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PowerByHand Raises $27 Million and Changes Name to Motricity
Durham-based PowerByHand has changed its name to Motricity and closed $27 million in venture funding led by Silicon Valley-based Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). Existing investors also participated in this round, including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Intel Capital, Massey Burch Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners and Wakefield Group. Motricity will use the money for marketing, acquisitions and further expansion overseas.

Since 2001, Motricity has followed an aggressive growth strategy through a number of acquisitions and mergers. Following this recent round of funding, Motricity's Board of Directors includes:

  • Ryan Wuerch, chairman & CEO, Motricity
  • Jud Bowman, president & COO, Motricity
  • Will Griffith, general partner, Technology Crossover Ventures
  • Suzanne King, partner, New Enterprise Associates
  • Steve Nelson, General Partner, Wakefield Group
  • Townes Duncan, president, Solidus Company
  • Rick White, CEO, TechNet, former U.S. Congressman

Motricity is a CED member.

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SJF Ventures Closes Initial $10 Million for Second Fund
SJF Ventures (www.sjfund.com), which has offices in Durham and Philadelphia, announced the initial closing on SJF Ventures II, L.P., its second venture fund with more than $10 million in capital commitments. Founding investors in the fund include MBNA America, Deutsche Bank, Wachovia, Merrill Lynch Community Development Company LLC, Key Community Development Corporation, the National Community Capital Association, the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance, and individual investors.

Company officials said they expect this second fund to end up with more than twice the capital of SJF Ventures I, which has $17 million under management. SJF focuses on financing and assisting rapidly growing companies with revenues of $1 to $10 million. SJF targets cleantech, business services, and consumer products companies whose rapid growth results in significant entry-level job creation.

SJF Ventures is a CED member.

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Centice Raises $3 Million Series A
Durham-based Centice Corporation (www.centice.com), a developer of the computational “smart” sensor, has closed $3 million in Series A funding from The Aurora Funds and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. The company will use the funds to increase staff and, through partnerships, bring a series of computational sensor-based products to market.

Centice has also hired a new CEO, Steve Kaye, and launched its first product - a research-grade Raman spectrometer - that is now available for evaluation by potential partners. Before joining Centice, Kaye served as president of privately-held GTCO CalComp, which he led to become the world's leading provider of large format position-sensing systems, including high performance digitizers and digital whiteboards. During his tenure, GTCO experienced a record 10 straight years of increased earnings and three highly successful acquisitions. Founded in September 2003, Centice (formerly called Optopo) has strong ties to Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. The company's computational sensors, which boost the performance of a wide range of products that rely on optical sensors, were developed at the University's Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics and Communication Systems with approximately $20 million in funding from research grants. Now at the product evaluation stage, Centice sensors are customized for the specific needs of relevant products offered by manufacturers of analytical and biomedical instruments, process spectrometers, imaging equipment and position-tracking devices.

Centice is a CED member.

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KBI BioPharma Receives $500,000 Phase II SBIR Grant
Durham-based KBI BioPharma, Inc. (www.kbibiopharma.com), a contract biopharmaceutical process development, production and technology company, will receive $500,000 under a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant will support on-going development work applying KBI BioPharma's proprietary Centrifugal Bioreactor (CBR) technology to biopharmaceutical production.

The Phase II grant follows successful completion of work under an earlier Phase I grant and will support design, fabrication, testing and characterization of a pilot-scale bioreactor and its integration into the biopharmaceutical production process. KBI BioPharma's CBR technology applies advanced fluidized bed methodology to allow cells producing recombinant therapeutic and vaccine products to be immobilized at very high densities without the use of membranes or other solid support or retention devices. The SBIR grant from the NSF will help KBI BioPharma focus its efforts on demonstrating high productivity of a number of specific monoclonal antibody and recombinant products in an applied development environment.

KBI BioPharma is a CED member.

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Peak 10 Introduces Disaster Recovery Solution
Peak 10 (www.peak10.com), which provides hosting and managed services to organizations throughout the Southeast, has introduced a disaster recovery solution designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized organizations in times of crisis. Peak 10's Recovery Express is a subscription service that offers businesses protection against disasters such as hurricanes, flooding, massive power outages, hardware failures, terrorist activities, human error or other unexpected events that can halt normal businesses operations.

