England companies, but these blips never lasted more than a quarter. This latest quarter (Q1, 2007) was the first time Southern California has remained steadfast in front for three quarters, which ... » Continue reading

Browse Archive

Erel Margalit, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Forbes Profile

Erel Margalit at VentureBeat Rate this dealmaker & see more of their investments

In addition to the demise of the MENS Club, there were several other interesting insights to be found at the Orlando CTIA conference a few weeks back:

Mobile Broadband is now a three-horse race, but one of them (mobile WiMax) may end up like Barbaro -– a visibly thrilling candidate that tragically crashes and burns in the final round.

Telecom reform over the last four decades has sparked massive innovation and growth – and helped lead to the vibrant wireline Internet we know today.
However, the wireless world could hardly be more different. Where the Internet’s rise was helped by agreements on open standards and access, the wireless world remains splintered by the “walled gardens” […]

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