Venture
Update Vol V, #7, September, 2001
Charlotte—YOUcentric (www.youcentric.com), which originally filed for an IPO last year, chose another exit as it was acquired by J.D. Edwards in a deal worth $86 million. YOUcentric, a supplier of eBusiness Relationship Management software, has its world headquarters in Charlotte. Contact: Robert Kear (888-462-7085)
Raleigh—Nitronex Corporation (www.nitronex.com), a semiconductor technology company, has closed on a $24.5 million second round of financing. California-based Texas Pacific Group's TPG Ventures led the investment. Contact: Robert Lynch (919.807.9100, bob_lynch@nitronex.com)
Durham—The medical diagnostics unit of Organon Teknika (www.organonteknika.com), maker of medical-testing products for hospitals, blood banks and laboratories, which employs about 500 people at its Durham facility, was bought by French medical laboratory bioMerieux SA for $263 million. BioMerieux has taken over operations of the Durham office. Contact: John Medinger (919.620.2000)
Chapel Hill—TriVirix International (www.trivirix.com), maker of complex electronic and electromechanical medical device and biotech equipment, has closed on $13.5 million in funding from several investment firms. The Aurora Funds of Durham was the largest investor. Frontier Capital of Charlotte and Envest Ventures of Virginia Beach, Va. were also investors in this round of equity financing. Contact: Richard West (919.259.9000)
Raleigh—PeopleClick (www.peopleclick.com), a leader in web-based HR process management software and services, closed on a $7.5 million round of funding from existing investors in May. Investors included Morgan Stanley, Lovett Miller, NC Enterprise Fund and Primus Venture Partners. Contact: Kay Burgess (kburgess@peopleclick.com)
RTP—Incara Pharmaceuticals Corporation (Nasdaq: INCR), (www.incara.com), developer of therapies focused on tissue protection, repair and regeneration, received subscriptions for approximately $6.9 million in an offering of common stock with warrants. Investors in the financing included Deerfield Capital Management, Merlin Biomed Asset Management, and other institutional and individual investors. Contact: Bennett Love (919.558.1907)
Cary—Elumens Corporation (www.elumens.com), a leader in 3D visualization technology, closed on a $6.5 million Series D round of funding. Investors include BancBoston Ventures, CIT Venture Capital, NewLight Associates, and Southeast Interactive Technology Funds. Contact: Brad Chasteen (bradc@elumens.com)
RTP—Overture Networks Inc. (www.overturenetworks.com), a developer of products that enable carriers to deliver voice and data services over a metro IP network, completed its Series A round of funding for a total of $3.4 million. Gray Ventures led the financing and was joined by several investment groups and individuals. Contact: Dale Graver (919.558.2200)
Raleigh—TaskPoint (www.taskpoint.com), a provider of e-commerce services to the construction industry, received an undisclosed investment from Komatsu America to close the company's Series B round. This is the second strategic industry investment for TaskPoint this year. Terex (NYSE: TEX), a large manufacturer of construction equipment, invested $3 million in the Series B in January. Contact: Bill Dears (919.327.0401; billd@taskpoint.com)
Raleigh—Entrinsik Inc. (www.entrinsik.com), a developer of human capital management solutions, has closed on its second round of funding. In July, the company secured $1.5 million in Series B funding from Research Triangle Ventures and Catalysta Partners. Contact: Brad Leupen (919.848.4828)
Raleigh—Empliant, Inc. (www.empliant.com), provider of ASP-delivered, employee self-reliant technology solutions, has closed on its initial round of financing valued at $500,000. A group of local angel investors helped fund the round, including Timothy Buckley and Howard Jacobson of Red Hat, former SAS executive and current CEO of FullSeven Technologies Barrett Joyner, and the founder of OpenSite Technologies Michael Brader-Araje. Conact: David Russo (919.968.9898)
Raleigh—Charles Sanders, MD, former chairman and CEO of Glaxo, and Richard Lin, MD, a venture capital specialist, have joined LipoMed's Board of Directors. LipoMed focuses on advanced methods of assessing and managing coronary heart disease risk. Contact: Richard Franco (919.256.1240)
Raleigh—Robert S. Whyte has joined Research Triangle Ventures in the role of venture partner. Whyte has worked in the private equity industry for over 30 years in three capacities - private equity investment manager, venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Most recently, he was an investment manager with Mitchell Hutchins Institutional Investors. Contact: Eric Johns (919.754.0080)
RTP—Interpath, www.interpath.com, an application service provider, acquired the PeopleSoft Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) hosting and consulting services business of Interliant (NASDAQ: INIT). No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. Contact: Rich Cain (919.388.6272)
