News Highlights
NEW DEALS
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. Series A backers include Flywheel Ventures, Fort Washington Capital Partners Group, ITU Ventures and New Mexico Angels. Read more…
PORTFOLIO UPDATE
Manta Media - Continued Growth
The growing popularity of Manta Media is evidenced by comScore’s September 30, 2009 ranking of unique monthly visitors to business, financial and news sites, which moved manta.com up to #5 in 2009 from #8 in 2008– ahead of such industry stalwarts as CNBC, Reuters sites, TheStreet.com sites, Businessweek, Bloomberg, Economist, Motley Fool, Hoovers, Google Finance and Seeking Alpha. Its target audience size has grown to 25% the size of Yahoo! Finance, which leads the list at #1.
Manta concluded a profitable 2009 with a 26% increase in net revenue and a 250% increase in EBITDA. High margin revenue from core manta.com business grew by 76% and is anticipated to continue rapidly in 2010. The company announced its name change to “Manta Media, Inc.” in September.
Akebia Therapeutics – Development Programs Progress; New Financing
Akebia announced the completion of the first-in-man Phase 1a study for AKB-6548 in healthy volunteers in January 2010. An important milestone for the company, Akebia looks forward to moving AKB-6548 into Phase 1b and 2a clinical trials later this year.
Akebia completed a $16M financing in July 2009. This was an expansion to the prior series A round of $9 million, bringing the total raised by the company to $25 million. Athenian participated in the round, which was co-led by Novartis Bioventures Ltd. and Venture Investors, LLC and was joined by participation from existing investors including Triathlon Medical Ventures, Kearny Venture Partners, and Sigvion Capital.
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.
Micromet (NASDAQ:MITI) - Siginificant Traction; Excellent Prospects
Micromet saw a significant advancement of its drug candidates in 2009, and continued to emerge as a recognized biotech leader.
ATHENIAN IN THE NEWS
Venture capital strong in ohio
Last July, the Center for Entrepreneurship at The Ohio StateUniversity’s Fisher College of Business released the results of its annual study which examined the prior year’s venture capital investments in Ohio and compared results to the state’s historical data and national figures. The results indicated a nearly 50-percent increase in Ohio’s seed and early-stage venture capital investment dollars year-over-year, while the respective national levels decreased by 20 percent. Athenian was contacted by WOUB TV for comment; to view, click on the
"NEWS WATCH" link in the upper left-hand pane of this web page.
NEW TEAM MEMBER
Athenian is pleased to announce a new team member, Jennifer A. Tate, based in Athens, Ohio, as our office manager of all Athenian locations. In addition to the day-to-day administration of Athenian's offices, Jen supports the firm’s accounting function. She brings over 15 years experience in business management, bookkeeping, customer relations, and human resources, having held office management and bookkeeping positions in several entrepreneurial ventures.