Peak 10's new disaster recovery service is a data, application and workspace recovery solution that enables companies to quickly recover from a disaster without adversely impacting their profitability. With Recovery Express businesses have access to space, bandwidth and hardware as well as mobile workstations complete with computers, telephones and satellite broadband access.

Peak 10 is a CED member.

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Raindrop Geomagic Ranks Among North America's 500 Fastest-Growing Companies
RTP-based Raindrop Geomagic (www.geomagic.com) is ranked number 162, up 141 places from last year, in the 2004 Deloitte Technology Fast 500. The annual awards program recognizes the fastest-growing technology companies in North America in terms of revenue over a five-year period. Founded in 1996, Raindrop Geomagic creates products that enable designers and engineers to capture scan data from physical parts and create highly accurate digital models.

The company's products provide the software power for applications such as mass customization, digital reconstruction and redesign of physical parts, and computer-aided inspection. Raindrop Geomagic reported a 1,366-percent growth rate from FY 1999 to FY 2003. Raindrop Geomagic's software is used by manufacturers worldwide - including Toyota, Harley-Davidson, Fisher-Price, Align and hundreds of others - for customizing products, automating processes, and increasing throughput.

Raindrop Geomagic is a CED member.

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Business Leaders Launch Effort to Boost Innovation and Entrepreneurship
A group of veteran North Carolina business leaders are launching the North Carolina Initiative for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which includes two new organizations that will support economic growth from innovation and technology commercialization. The first group, the North Carolina Innovation Foundation, will be a non-profit entity supporting research and education regarding innovation and entrepreneurial activity. The second organization, the North Carolina Entrepreneurial Association (NCEA), will serve as a statewide non-partisan trade association for the North Carolina entrepreneurial community.

Serial entrepreneur and past CED Board Chairman Max Wallace will serve as President and Chairman of the North Carolina Innovation Foundation, which will fund educational programs for citizens, businesspersons and governmental leaders concerning innovation policy and entrepreneurship. Past CED Board Chairman Steve Nelson, Managing Director of the Wakefield Group, and current CED Board Chairman Jeff Clark, Partner with The Aurora Funds, are serving as co-chairmen of the N.C. Entrepreneurial Association (NCEA). The Association expects be active in the 2005 General Assembly as lawmakers consider further steps to revitalize North Carolina's economy and address job losses in traditional industries. NCEA has already created a new political action committee, to be known as NCEntrePAC, with the goal of supporting candidates that lead the way in energizing the state's innovation economy. For more information on these new initiatives, contact NCBIO's Sam Taylor at (919) 676-1913 or by e-mail at samuelmtaylor@earthlink.net.

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UNC-Chapel Hill Named Most Entrepreneurial Campus by Forbes
UNC-Chapel Hill has been ranked at the top of the Forbes' list of “America's Most Entrepreneurial Campuses.” The university already offers an undergraduate business degree with a concentration in entrepreneurship, and next fall it will allow students in its College of Arts and Sciences to minor in entrepreneurship. UNC Kenan-Flagler's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies is a frequent partner with CED.

Forbes based its rankings on data solicited by the Princeton Review from 357 top colleges and universities around the country, asking them a series of questions about the various ways they encourage and train undergraduate students to become successful. The top ten universities were UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, Louisiana State University and A&M College, Northeastern University, Indiana University - Bloomington, Carnegie Mellon University, Syracuse University, University of Arizona, University of Iowa, University of New Hampshire. Complete coverage, including methodology and summaries for each school, are available at www.forbes.com.

UNC-Chapel Hill is a CED member.

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Events Update

October 30 — Entrepreneur '04
November 15 — Biotechnology Forum: The Drug-Device Intersection: Combination Devices and North Carolina's Life Science Future
November 17 — Technology Forum-“Doing Business with the Department of Defense” and “What and How IT Buyers are Buying”
November 18 — CED Information Session for Prospective Members