Interest: The fact that the SEC has yet to fully implement the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the "JOBS Act") has not slowed the discussion of the Act. One of the more novel discussions was published by the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in an online issue. Law students of J. Robert Brown Jr. wrote papers on the Act. Eight of them were published by the Law Review. They discuss Title V’s registration threshold; exempting internet portals from the definition of broker-dealer; the income ca
Interest: The creation of Bloomberg Beta has raised questions of journalism ethics in The New York Times.
The following is based on reports that appeared in Adweek and Techcrunch.
Bloomberg L.P., the parent company of Bloomberg News, launched a $75 million venture capital fund on Wednesday. The fund is called Bloomberg Beta and will focus on startups that produce insights from data and make the experience of work better.
Interest: The burgeoning crowdfunding industry is giving entrepreneurs more access to capital, but if spent foolishly, even unlimited amounts of money will not support a single successful business. Money paired with mentorship can turn ideas into growing businesses.
Interest: Three entrepreneurial efforts by University of Tennessee students have received a total of $25,000 from the Boyd Venture Fund.
And a fourth student venture has been given space in the UT Research Foundation Business Incubator — an in-kind offer worth $3,000.
Interest: Recent figures out indicate that bank lending for small businesses is at a particularly low ebb at present – in April, they tumbled by a staggering £700 million, which is startling, given they currently account for 85% of small business finance, writes James Day, social media manager at Ingenious Britain.
Interest: Entrepreneurs have been increasingly turning to crowdfunding to fund their ideas, soliciting donations through online sites. But the trend has been slow to take off in Asia.
Interest: Madison —The state Assembly overwhelmingly approved boosting venture capital investment on Thursday with $25 million in taxpayer money, sending a long-stalled idea to the Senate.
Republicans who run the Assemblyalso approved bills rewriting landlord-tenant law and allowing attorneys to quickly block orders by trial judges blocking state laws, at least for a time. Those bills received preliminary approval last month, but Democrats prevented final votes on them then.
Interest: The Tennessee Charter School Incubator has received a $112,000 grant that will be used to form the Tennessee Turnaround School Leaders Network.
The network will provide development for local charter school operators and leadership groups in Nashville and Memphis.
Interest: Two of EPA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program awardees received Tibbets Awards at the White House. Orono Spectral Solutions and Ecovative Design were among the 21 recipients of this year’s Tibbets Awards. This prestigious award is presented to small businesses and individuals that are exemplary in their work and continue to illustrate the mission and goals of the SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfers programs.
Interest: The Department of Energy has approved a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grant proposal to study the differential data from retrofitting a concentrated solar thermal array to the existing geothermal electrical generation system currently installed at the Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT). The SBIR program encourages small businesses to engage in research and development that has the potential for commercialization.
Interest: Microsoft announced a new crowdfunding initiative yesterday, aimed at college students in need of a PC.
The program, called ‘Chip In,’ will allow students to set up a fundraising page for a laptop or tablet of their choice, to which friends and family will be able to contribute.
Interest: Chicago-based Narrative Science, which specializes in artificial intelligence and communication technology, has received funding from an investment firm tied to the Central Intelligence Agency.
The amount of the funding was not disclosed. Narrative Science said it will build a version of Quill, its flagship technology product, for In-Q-Tel's government customers. IQT, as the Arlington, Va.-based firm is known, is a private company that invests in and partners with startups on behalf of the U.S.
Interest: The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) has signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson Innovation to allocate 5,000 square feet of the space in QB3's new 24,000-square foot biosciences incubator in San Francisco to launch Janssen Labs @QB3.
Under the collaboration, Johnson & Johnson will have an exclusive agreement to create a Janssen Labs facility within the new incubator at 953 Indiana St., near the UC San Francisco (UCSF) campus at Mission Bay, with an option to expand.
Interest: NIH has reissued its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Omnibus Grant Solicitation announcement, which states that small businesses that are majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies are eligible to apply for (1) these SBIR grants and (2) any other NIH SBIR funding opportunities announced after January 28, 2013. The NIH grant solicitation announcement can be found here.
Interest: Protagonist Therapeutics has found another major corporate investor to support its pursuit of new peptide drugs. Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, a unit of J&J ($JNJ), led the Menlo Park, CA-based biotech group's $14 million Series B financing, and Eli Lilly's ($LLY) Lilly Ventures and Starfish Ventures returned for the latest round of funding after previously investing in Protagonist.
Interest: This afternoon, the White House is honoring 12 entrepreneurs who’ve used crowdfunding to launch tech startups and Main Street businesses, make microloans, and explore ocean floors and outer space.
The recognition of the entrepreneurs calls attention to a conspicuous absence. More than a year after President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law, predicting it would be a “game changer,” the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to finalize rules that would make it legal for companies to sell
Interest: Bloomberg is launching a new $75 million venture capital fund to support early-stage companies.
The fund will be called Bloomberg Beta and will invest in startups that are “producing insights from data” and “making the experience of work better.” This could involve anything from content discovery to human-computer interaction technology. Bloomberg has already invested in Newsle, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane, and ProsperWorks.
Interest: MIOX Corporation www.miox.com today announced a strategic investment by TEL Venture Capital, Inc. http://www.tel.com/about/telvc.htm, the corporate investment arm of Japanese semiconductor capital equipment manufacturer Tokyo Electron Ltd. http://www.tel.com/. This marks the first investment by an Asia-based investor in MIOX.
The TEL investment complements grants awarded to MIOX by the National Science Foundation (NSF) http://www.nsf.gov/ targeted toward the pursuit of coupling MIOX's core on-
Interest: Startups pioneering new products for scar reduction and a hand-held imaging system to detect cancer each have secured $1 million loans from a state program that boosts early-stage life sciences companies.
The quasi-public Massachusetts Life Sciences Center chose Boston’s Cytrellis Biosystems and Wellesley-based Lumicell Diagnostics as recipients of the seventh round of its accelerator program from among 29 applicants.
Interest: Indiana Governor Mike Pence joined Indiana-based global life sciences and research university executives last week to unveil the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute, the first industry-led collaborative life sciences research institute in the country.
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