Boulder’s TeamSnap snaps up competitor Weplay

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

TeamSnap, a Boulder-based firm that develops software to manage sports teams and organizations, acquired the customer base and technology of Weplay a youth sports-focused social networking and team management site.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not immediately disclosed.

Credit: TeamSnap

Credit: TeamSnap

The New York-based Weplay, which has raised roughly $15 million since its launch in 2008, has 2.25 million customers.

The acquisition practically doubles TeamSnap’s customer base. TeamSnap now has 5 million customers in 195 countries, officials said.

As part of the transaction, TeamSnap also snapped up Weplay’s technology, online coaching resources and video content, officials said in a news announcement.

Earlier this year, TeamSnap raised $2.75 million in an investment round led by the parent company of the Toronto Star news organization. The acquisition allowed for further expansion into Canada, TeamSnap officials said.

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Orbotix Inc., Boulder-based maker of Sphero, raises $4M more

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

Orbotix Inc., the Boulder-based firm that manufactures the smartphone-controlled Sphero robotic ball, appears to have raised $4 million of a nearly $10 million investment round, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filing made Thursday.

Sphero (Credit: Orbotix Inc.)

Sphero (Credit: Orbotix Inc.)

Three investors have contributed to the equity offering, according to the filing. The date of the first sale was April 26.

To-date, Orbotix has raised more than $11.1 million since it launched out of the TechStars program in 2010.

Roughly 45 percent of that total funding came last May in a round led by Boulder’s Foundry Group and the Boise-based Highway 12 Ventures. The $5 million raised last year was put toward apps and additional development costs for its Sphero ball devices, which had started shipping in January of 2012.

Since that time, Sphero has landed in the hands of President Barack Obama, garnered attention for its augmented reality offerings and has gained steam as an educational tool.

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Boulder’s SparkFun open-sources new $10.5 million headquarters

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

Long a proponent of open source hardware, Boulder’s SparkFun Electronics has not shied away from sharing the guts of its products with the greater web.

“Products designed by SparkFun engineers are released with schematics and firmware under a Creative Commons license,” Christopher Clark, SparkFun director of information technology, wrote last fall in a post on opensource.com. “For all the new electronics SparkFun has produced over the years, the company doesn’t hold a single patent.”

The DIY company’s founder, Nathan Seidle, believes that a reliance on patents and intellectual property can make companies “intellectually unfit.”

SparkFun on Monday took that transparency and community engagement to a different type of hardware: The company’s new 80,000-square-foot headquarters facility that is set to be built this year.

SparkFun employee Will Talbott solders serial LCDs on March 4, 2013, at SparkFun Electronics in Boulder. Jeremy Papasso/ Camera

SparkFun employee Will Talbott solders serial LCD’s on Monday, March 4, 2013, at SparkFun Electronics in Boulder. Jeremy Papasso/ Camera

In a blog post titled “How to Build a Building,” Seidle shared a very detailed background — including maps, floorplans, loan schedule, construction specs and LEED efforts — on the $10.5 million project:

“How much will the doors for the building cost? About $68,000. How much sheetrock and metal studs? About $475,000. How much does it cost to build a 38’ building with 80,000 sq ft? About $7,037,354. This number doesn’t include a few other large expenses namely:

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Colorado BioScience Association establishes 2013 board of directors

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Alicia Wallace
2013CBSABoardChair DerekCole

Derek Cole, the newly appointed chairman of the Colorado BioScience Association’s board of directors. Cole also is the president of Investor Relations Advisory Solutions, with offices in Broomfield and New York.

Derek Cole, president of the Broomfield- and New York-based Investor Relations Advisory Solutions, was selected to serve as the chairman of the Colorado BioScience Association’s board of directors.

Cole, who has 22 years of experience in capital markets and corporate planning, will succeed outgoing chairperson Steve Orndorff, CEO of Broomfield-based Caelus Biosciences Inc.

Additionally, CBSA announced several newly appointed and reappointed board members. They are as follows:

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Nearly a year out of stealth mode, Boulder’s LinkSmart raises $5M more

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

LinkSmart Inc., a Boulder-based in-text linking and analytics firm, raised $5 million through an equity investment round, according to regulatory filings made Friday.

Filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicate that six investors participated in the round that was initiated in mid-April.

lniksmartLinkSmart — which was founded in 2009 by Pete Sheinbaum, a former CEO of style and culture newsletter Daily Candy — emerged from stealth mode in June 2012. At that time, company officials disclosed the firm raised $4.7 million since its founding.

Existing investors include the Boulder-based Foundry Group and Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firms Sutter Hill Ventures and Costanoa Venture Capital.

What resulted from the stealth mode efforts was LinkSmart’s Total Link Management, a software-as-a-service technology that allows publishers to analyze people’s behaviors on their websites, to update links to existing content in real-time and to inject new keywords into new and existing content.

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Boulder-based Slice of Lime gives Foundry Group’s site the rock ‘n’ roll treatment

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

The web portal for Boulder’s Foundry Group got a touch-up at the hands of local agency Slice of Lime, and the venture capital firm issued a lighthearted challenge to have members of the entrepreneurial community show off their rockstar selves as well.

