Stonebraker's Latest Start-Up: Byledge

Database pioneer Mike Stonebraker is quickly becoming one of Boston's most prolific parallel entrepreneurs. When I wrote about him last December in the Globe, it sounded like there was something new cooking.

Turns out, there's at least two new pots on the Stonebraker stove. (Stonebraker is a founder of StreamBase and Vertica, which have together raised more than $50 million in VC funding... and earlier in his career helped start Ingres Corp., Illustra, and Cohera.)

The first is Byledge, a new company funded by Kepha Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners (formerly IDG Ventures Boston.) There's no site yet, and no funding announcement. The company hasn't set up offices, but there's a team taking shape, and a rough strategy.

I'm told, by someone who is familiar with the company, that Byledge will focus on "long tail travel search," scouring the Web for hidden information about lodging, restaurants, activities, and events and organizing them in easily searchable databases. (Another person who knows about Byledge described it as "semantic enrichment" -- trolling for unstructured data and then applying the right tags and labels and categories to it.) If you're looking to go salmon fishing in Alaska, how do you find all the guides, and information about the terrain they cover? Byledge aims to supply the answer.

That places the company squarely in the middle of Boston's travel info cluster, which includes companies like TripAdvisor, ITA Software, and Kayak, which is partly based here and partly in Connecticut. Kayak co-founder Paul English told me he hadn't yet heard of Byledge when we spoke yesterday. The idea sounds to me like it's closest to what TripAdvisor does -- but TripAdvisor relies heavily on human editors to organize and clean up information from around the Web.

The Byledge technology originates at MIT, where Stonebraker is a prof. I'm told it was developed by a researcher named Mujde Pamuk, who has worked alongside Stonebraker at CSAIL, the computer science and artificial intelligence lab. (Here's some of Pamuk's published work, with Stonebraker as co-author.) Also involved in the start-up are Andy Palmer, who also helped start Vertica; Vince Russo, a former chief architect at Lycos; and Mark Watkins, who headed the development organization at the enterprise search start-up Endeca, and before that worked at PTC.

Stonebraker isn't talking about the company, describing it as "currently in stealth mode" in an e-mail. Chip Hazard, the Flybridge partner who's serving on Byledge's board, wouldn't talk about the company's focus but hinted that it could be broader or different than travel. I'm told that Byledge may try to both license its technology to other companies and also run its own destination site on the Web, a hybrid strategy that Paul English characterized as pretty difficult to pull off.

Andy Palmer said that "we're gonna work pretty hard to keep our cards close to the vest." But he did tell me that both he and Stonebraker will remain involved with Vertica. He wouldn't say how much the company raised, except to describe it as "well-financed." Hazard said they have "enough to get the company to critical milestones. It's not $50,000." Update: Tango at Kepha Partners wouldn't peg the exact amoung, but wrote via e-mail that "we did a seed round a bit ago and did close an A round recently." Byledge is the third investment for Kepha, which is essentially a one-man firm.

Stonebraker's second new project is an initiative that will be part of Vertica, code-named Horizontica. Palmer describes it as an open source database designed for cloud computing applications. Sounds like there's some cool potential there.

Vertica's also in the midst of preparing for a move from Andover to Bedford.

How many projects can one person juggle simultaneously, while still teaching at MIT? Stonebraker seems intent on setting a record.

Byledge, by the by, is the name of the street Stonebraker lives on in Manchester, NH.

(A thank-you to Genotrope, where I stumbled across the first mention of Byledge.)

Peermeta Lands Ricotta as CEO

Acton-based Peermeta, founded by Cheng Wu and funded by Sigma and Kepha Partners, is starting to say a bit more about what they're up to...and today, they announced that they've hired IBM and Cisco veteran Jim Ricotta as CEO.

Here's their company description:

Peermeta is a pioneer in Web 2.x enabled software platforms for intelligent end points utilizing mobile broadband infrastructure. Peermeta provides a method for tapping into the breadth of distributed heterogeneous content, extending control over consumable content to users for personalization and sharing among social networks, and closing the capability gap between today's fixed and mobile networks. The result is enhanced end-user experiences, mainstream adoption of mobile media and greater productivity in our daily lives.

