Financial terms of the acquisition were not immediately disclosed.

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.

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.

Foundry’s Brad Feld highlighted a “Sphero Rangers” event in a recent blog post:

“The Orbotix team has turned their Sphero into a fantastic programming aid to introduce coding to kids as young as 4th grade.  In about an hour kids will be commanding their robot to drive geometric patterns while also learning a bit about

angles, degrees, time and distance calculations, loops and conditional branching. If your my age, you might remember Logo and turtle graphics. It turns out to be really cool to toss a robot into the mix, instead of just a computer screen.“

Click here to view the embedded video.

“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 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:

• Land
• Architecture, engineering, design, testing and commissioning fees
• Solar array
• IT/Security

The total bill looks to be about $10,500,000 with monthly payments to be about $70,000 a month. $10M is a terrifying number but to put it in perspective, this is part of the calculated plan for the next 20 years of SparkFun. I’m ready to invest now to be sure we have a good work environment with space to grow.”

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:

Newly appointed CBSA board members include:
Brenda Fielding, executive vice president of regulatory and strategic development for Clinipace;
Scott Larson, senior vice president and legal and general counsel for Lakewood-based Terumo BCT;
Brett Lund, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Englewood-based Gevo; Bill Marshall, Ph.D., president, CEO, co-founder and director of Boulder-based miRagen; Chris Myatt, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Boulder-based MBio Diagnostics Inc.; Bob Reddy, director of global marketing for Medtronic.

The newly appointed CBSA board members (from left to right): Brenda Fielding, Scott Larson, Brett Lund, Bill Marshall, Chris Myatt and Bob Reddy.

Reappointments of CBSA board members include:
Derek Cole, president of Investor Relations Advisory Solutions; Betty Iverson, director of state government affairs for Johnson & Johnson;
Kevin Smith, president and CEO of Aurora-based CID4; Rick Silva, senior director of technology transfer for the University of Colorado-Denver; Sean Moriarty, vice president and general counsel for Fort Collins-based TOLMAR Inc.; Bruce Eaton, president and CEO of i2 Pharmaceuticals Inc.

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

LinkSmart — 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.

While in stealth, LinkSmart tested its technology with roughly two dozen different publishers. Last year, Sheinbaum told the Daily Camera that his intention was to build the customer base, expand the product road map and scale the business.

LinkSmart has not publicly announced the $5 million round.

Company officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

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

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

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.

“In that spirit we’re offering up a bit of a challenge to the entrepreneurial community. Our hope is that these album shots will inspire entrepreneurs to come up with their own take on iconic albums. Send them our way, and we’ll feature them on the site. It would be fun to start a little meme around the ‘company founders as famous album cover’ idea!”

Speaking of rock, Foundry announced that Brad Feld joined the board of directors for Harmonix, the developer of “Guitar Hero,” “Rock Band” and “Dance Central.” Harmonix is developing a new generation of games expanding on the concept of human-computer interaction, Foundry officials said.

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.

In Boulder, which is home to one of Slow Money’s six investment clubs, loans have been made to efforts such as Localization Partners and Grant Family Farms.

“We’re really a network that is putting investors and entrepreneurs together … we’re creating conditions in which investing can happen,” Tasch said.

The idea of Slow Money was the catalyst for The Kitchen Coop, a Broomfield-based manufacturing space for small food companies.

“Slow Money talks about the idea of the commons and returning the money back to the land and all of the earth is our commons,” said Jeff Greenberg, the Kitchen Coop’s executive director. “I think about the Kitchen Coop as the same type of thing. It’s a shared manufacturing and work environment and we all have to take care of it.

“If any one of us abuses it, it hurts the rest of it.”

The Kitchen Coop is one of several companies that will pitch to Slow Money investors at this week’s event.

“This is our first opportunity where we’re really announcing our presence, that we’re on the scene,” he said. ” … We’ll explore investment in the Kitchen Coop and spread the word that it’s possible we can take this same model and build it in other locations.”

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.

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.”

Bender kept specifics close to his vest, but indicated the firm intends to position itself by having a “true consumer focus.” The combination of the K3 Promoter prosthetic foot with additional coaching could be extremely beneficial to people who lost their legs to trauma or diabetes, he said.

FitBionic officials are in discussions with potential investors to raise additional funds to expand its Boulder-based headquarters and enable the firm to become a global player in the $2 billion market, he said.

“We are serious about our statement that we want to become leaders in this field,” he said. “Our intention is to really build out our headquarters of the company from here. It’s going to be a global company.”

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.

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.

“When you start a company you come up with a business plan,” XetaWave CEO Jonathan Sawyer said. “We just blew away that business plan. … It’s like grabbing onto a racehorse and holding on while you get dragged along.”

XetaWave’s 22-person workforce at its Valtec Lane facility currently is cranking out roughly 150 radios a week. That should grow to 750-per-week within four months, Sawyer said, adding the firm most likely will have to hire about five to 10 people and move to larger quarters within Boulder County.

“We’re very pleased about (the growth) and a little shell-shocked about how we’re going to be able to grow as fast as our customers want us to grow,” Sawyer said.

The output of the Bakken formation, which spans parts of Canada, Montana and North Dakota, has increased to 700,000 barrels per day from 100,000 barrels per day in 2008, the Economist reported last month in its look at the booming shale business.

The Bakken Formation accounts for 91 percent of North Dakota’s oil production and estimates for how much oil the Bakken contains has ranged from 10 billion barrels in 1974 to as much as 503 billion barrels, according to the New York Times Magazine’s Jan 31 cover story “The Luckiest Place on Earth.”