IMG_9203-U2-opt2-Rev2 (2) ALBUM

The Foundry four in U2′s “The Joshua Tree” cover. (Image courtesy Foundry Group).

IMG_9166-Queen-gritty-Rev

The Foundry four in Queen’s “Queen II.” (Image courtesy Foundry Group).

Doors-BW-Rev

The Foundry four as The Doors. (Image courtesy Foundry Group).

In a blog post made Wednesday, Foundry officials announced the site redesign:

“…We felt that it was time to give a bit of a refresh to the Foundry site, which was feeling rather stale and outdated. We’ve tried to streamline things, make information more readily available and to highlight our investments more on our homepage.”

In typical Foundry fashion (the VCs had some fun with the “I’m a VC” music video in 2011), the rebooted Foundry.com front page includes a collection of “Album Cover” series of photos of the venture capital firm’s four founders Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre and Jason Mendelson.

Among the “tongue and cheek and in the spirit of good fun” album cover reshoots are Foundry’s founders strolling along the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” crosswalk situated in front of the Flatirons; looking contemplative in a shot from U2′s “The Joshua Tree;” donned in all black and in the diamond formation of Queen’s “Queen II;” and Managing Director Jason Mendelson in full Lizard King fashion for a retake of a classic shot from The Doors’ “Essential Rarities.”

Foundry hopes members of the entrepreneurial community might take it to the next level. Continue reading →

Posted in Boulder, Web design | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Slow Money National Gathering slated for April 29-30 in Boulder

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

 

Jennifer and David Bacon, founders of FlapJacked Protein Pancake mix, sift a mix for a their first product processing run at Kitchen Coop in Broomfield on April 25, 2013 -- David Jennings/For the Camera

Jennifer and David Bacon, founders of FlapJacked Protein Pancake mix, sift a mix for a their first product processing run at Kitchen Coop in Broomfield on April 25, 2013. The Kitchen Coop is one of several companies pitching for investment at this week’s Slow Money National Gathering in Boulder. — David Jennings/For the Camera

Slow Money, an organization that assists in investments and loans to small food companies and farms, will host its fourth national conference on Monday and Tuesday in Boulder.

About 600 people are expected to attend the Slow Money National Gathering at the Boulder Theater. The event will feature educational talks, networking, pitches from food entrepreneurs and the awarding of the Mamma Chia Entrepreneur of the Year Prize.

“We’re a network of investors and entrepreneurs and donors who want to see more money being invested in small food businesses and local businesses,” said Woody Tasch, founder and chairman of Slow Money, which recently established its headquarters in Boulder. “Slow Money is a general reference to slow food, the opposite of fast food. Slow Money is the opposite of fast money.”

Tickets for the event are still available and can be purchased at www.slowmoney.org. The film screening of “Betting the Farm” at 8 p.m. on Monday is open to the public at a cost of $10 per ticket.

Tasch’s non-governmental organization has helped lead to $24 million invested in 190 small food businesses.

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Boulder’s Tensegrity Prosthetics rebrands as FitBionic, brings on Eythor Bender as CEO

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

An early stage Boulder prosthetic company hired an industry veteran as its CEO and repositioned its brand.

The privately held Tensegrity Prosthetics, which developed a prosthetic foot with joints that mimic the motion of a walking foot and ankle, announced Thursday it hired Eythor Bender as its CEO and changed its name to FitBionic.Eythor Bender black and white cropped

Bender previously served as the president of Ossur Americas, a division of the Iceland-based Ossur, an orthopedics company that posted nearly $400 million in net sales during 2012.

In an interview with the Daily Camera, Bender likened the five-person FitBionic to his early days with Ossur and Ekso Bionics, which developed a “wearable robot” that allowed wheelchair users to stand and walk.

“This is really how I like it,” Bender said of the small and nimble nature of the firm. “I enjoy that because it gives you a chance to take it in a direction without too much hesitation.”

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Boulder’s Biodesix closes on $8.8M to expand r&d, sales efforts

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

Boulder-based Biodesix Inc., a venture-backed molecular diagnostics firm, landed $8.8 million in a follow-on sale of Series D preferred shares, company officials announced Thursday.

Biodesix plans to use the money for product development and to bolster sales and marketing efforts related to VeriStrat, a product aimed at identifying the effectiveness of potential treatments for non-small cell lung cancer patients.

Separately, Biodesix announced it inked a collaboration agreement with Bruker Daltonics. The support agreement expands on an existing partnership that involves the use of Bruker’s mass spectrometry instruments with other products in development.

Posted in Bioscience, Boulder | 1 Comment

Boulder data radio firm XetaWave lands contact with ‘major’ oil company

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Alicia Wallace

At the tail end of last year, Boulder-based XetaWave landed a contract that served to quickly transform the startup developer of software-defined data radios.

In November, XetaWave inked a contact to sell 1,600 radios to an unnamed Ethernet network operator. The deal — XetaWave’s first — represented more than $1 million in revenue for the company launched in 2010 by a co-founder of Boulder data radio firm FreeWave Technologies.

On Wednesday, XetaWave landed another game-changer.

Officials for the privately held firm announced that a “major oil company” ordered  XetaWave radios to support its wireless communications across 15,000 sites in the Bakken Shale region. XetaWave did not disclose the company’s name.

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Posted in Boulder, Energy, RF | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment