Interest: $8.4 billion
That's how much venture capital was invested in startup companies, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. The total climbed 29 percent as funds raised by consumer Internet companies more than doubled from a year earlier.
Interest: Venture and angel capital has created entire new industries, such as semiconductors, microprocessors and biotechnology, and sparked the formation of companies that have grown into the corporate giants of our time, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Genentech, FedEx, Amazon, Amgen, Starbucks, Twitter, Cisco, Intel, eBay, Costco, Medtronic, Staples and Home Depot.
Venture-backed companies also grow faster and they tend to weather economic storms more effectively.
Interest: Mencuro Therapeutics Inc. has agreed to move into the Bioscience and Technology Business Center Expansion Facility near Bob Billings Parkway and Wakarusa Drive. The company uses research developed by KU researcher Tom Prisinzano and Laura Bohn, a neuroscientist at The Scripps Research Institute in Florida. That pair teamed up with colleagues Robert Karr and Randy Weiss to launch the company earlier this year.
Interest: Scientists also were issued 12 U.S. patents, and the university also produced 49 agreements to commercialize intellectual property owned by OHSU. In all, the office spent between $3.5 million and $3.8 million to pursue commercialization, Pradhan said. The university's academic culture has shifted significantly in the last seven years, Pradhan said, adding that in 2004 his office reached 30 to 35 research agreements totaling $2.5 to 43 million dollars.
Interest: Third Rock Ventures LLC, a Boston venture capital firm, announced the formation of Sage Therapeutics, a company that looks to develop new treatments for central nervous system disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, pain, and traumatic brain injury.
Interest: Triangle Research Labs, or TRL, will focus on screening drug compounds before they go into clinical studies. This predictive toxicity testing can quickly identify toxic compounds, which saves drug companies time and money in drug discovery and development.
Interest: The Start Fund awards $150,000 to each startup brought into the incubator. Ron Conway of SV Angels and Yuri Milner of investment firm DTS have been running the show on their own since January. With Andreessen-Horowitz’s inclusion, the three will each put $50,000 of convertible debt into the pot.
The amount is static and does not change per startup, everyone receives $150,000. Andreessen-Horowitz will participate in the next Y Combinator startup event at the end of October.
Interest: The fund stands out because investors have had a harder time raising money this year. U.S. venture capital fundraising fell 53 percent to $1.72 billion during the third quarter, the lowest amount since the third quarter of 2003, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
Interest: Georgia Institute of Technology was joined by three other major research institutions last week, in receiving a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the advancement of children’s medical devices, News Medical reported Thursday.
Interest: The University of Maine Foster Center for Student Innovation recently benefited from a $3 million grant given to the state of Maine by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. Maine Technology Institute will manage the Blackstone Accelerates Growth initiative as it supports and expands existing entrepreneurial projects in Maine.
Interest: The innovation centre is part business incubator, but greater part business accelerator for ideas that have already hatched. It wants to become the go-to place for budding entrepreneurs seeking expert advice, space and tools to bring their products or services to the broader marketplace.
Tonya Elmore, who leads the centre and led its predecessor, STAR Technology Enterprise Center (known as StarTec), said the mission has stayed the same: to accelerate entrepreneurial success.
Interest: The centre will aim to connect the ideas and knowledge of the university faculty and its students with real-world practitioners who have a pulse on an idea's relevance in the marketplace.
It will focus on launching both for-profit ventures and provide catalysts for social entrepreneurship to help not-for-profit organizations incubate ideas.
Interest: Angels have significantly increased their penchant for seed and start-up stage investing, with 39 percent of Q1 and Q2 2011 angel investments in the seed and start-up stage, marking a 13 percent increase from the same period in 2010. This increase was reflected in a decrease in post-seed/start-up investing, with 60 percent of investments in early and expansion stage, compared to 70 percent in the first half of 2010.
Interest: Lorain County Community College's goal is for the program to become a “Six Sigma” for investors, said Tracy Green, director of the Lorain County Community College Foundation.
Roy Church, president of LCCC, agreed. He noted how the college's foundation could have used such a program before starting its Innovation Fund, which invests in startups, in 2007.
Interest: The deal with IBM and Intel is expected to create 2,500 jobs across the Hudson Valley and west along the Thruway in Utica and Canandaigua, with the latter getting about 300 of the total. What has created optimism among business groups is that the nanotechnology research, which in this case aims to develop faster and cheaper computer chips, may also spur the manufacturing of the chips in New York.
Interest: The i6 Green Challenge is led by the U.S. Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It is an important component of President Barack Obama's Startup America initiative to promote American innovation.
Interest: UF's Office of Technology Licensing on Friday moved into the 45,000-square-foot, $13.2 million hub, a business incubator built on the old Shands at AGH site. Startup technology companies begin moving in Monday, along with service providers such as accountants, patent attorneys and venture capitalists.
Interest: Cambridge University Entrepreneurs is seeing an increasing number of students interested in setting up their own companies, following a spell where the lure of safe jobs in industry threatened to stifle ambition.
Interest: The government’s chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, heralded the partnership as “another key piece in the jigsaw”, adding that ““NIHR translational research partnerships bring together this country’s leading clinical academic investigators to work in true partnership with industry in early phase research”.
Interest: "This program will foster entrepreneurship within the ranks of the NSF grant recipients and help commercialize their research," Feiber explained. "We want to encourage participants to embrace experimentation and apply what they learn every step of the way. That's what leads to great companies."
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