That's what I need: greater productivity in my daily life!

Tight-Lipped Tango Looks to McKinsey as a Model

I had a conversation earlier this week with Jo Tango, founder of the early-stage venture firm Kepha Partners and an alumnus of Highland Capital Partners. The entire conversation was off-the-record, though. Tango says he wants to let the companies in which he invests do the talking. The comparison he used was McKinsey & Company, which never even divulges the names of clients it serves.

I acknowledge that VCs can often hog the spotlight, subtly trying to make themselves look like the geniuses, rather than the entrepreneurs they choose to back.

But Boston needs a new generation of high-profile VCs, and I had been hoping that Tango would be part of that group.

VCs ought to be a presence at public events (Tango usually turns down speaking invites, and doesn’t go to gatherings like Web Innovators Group or OpenCoffee), and they ought to blog/write/podcast/vlog about what’s on their minds and what they’re seeing.

That sends a message that:

A. They’re approachable, even if you’re not a done-it-before entrepreneur, and
B. It communicates that there is a vibrant, plugged-in VC community here that’s interested in new stuff, and brainstorming about it in public.

Unlike McKinsey, Tango does at least have a Web site listing the investments he has made so far. (He also lists a number of investments he made while at Highland.) Kepha’s two investments so far, AutoVirt and Peermeta, have both been made alongside Sigma Partners, another ultra-quiet local firm. Peermeta was a $6 million first round; AutoVirt’s wasn’t disclosed. Peermeta was founded by Cheng Wu, the successful serial entrepreneur who has been with Cisco, ArrowPoint, and Cascade.

The same day I spoke with Tango, Going.com CEO Evan Schumacher asked who I thought were the next-gen VC firms in Boston… the firms that are worth watching because of their new approach to investing. Off the cuff, I listed Spark Capital, IDG Ventures, .406 Ventures, Longworth, and General Catalyst. (Old school firms trying to reinvent themselves include Prism VentureWorks and Polaris.) While some of them don’t have dazzling track records yet, they are communicating with -- and presumably working with -- entrepreneurs in new ways.

Tango, I worry, is doing things the old “Waltham way."

(Am I being too cranky on the day before Thanksgiving? Maybe. So I'll note that Tango gets very high marks on TheFunded.com, mostly for his work while at Highland. Also, I compare Kepha with other new early-stage venture firms here.)

Today's Globe column: When VC Firms Go Back to the Well

Today's Globe column is about the fund-raising process that VCs have to go through every few years. It focuses on one new fund, DACE Ventures, and one older fund, Masthead Venture Partners, but also mentions a few others, including .406 Ventures, Kepha Partners, Longworth Venture Partners, and New Atlantic Ventures (formerly DFJ New England.)

Here's the opening:

Entrepreneurs visiting a venture capitalist to ask for money sometimes feel like kids asking Dad for an allowance. Ordinarily, they're not in the power position.

But every few years, Dad has to hit up Grandpa for a handout. When VCs spend through a given pool of money, they return to the investors who supply them with cash to manage the pension funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals whom they refer to as "limiteds," or limited partners.

Just as fund-raising for entrepreneurs is a pivot point at which businesses will get a jolt of juice or struggle to hang on - fund-raising is a moment of truth for venture capitalists, too. Some will keep on truckin', and some will run out of gas.

"There's a tremendous amount of weeding out that takes place when younger firms go back and try to raise more money," says Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School.

Video is below -- and here are two paragraphs that got snipped from the end of the column in the edit process (happens all the time.)

Longworth partner Peter Roberts says the firm hasn’t officially drafted the private placement memorandum that it’ll use to raise the next fund, but says he’s optimistic about the reception they’ll get. “We’ve had a pretty good run over the past 18 months or so,” he says.

Lerner, from Harvard, and a collaborator at MIT, Antoinette Schoar, have been gathering data that shows that as VC firms get older, raising their sixth, seventh, or tenth funds, their financial performance improves markedly. But the challenge, he says, is surviving that long.

