Venture Capital News

Symyx Technologies Creates New Sensors Company

Representatives of Symyx Technologies, Inc. announced that it has formed an independent company to develop and pursue commercial applications of proprietary sensor technologies. The new company, Visyx Technologies Inc., will focus on efforts to commercialize the sensor technologies in the transportation, industrial and other markets, particularly for use in passenger, truck and off-road vehicles.

Visyx has received the majority of its funding from CMEA Ventures, a leading venture capital firm based in San Francisco, plus an investment of $400,000 from Symyx. Based on this investment and the transfer of sensor intellectual property rights to Visyx, Symyx owns 37% of the new company. Symyx has retained rights to apply the sensor technologies in certain pharmaceutical, chemical and refining applications. Symyx's President, Isy Goldwasser, and CMEA Ventures' partner, Robert McIntyre, have joined Visyx's Board of Directors.

The sensor technologies transferred to Visyx originally were developed for use within Symyx's internal research programs. Symyx's patented tuning fork technology, developed as a single-sensor platform, has direct application for providing real-time, in-situ measurements and monitoring of the viscosity, density, and dielectric constant of oils, lubricants, refrigerants, fuels, solvents, gases and other single and multiphase fluid mixtures.

This is the second company that Symyx has created to pursue internally developed technologies independently: in 2003, Symyx launched Ilypsa, Inc., a pharmaceutical company pursuing non-absorbed,GI based drugs for renal and metabolicdiseases applying proprietary high-throughput technologies created and validated at Symyx. Ilypsa's current drug candidates are based on tailored non-absorbed polymers, where the polymer itself provides the drug function. Its most advanced drug candidate is currently in Phase II clinical trials. By preventing degradation and systemic uptake, the polymeric drugs are designed to act in the gastrointestinal tract and clear the human body through the digestive system. The non-absorbed feature significantly simplifies toxicology and pharmacology requirements for this class of drugs, leading to potentially improved safety profiles. To date, Ilypsa has raised $46 million in financing from investors including NLV Partners, 5AM Ventures, US Venture Partners, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation and Delphi Ventures.

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Linden Adds Veteran Healthcare Executive Anthony K. Kesman as Operating Partner

Representatives of Linden LLC, a Chicago-based private investment firm that focuses on middle market leveraged buyout investments in the healthcare and life sciences sector, announced Thursday the appointment of Anthony K. Kesman as an operating partner. Linden's strategy is based upon the deep involvement of experienced industry executives in its investment process.

Kesman, a 30-year veteran of the healthcare industry, has broad exposure to high performance distribution, medical device and provider operations. Prior to joining Linden, he was with Allegiance Healthcare Corp., a subsidiary of Cardinal Health, where he most recently served as President of the Care Continuum Products and Services Group, and previously as Corporate Vice President, Distribution. He was with Baxter International for 10 years prior to that as President of Health Systems, President of Baxter's Edwards Critical Care Division, and General Manager ValueLink Business Center. He began his career at American Hospital Supply Corp., and served there for nearly 8 years before it was acquired by Baxter International. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and received his MBA degree from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Kesman expands Linden's prestigious group of operating partners as he joins Linden's co-founding resident operating partner Mary Beth Pieprzyca, an 18-year veteran of Bristol Myers Squibb. In addition, Richard De Schutter, the former Chairman and CEO of G.D. Searle; Gerard Moufflet, a former Managing Director at Advent International and Corporate Vice President of Baxter; James Rollans, the former Chairman of Inovision/Lafayette Pharmaceuticals; Stark Thompson, the former CEO of Life Technologies, Inc. (now Invitrogen); and Peter Croden, former President of Pharmacia Animal Health, are Linden operating partners. Also this year, Linden expanded its investment staff with the additions of Andrew Kuhn, Mark Groner, and Rutul Shah. Kuhn, a former Bain & Company consultant and private equity associate with The Sterling Group, joined Linden as a Vice President. Groner, a former Citigroup analyst, and Shah, a former Merrill Lynch analyst, joined as Associates.

Kesman joins Linden as it has recently completed fundraising for Linden Capital Partners LP with total commitments of $200 million from a prestigious list of university endowments, foundations, and fund of funds. Linden's fund exceeded its initial target of $150 million.

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Serial Entrepreneur Jothy Rosenberg Joins ANGLE Technology Ventures

ANGLE Technology Ventures LLC, the U.S. technology commercialization arm of ANGLE plc an international ventures management and consulting company, has named industry veteran Jothy Rosenberg, Ph.D. to its Ventures team as Director of Information Technology Ventures, giving the company a presence in the fertile Boston high tech region.

Rosenberg will be based in Newton, Massachusetts near the Route 128 technology corridor and within minutes of all the Boston-based research laboratories and universities. He will spearhead ANGLE's efforts to commercialize early-stage technologies in software, semiconductors, communications and other IT technologies and services. Rosenberg will work closely with the technology transfer staffs at New England area universities to help identify commercializable technologies and enable start-up formation.

Working through his extensive networks in the entrepreneur and venture capital communities, Rosenberg has founded five companies since 1988, with two companies having greater than $100 million exits. Prior to his string of successful startups, Rosenberg held several executive positions at Borland International where he oversaw software development and delivery activities, for Delphi, C++ and JBuilder.

Rosenberg earned a B.A. in Mathematics from Kalamazoo College and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University, where he served as an assistant professor of computer science for five years post-Ph.D. He is the author of the successful technical books How Debuggers Work (1996) and Securing Web Services with WS-Security (2004). Rosenberg is also the founder of the Boston Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Forum, a technology and idea interchange forum among CTOs of leading Boston technology firms.

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Sevin Rosen Funds Adds Jerry Bowerman As Entrepreneur in Residence

Representatives of Sevin Rosen announced the addition of Jerry Bowerman, former Vice President and COO of Electronic Arts Canada, as their latest Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR). Working in Sevin Rosen's Austin office, Bowerman will draw upon his decade of consumer gaming industry experience to pursue new business opportunities in the areas of user-generated content and consumer gaming. As an EIR, Bowerman works with the Sevin Rosen partners on evaluating new markets and identifying new, early-stage investment opportunities for the firm.

Bowerman joins Sevin Rosen from Electronic Arts Canada where he served as the Chief Operating Officer. As COO, Bowerman had an instrumental role in creating the largest single studio in the world with more than 1,500 employees and over $1 billion in revenue. He also overhauled the entire development process which led to the best on-time delivery of any EA studio at scale. Bowerman is credited with the development of some of the industry's biggest hits, including Need for Speed Underground, Phantasmagoria, King's Quest and Police Quest.

Prior to his current position of COO, Bowerman served as EA Canada's Vice President of Development in EA's Driving Business Unit. There he crafted and executed a plan to grow EA's market share in the driving game genre by more than 30%. Prior to that, Bowerman combined his Internet and gaming experience to develop and launch Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO's) games for EA.

Prior to EA, Bowerman co-founded Sentire, a company which monitored the health of the Internet backbone in real-time. Before that, Bowerman co-founded WorldStream Communications, where he was responsible for designing and building a nationwide network for streaming multimedia presentations over the Internet. Bowerman has also held numerous executive titles at Sierra Online where he led the development of some of the company's greatest hits.