Mass. VCs Looking Further Afield for Deals

(I'm slow to post the link to last Sunday's column, since last Saturday afternoon there was a new addition to the Kirsner family. Babies and blog posting are not so compatible, I'm finding...)

The column was headlined, 'Investing Further Afield'. From the opening:

Massachusetts venture capitalists are starting to rack up more frequent flier miles. A business that was once exclusively local - a decade ago, most venture capitalists adhered to the adage that they'd never invest in a company they couldn't drive to - is becoming global, fast.

Battery Ventures of Waltham is planning to open an office in Mumbai, India, this fall, and shipping one of its senior partners to Israel to help build a small team there. Earlier this year, Matrix Partners of Waltham raised $275 million from investors for its first fund dedicated to start-ups in China. Billionaire publishing entrepreneur Patrick McGovern, founder of the Boston company International Data Group, is planning to announce a $150 million fund for Eastern European investments soon - but he no longer is putting new money into New England companies.

There's also been a tilt toward California at some local venture capital firms, like Greylock and Charles River Ventures, where the center of gravity had once been Massachusetts.

After the column ran, the PR rep for Kodiak Venture Partners wrote to remind me that Dave Furneaux at that Waltham firm has been investing in China for a while now, and that Kodiak has a partnership with Dragonvest Partners in Shanghai to co-invest in Chinese companies.

And as I was wrapping up the column, Carl Stjernfeldt at Castile Ventures had mentioned that his firm has three deals at the term sheet stage, all of them in California.

Here's the video that accompanied the column, which features Charlie Lax of Grand Banks Capital and Vinit Nijhawan, a VC and entrepreneur now working at Boston University.

Westphal to Keynote Globe 100 Breakfast

This year's Globe 100 Breakfast, on May 20th, seems like it has become quite the hot ticket. Keynoting is Christoph Westphal, CEO of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, who started his company, took it public and sold it for $720 million in just four years.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Globe 100, which honors the best-performing Massachusetts companies.

Go Camping in Cambridge, This Weekend and Next

Two really cool "unconference" events are on the way in Cambridge...

The first is MacCamp, on Saturday May 10th in Central Square. This is the first time MacCamp is being held here... There's also a pre-camp event at betahouse on May 9th.

And next weekend is the third edition of BarCampBoston -- also in Cambridge.

Props to Mike Walsh, who's helping to organize both events.

Thinking About Design on Nantucket

Sim Simeonov from Polaris Venture Partners posts about one of the workshop sessions held at the Nantucket Conference yesterday, focused on "design thinking for entrepreneurs," which featured Devorah Klein and Eric Saperstein from the Cambridge office (though IDEO's CEO, Tim Brown, was in the back of the room, chiming in.)

The presenters left the group with the following five suggestions:

1. Spend time with customers. Really push yourself to think about unusual but relevant people you should talk to.
2. Be visual and tangible. Build a prototype of something. Paper is OK.
3. Try it yourself. This is the classing dogfooding principle.
4. Get out of your category for inspiration. You won’t know what you don’t know until you see something that inspires you.
5. Test-drive ideas. Do it all the time.

Sim's post includes two cool video interviews, too.

Now, for some good news...

The Massachusetts economy grew at 3.6 percent during the first quarter, according to the Globe. From Robert Gavin's blog post:

Massachusetts, after lagging behind the US through the economic recovery of the past few years, is weathering the recent national downturn because of the strength of its technology, science and healthcare sectors, according to UMass. State exports of technology and pharmaceutical products are strong and so is hiring in those sectors. Employment in professional, scientific and technical services, for example, grew nearly 4 percent over the past year, compared to less than 1 percent for the state as a whole, according to the state Department of Workforce Development.

Also, we didn't build a lot of spec housing in the last decade.

The A123 Systems IPO: Signed, Sealed ... But Not Yet Delivered

Two unnamed sources with close ties to A123 Systems, the Watertown maker of next-gen lithium ion batteries for Black and Decker cordless tools and plug-in hybrid cars, tell me that the company's IPO filing is essentially complete. Once the first quarter numbers are finalized, an S-1 is likely to arrive in the SEC's inbox sometime in the next month or so. The offering could value the company at more than $1 billion. Road show is planned for September; Goldman, JP Morgan, and Merrill are underwriting, I'm told.

A123 Systems has raised more than $150 million since it was founded in 2001. Among the biggest winners from a successful IPO would be North Bridge Venture Partners and Sycamore Networks chairman Desh Deshpande. (North Bridge has a cool video case study on A123.) Sequoia Capital and General Electric are also investors.

Will Wall Street have an appetite for a battery IPO in September? We'll see...

A123 Systems' PR rep, Keith Watson, says, "The company can't comment on anything related to an IPO."

(In the photo is George W. Bush with A123 CEO David Vieau, standing next to a plug-in hybrid Prius that A123's Hymotion division converted. White House photo by Paul Morse.)

Mark Levin's First Two Deals at Third Rock

Mass High Tech had the first word last Friday on Constellation Pharmaceuticals, the first big company announced by Mark Levin's new venture capital firm, Third Rock Ventures. Levin was the long-time CEO at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Constellation will focus on the relatively new arena of epigenetics.

Today, Todd Wallack of the Globe gets a bit more in depth with Constellation, noting that the firm has raised $32 million, and that Levin will serve as interim CEO (though he's recruiting a permanent chief executive.) Wallack also mentions that Third Rock has backed another company, Zafgen, which is hunting for treatments for obesity. That company has raised $23 million.

Here's the official press release on Constellation.

(Still no news of either company on the Third Rock Web site.)