New England's New Crop of Early-Stage Venture Firms

In working on my Innovation Economy column for this Sunday's Globe, I was hoping to be able to squeeze in a run-down of the newest early-stage venture capital firms in our neck of the woods.

That didn't work out. (Totally my fault: trying to fit in too much good stuff.)

So here's my list -- with much more material than I would've been able to fit into the column. If I've missed anyone who has raised a new early-stage fund in 2007, please post a comment.

Fair Haven Capital
Boston, MA
Partners: Paul Ciriello, Managing Partner; Rick Grinnell, Managing DIrector; Jim Goldinger, Managing Director; Dan Keshian, Managing Director; Cheryl Goyette, Partner and CFO
Size: $200 million
Investments so far: Everyzing (formerly Podzinger), Cocona Fabrics, Xtranormal, and one Boston company that is currently at the term sheet stage
Sweet spot for A rounds: averaging $4 million

Ciriello says the firm spun out of TD Capital Ventures; Toronto Dominion Bank is an LP in the new fund. Fair Haven will focus on consumer tech, enterprise tech, security, and materials. (Cocona is developing a new fabric derived in part from coconuts.) "We do have a bias toward eastern North American," he says.

.406 Ventures
Boston, MA
Partners: Maria Cirino, Co-Founder and Managing Director (formerly of Guardent/Verisign); Larry Begley, Co-Founder and Managing Director; Liam Donohue, Co-Founder and Managing Director
Size: $125 million (could grow as large as $150 million)
Investments so far: Veracode, RatePoint, Memento
Sweet spot for A rounds: A few hundred thousand to $3 million

Cirino says, "We're very clued in to the fact that savvy entrepreneurs don't want $10 million bucks jammed down their throat when all they need is a couple. Take all the money you want? That idea is dead. Savvy entrepreneurs want to preserve their equity, and the way to do that is take as much money as you should, but as little as you can." Firm will focus on IT security and tech-driven services. "Part of what we look to do is avoid spaces that have been overheated by a lot of venture investment," she says.

Point Judith Capital
Providence, RI
Partners: Gina Raimondo, General Partner; David Martirano, General Partner; Sean Marsh, General Partner; David Mixer, Founding Partner; Michael Doyle, Venture Partner; Brad Waugh, Venture Partner; Jeff Weiss, Venture Partner
Size: $73 million (this is the firm's second fund; all others on this list are on their first)
Investments so far: Novare Surgical, Envista Corp., Music Nation
Sweet spot for A rounds: $500,000 to $3 million

Formerly an affiliate of Village Ventures. From the site, "We focus our investment activity in communications, information, Internet, and healthcare technologies." First three investments are in Silicon Valley, Beverly, MA, and New York.

DACE Ventures
Waltham, MA
Partners: David Andonian, Managing Partner; Jon Chait, Partner; Doug Chertok, Venture Partner (Chertok is based in New York)
Size: Slightly over $70 million
Investments so far: Panraven, Cityvoter, AuctionPal, LocaModa
Sweet spot for A rounds: $1 million to $3 million

"We're looking for capital-efficient, early-stage Web businesses," Andonian says. "There are not many firms filling the capital gap, as VC firms have gotten bigger and bigger." Andonian says the focus at DACE is businesses built either on the Web or on mobile platforms.

Kepha Partners
Waltham, MA
Partners: Jo Tango, Founder (formerly of Highland Capital Partners); Ed Hamilton (acting CFO)
Size: Roughly $50 million
Investments so far: PeerMeta, AutoVirt

Tango wouldn't talk to me, but this is from their site: "To deploy the vast amounts of capital the venture industry has raised, many firms are pursuing new strategies, models, countries and later-stage investments. Many are becoming venture bankers. KP has a back-to-basics approach focused on pre-seed, seed and Series A companies. We call this 'venture building,' and it is what created the venture industry in the first place." Is he hoping that people will associate his KP with that other KP on the West Coast?