Lights, Camera, Action…And a Lot of Action

 On the Flying Bridge By Michael Greeley 

Two days ago I was on Bloomberg TV’s “Street Smart” with Carol Massar to discuss “Getting Boston’s Edge Back” – which focused on how Boston was doing but quickly turned into a discussion on the race for the next Facebook. As I approached the set I felt confident that I could tell an enthusiastic story about Boston’s innovation economy until Carol asked me why Boston has lost so much market share to the Valley!

I think I did a reasonable job defending Boston. While Carol was great, my biggest issue with the show was how it showed up on YouTube – “Greeley Says Boston VC Not Focused on Social Media” – which is nothing I ever said, quite the opposite actually. I stressed repeatedly that entrepreneurs in Boston solve really hard problems – I even used the word “intractable.” I referenced cloud computing, storage, infrastructure, robotics, life sciences as sectors we excelled at – although I did acknowledge that we might be guilty of selling out too early.

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Savitz resigns as Shoebuy.com CEO

By Rodney H. Brown / Mass High Tech Journal 

Scott Savitz, founder and CEO of Shoebuy.com Inc., has stepped down as CEO of the Boston-based shoe retail website effective today. 

Savitz announced the resignation in an email blast, essentially saying he was going out at the top, by touting the company’s average of 50 percent growth rate since it was founded in 2000, and the double digit growth it has been experiencing in 2011. Savitz declined to say what he would be up to next, stating simply, “There may well be interesting speculation by some about the next chapter in my life; I will let you know in due course.” The email did not include informatino about Shoebuy's succession plan.

Shoebuy.com was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp of New York in January of 2006 for an undisclosed amount. 

In April 2010, Savitz was one of the dozen founders of the “12x12” initiative, which matches 12 leading CEOs in Massachusetts with 12 leading venture capitalists in the state to create 12 new startups in a year. The initiative was co-founded by Michael Greeley, founder and general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, and Andy Ory, founder and CEO of Acme Packet Inc., following discussions with digital technology leaders at the Tech Hub Collaborative.

Novophage raises $5.75 million to battle bacterial build-up in the industrial world

Posted by Scott Kirsner May 31, 2011 11:00 AM / Innovation Economy

A small Boston University & MIT spin-out company, Novophage, wrapped up its first round of funding last week, raising $5.75 million from a trio of local investors and Chevron Technology Ventures, an arm of the energy conglomerate. The start-up is engineering customized viruses called phages whose job is to seek and destroy the bacteria that gum up all kinds of industrial processes, from paper-making to oil exploration to heating and cooling big buildings.

Anywhere there's water and humidity, explains Novophage CEO Micah Rosenbloom, you get colonies of bacteria that produce what are called "biofilms." "Right now, people use all kinds of chemicals and biocides to eliminate the bacteria, but that isn't very environmentally-friendly," Rosenbloom says. "What we did was to go in and analyze the microbial community — we sequenced its genome — and then we developed a targeted phage that can seek and destroy. It is a predator of bacteria." Biofilms, he notes, tend to make production processes less efficient and more energy-intensive. "They clog up the system," he says, "so it costs you more money to run it, and in the case of paper-making, you sometimes need to stop the production line to deal with the biofilms."

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Novophage Secures $5.7 Million Series A Funding  

Flybridge Capital Partners, Chevron Technology Ventures, Founder Collective, The Kraft Group and Boston University Invest

Novophage named part of prestigious “12x12” program

BOSTON, MA – June 1, 2011 – Novophage, an early-stage technology company that is developing a new class of industrial biologics, announced today that it has completed a $5.7 million Series A round of financing. Flybridge Capital Partners led the investment round, which also included participation from Founder Collective, Boston University (BU) and strategic investors, Chevron Technology Ventures and The Kraft Group. Concurrent with the funding, Jon Karlen, a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, will join the company’s Board of Directors and Vinit Nijhawan, Managing Director of the Office of Technology Development at BU will join the Board as an Observer.

The company is bringing the industrial sector the same breakthroughs in genetic sequencing and engineering that have revolutionized biotech and biofuels. Novophage will develop and market synthetic biology-enabled products that tackle the problems of bacterial contamination in industries such as oil and gas, pulp and paper and HVAC systems. The company’s products will improve productivity, reduce infrastructure corrosion and improve the overall environmental impact of these water-intensive industries. 

As part of the funding, Micah Rosenbloom has joined the company as CEO.  Rosenbloom is the co-founder of Brontes Technologies, which was backed by Flybridge Capital Partners and co-founded by Founder Collective’s Eric Paley. Brontes Technologies was sold to 3M in 2006.

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Not-so-great migration

The Boston Globe by Steven Syre

The story about young tech talents leaving Massachusetts to make their fortunes in California is a grating old tale to people in these parts. Sadly, it comes in many chapters.

The latest — perhaps ultimate — stick in the eye: Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard dropout who created the earliest versions of Facebook right here in Massachusetts, and then moved it all to California, is Time magazine’s 26-year-old Person of the Year.

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Some version of that story has played out over and over. The broader east-to-west migration of young technology talent continues to some degree, though some investors and entrepreneurs are making a conscious effort to blunt that pattern.

“There was a lemming mentality through the last decade. If you were a young and ambitious guy, you had to leave and go to the West Coast,’’ said venture capitalist Michael Greeley, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. “A lot of steps have been taken to arrest that movement.’’

Greeley is a distant relative of the newspaper editor Horace Greeley, long credited with the phrase “Go West, young man.’’ The irony isn’t lost on Greeley trying to keep young entrepreneurs and their companies in Massachusetts today.

He helped start 12 x 12, an group of venture investors and established entrepreneurs organized to help a dozen selected start-up businesses get off the ground within a year. The group held its quarterly dinner meeting Tuesday, joined by Governor Deval Patrick, among others. One was the head of a business known publicly only as Company No. 5.

Read the full article here.