Pasadena-based Arrowhead Research, a publicly held firm commercialization technology in the life sciences, electronics, and energy markets, said today that it has raised $5.4M The firm said the funding activity helps the firm to conserve capital and maintain commercialization progress at its subsidiaries. for a number of the firm's subsidiaries. According to Arrowhead, it raised $2.7M

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice . Many of these businesses were what First Round Capital called FNACs (features, not companies – this acronym has always stuck with me). Broadly speaking this last trend has been healthy as it has brought an increase focus on launching products that you can test with the market and on capital efficiency.  I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0

Alfred Wong , Chief Science Officer, and Albert Liu , Vice President of Business Development, at Pong Research (www.pongresearch.com), a company developing products for redirecting cell phone antennas to reduce the radiation exposure of users. We sat down with Wong--professor emeritus at UCLA--and Liu to talk about the company's roots from research at UCLA, and how it's trying to get past the poor reputation of products in its segment, the debate over whether radiation from cell phones does or does not affect humans, plus its private equity backing by Bridgewater Capital Partners.

You should do enough research about the VC to sound like you know a bit about their investments and find some that are related to you in some way as a means of trying to engage the VC in a dialog. Tags: Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capita photo courtesy of Atlanta Braves This is part of my ongoing series “ Pitching a VC .”

San Diego-based Receptos , a biopharmaceuticals firm based on technology out of the Scripps Research Insitute, announced today that it has raised $25M in the close of a two-tranche Series A financing. The firm said that the capital came from ARCH Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures, Lilly Ventures, and Venrock. Receptos is developing drug discovery technology which is based Receptos co-founders Professor Raymond Stevens, and Professor Hugh Rosen, developed the technology at Scripps. According to the firm, the Series A financing will support the company's lead clinical candidate

It can be a simple email on any topic and toward the end say, “I’ve included some links to the most important (or most recent) articles covering us in case it helps with your research.” Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice startup technology v Handling PR with VCs This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally.

Lux Capital 's Josh Wolfe offers, "the best way to predict the future is to invent it". At the elite research universities across the country, especially in California where Shahin Farshchi is located. "If Josh and Shahin talk about the challenges in licensing technology out of research universities. So where do they find the best inventors? If you can actually de-risk a project early on, you're going to get a huge value inflection.

The firm also bolstered its research, posting reports on all of those firms, and also reported that it had over 4,000 users sign up in its first two weeks. Tags: sharespost brighthouse private company stock venture capital tesla faceboo Santa Monica-based SharesPost , which has created on online marketplace for sellers and buyers of private company stock, reported to its users late Friday that the firm now has sales of LinkedIn, Linden Lab, Tesla Motors, and SugarCRM going into escrow. The firm--which launched in early June--also said that that it now has offers to sell Facebook,

According to Zag, the firm will provide a turnkey, fully integrated auto buying program for the site, which will offer resources to research and compare vehicles, read AAA editorial reviews, and configure and purchase vehicles. Zag is venture backed by Anthem Venture Partners, USAA, GRP Partners, Arcturus Capital, Callaway Cars and the Skoll Fund. READ MORE>> ...Tags: Santa Monica-based Zag.com , the online car buying software firm headed by Scott Painter, announced this morning that it has inked a deal with the AAA, to power a new service called AAA Automaker. Financial

Saturday, November 8, 2008 -- Venture Capital 3.0. Breakfast with Adeo Ressi, Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. See [link] (mor