News
Micromet - Fund I & II
Micromet was acquired by Amgen for $11 per share in cash, a 33% increase over the prior day's closing price. The transaction, which values Micromet at approximately $1.16 billion, was unamimously approved by both the Amgen and Micromet Board of Directors. Read full press release here.
Akebia Therapeutics - Fund III
New Company, Aerpio Therapeutics, is spun out of Cincinnati, OH-based Akebia Therapeutics, to Advance Novel Tie-2 Activators and HIF-1a Stabilizers for Multiple Diseases Read more...
Cyber-Rain – Fund III
Cyber-Rain (www.cyber-rain.com), an Encino, California-based maker of an easy-to-use Internet-based smart sprinkler controller system, completed an oversubscribed $1.8 million Series B round of financing in August 2010. The lead investor, DeWaay Investment Partners, was joined by new investor Athenian Venture Partners. Also participating were Momentum Venture Management and Funk Ventures, which led the Series A round in 2009. Athenian is a board observer. Read more…
Baxano – Fund III
Baxano, Inc., a Mountain View, California-based developer of minimally-invasive spinal devices, has raised $30 million in Series C funding. CMEA Capital led the round, and was joined by Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Affinity Capital Management and return backers Prospect Venture Partners, Three Arch Partners and Kearny Venture Partners.* The company previously raised over $28 million. Read more…
*Athenian Venture Partners joined the round in the final closing on July 23, 2010.
PacketMotion – Fund III
Packet Motion, Inc., a Sunnyvale, California-based provider of User Activity Management (UAV) solutions, has raised a total of $8.4 million in Series C funding. On June 9, 2010, Athenian Venture Partners participated in an additional closing of $2.7 million of this total. The round was initially led by Reservoir Venture Partners, with additional contributions from all of PacketMotion’s existing investors including Intel Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Onset Ventures.
Comet Solutions – Fund III
Comet Solutions, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based provider of early simulation software for product development, has raised $2 million in Series B funding co-led by Athenian Venture Partners, Tri-State Growth Capital Fund and Kentucky Co-Investment Partners. The round was closed on December 22, 2009. Series A backers include Flywheel Ventures, Fort Washington Capital Partners Group, ITU Ventures and New Mexico Angels. Read more…
PORTFOLIO UPDATE
Manta Media - International Recognition
During the Fourth Quarter of 2010, Silicon Alley Insider, known as "SAI" and produced by
Adam Fusfeld and Henry Blodget, released its annual list of most valuable private Internet companies in the world. For its first year on the list, Manta was ranked at #83, and was valued at 6x revenue. Read more…
To create its list, SAI identifies as many promising companies as it can, and then these companies are valued using the best financial and market information available and collected.
Two years ago, this list was called the SAI 25. Last year, it was called the SAI 50+. This year, thanks to the ongoing proliferation of promising Internet startups, SAI says it will likely be called the SAI 100. Read more…
In addition, Manta reported staggering growth in July 2010, reaching a series of milestones, beating out major business sites and hitting 21 million monthly visitors. As the largest source of information on and for small businesses, the Ohio-based startup ranks above Bloomberg and FoxBusiness.com, and has nearly tripled in size since launch. Since it was founded in 2005, Manta has continued to grow organically, becoming the go-to site for small businesses on the Web. In addition to passing the 21 million visitors mark, Manta recently hit three other major milestones, including:
- Manta has grown from 22 million profiles in 2005 to nearly 64 million today.
- comScore, the marketing research company that provides marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses, ranked Manta 4th* in the business and finance category in July. Manta beat out well known sites such as Forbes, CNN Money, CNBC, Reuters, Bloomberg and Motley Fool.
- Quantcast, used by the top media and advertising agencies in the U.S. to measure and organize Web audiences in real-time, tracking more than one million sites, ranked Manta the number 56 site on the Web after only a month of being officially tracked. Read more…
*Manta soon took the #3 spot, second only to Yahoo!Finance and the entire suite of Dow Jones sites.
LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals – Development Programs Progress
LigoCyte initiated its third human clinical trial of its norovirus vaccine. The Phase I/II study will assess safety and immunogenicity associated with LigoCyte’s investigational, nasally-delivered, dry powder vaccine in healthy adults. The study will also assess potential protection against clinical symptoms of norovirus infection by including a live virus challenge of subjects that have received either the vaccine or placebo.