I obviously don’t have a crystal ball so the economy could fare better than my gut, but here’s why I’m cautious for some time in 2010 or early 2011: It’s my job to invest wisely in entrepreneurs who are capital efficient, who innovate in ways that pay off economically in good markets or bad and who plan for worst-case scenarios. ...Tags: Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009 .  In In the second post I argued that as

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA).  Montgomery believes there will be 50 IPOs in 2010 as there is pent-up supply and a higher risk tolerance amongst institutional public investors harmonizing at 40 deals / year for the 3 years starting in 2011. Montgomery & Co Projects Deal Volume to Grow by 167% in Just 2 Years with No End to Growth in Sight

According to the firm--which is traded OTC--the restricted common stock investment by Guthy-Renker also came with an extension of an agreement the two companies have until June 2011. Tags: software security investment capital venture guthyrenker cyberdefende Los Angeles-based CyberDefender , a developer of PC security and antivirus software, announced Thursday that the firm has raised $2.0M in equity from marketing firm Guthy-Renker.

in new capital. The funding round came from Arnerich Massena, BBT Fund/Apothecary Capital, Essex Woodlands Health Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and RiverVest Venture Partners. The firm said the funding will fully finance the firm into 2011. ...Tags: Tags: accumetrics diagnostics biotech venture capital lifescience heart disease antiplatele San Diego-based Accumetrics said today that it has raised $16.5M Accumetrics is developing a diagnostics system for measuring an individual's repsonse to multiple antiplatelet agents, which helps determine the risk of death,

According to Regulus, the new funding will provide it with cash to operate through 2011. Tags: microrna regulus pharmaceuticals venture therapeutics biotech lifescience capita Carlsbad-based Regulus Therapeutics , a biopharmaceuticals firm focused on microRNA-based therapeutics, announced this morning that it has raised $20M in a Series A funding round. The investment came from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Isis Pharmaceuticals, which created Regulus in a joint venture in September of 2007.

Incidentally, the Kline Hawkes guys have raised a new fund and are rebranding their current fund, website, etc to Vicente Capital Partners .  He believes the government would be overpaying for the debt it buys (on purpose) in order to help capitalize insolvent banks.  he is quite concerned about the next wave of teaser-rate resets which will hit in 2010 / 2011 and indicates that we should watch closely how government and banking Although a bit broader topic than typical for this blog, I want to share some notes from a lecture I attended  the other day by well known economist Ed Leamer of the UCLA Anderson School.    Ed was speaking at Kline Hawkes’ annual meeting on Tuesday night.  

think that there might be cash toward the end of 2010 or 2011, where IPOs might be reasonable. That was one of the main reasons we picked them, and we've got two new board members--Brandon Hull, from Capital, who is a seasoned veteran in the space, and Brian Ascher, from Venrock, who will be coming out. San Diego-based Awarepoint (www.awarepoint.com) is a developer of systems for tracking hospital assets, patients, and doctors, using RFID tags. The firm is announcing a substantial Series D funding round today, so we spoke with the firm's CEO, Jason Howe, to get the details on the

Wylie also explained that the new funding will also help fund new capital investments to allow the firm shift the business to where the new investors and management team believe the firm should go. Hydra--which according to Cooperman had 2008 revenues of over $100M--saw a retrenchment in revenues in 2009 as it shifted its customer base--but Cooperman says it hopes the firm will be in the same revenue ballpark as it was in 2008 and 2009, and up from there in 2011. How Beverly Hills-based Hydra Media , the cost-per-action (CPA) advertising network, has new funding in hand and legal issues behind it, and is now looking upmarket, the firm told socalTECH in an interview Thursday.

spent the last year at a venture capital fund, helping people to prepare broken businesses. Email is becoming ineffective, and by 2011 there will be three times more smart phones than computers. Daniel Scalisi is the CEO of Los Angeles-based MobileCause (www.mobilecause.com), a startup focused on the mobile, nonprofit fundraising area. We spoke to Daniel last week to learn more about his firm. What's