Durham—Aurora Funds plans to raise its fourth fund, Aurora Ventures IV, beginning this fall with a target of between $75 million and $100 million, according to a newsletter published by the firm. Contact: Jeff Clark (jclark@aurorafunds.com)
RTP—CED's Research Triangle InfoTech 2001 conference is attracting high-profile names to the Triangle. For the first time ever, the conference is a two-day event, October 30 & 31, and will feature nationally recognized speakers including:
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Mike Brooks, partner, Venrock Associates
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Sandeep Chennakeshu, chief technology officer, Ericsson
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Bill Ford, general partner, General Atlantic Partners
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Rajat Gupta, managing director, McKinsey & Company
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Satish Gupta, vice-president, e-Server x-Series and IntelliStation, IBM
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Bill Helman, general partner, Greylock Partners
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Hugh McColl, chairman, the McColl Group
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Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist, The Wall Street Journal
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Raju Narisetti, news editor, technology/media & marketing, The Wall Street Journal
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Ed Paradise, vice president and general manager, mobile wireless, Cisco Systems Inc.
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Alex Salkever, technology editor, BusinessWeek.com
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Jai Singh, editor-in-chief, CNET News.com
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Sreenath Sreenivasan, journalism professor, Columbia University, and administrator, the Online Journalism Awards
More information on the conference and speakers can be found at www.cednc.org/infotech/2001.
Trinity Convergence
Creating software to facilitate internet telephony,
one of the latest innovations to shortcut heavy long
distance rates, is what drives Trinity Convergence
(www.trinityconvergence.com). The company provides
high performance packet voice and fax software for
telecommunications equipment suppliers.
Headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., Trinity maintains its R&D center in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Trinity develops communications software that builders of converged network infrastructure equipment for Voice over IP (VoIP) would embed in their designs.
"The concept of VoIP allows traditional telephony services such as voice, fax, and modem communications to be routed over a packet based data network as opposed to the circuit switched public telephone network," explains Mark Felice, co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing. "Relying on similar principals that allow subscribers to download Internet content from Durham or Paksitan for the same net expense, toll advoidance is one of the principal advantages to VoIP."
VeriCall, Trinity's flagship product, measures the performance quality of internet telephony allowing service providers to more effectively adhere to their service level agreements. The software is also responsible for voice processing requirements such as compression, decompression, and echo removal.
Trinity Convergence closed on a $1.5 million seed round in early August from a syndicate of investors including Core Capital Partners of Washington D.C., Intersouth Partners of Durham, N.C., Kittyhawk Capital of Charlotte, N.C. and Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds of Reston, VA. Trinity is in discussions on its Series A funding.
"RTP represents a fertile area with the ideal blend of resources and talent that we need," Felice adds. "The fact that we can tap into the academia and telecommunications companies like Nortel, Cisco and Ericsson, for research, talent and recruiting, makes this area a perfect fit for us."
Contact: Mark Felice (mfelice@trinityconvergence.com)
October 9, 2001
CED's Annual Meeting
Location: The Carolina Club
Chapel Hill, N.C.
October 16-17, 2001
Third Annual SEBIO Conference
Location: Sheraton Birmingham Hotel Birmingham,
Alabama
October 30-31, 2001
Research Triangle InfoTech 2001
Location: The Carolina Club & The Friday
Center
Chapel Hill, N.C.
November 2, 2001
Southeast I-Deal Flow Forum
Location: Georgia Center for Advanced
Telecommunications Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
January 25, 2002
Money & Markets 2002
Location: The Sheraton Imperial
RTP, N.C.
April 30 - May 1, 2002
Venture 2002
Location: The Friday Center
Chapel Hill, N.C.
For more information, visit the CED Web site (www.cednc.org) or call 919.549.7500.
CED is a private non-profit organization supported, in part, by corporate contributions, including funding from Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Kilpatrick Stockton, L.L.P.
Research Triangle Venture Update is published by the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), a non-profit organization located in Research Triangle Park, N.C.