|
 ugust – the dog days of summer, or caniculares dies as the ancient Romans called them. An evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" (from Brady’s Clavis Calendarium). Not! At least not in the earliest stage investing world at
Labrador
.
Since our last newsletter, Shotspotter and Solaicx each completed follow-on financings at significant increases in valuation. Altierre, Jangle, Pandora and Solaicx each received the 2007 "Red Herring 100
North America
" award. Red Herring's prestigious list of the top 100 private technology companies in North America for 2007 are selected from an applicant pool of over 800 leading companies, Red Herring recognizes the North America 100 for their part in driving the future of technology. In addition, our proprietary seed program in conjunction with the Band of Angels was active, adding Marrone Organic Innovations and Yardbarker to the portfolio.
During the second quarter, venture funds invested more than twice as much as they received in new commitments -- $7.4 billion invested versus $3.2 billion in new commitments. Commitments to venture funds are off significantly relative to the amounts raised in the first halves of 2005 and 2006.
At the same time the exit markets continue to improve. $2.7 billion was raised by the 22 venture-backed companies that went public in the second quarter. That is the highest since Q3 of 2000. M&A activity in only the software segment has surpassed the $30 billion mark this year, more than twice the amount achieved during the same period last year.
The public markets have been very volatile over the last several weeks, recording their worst daily, weekly and 2 week declines in the last 5 years. Despite worries in the credit markets worldwide, the fundamentals underlying the
US
equity markets appear to remain intact. Barring any negative exogenous events, we expect that the
US
economy has more potential growth left in it.
We hope that all your investments are as “hot” as ours currently are. Enjoy these sultry days of summer, don’t let your wine turn sour or your dogs grow mad, and find some shade.
Larry Kubal, Stuart Davidson, Sean Foote
| LABRADOR
PORTFOLIO FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
|
|
|
GreenBorder Technologies, Inc.
www.greenborder.com
GreenBorder delivers security solutions that proactively protect desktops and enterprise systems against damage, theft, or hijacking from Internet-delivered threats.
- Google acquired GreenBorder in May.
|
|
|
Marrone Organic Innovations
www.marroneorganicinnovations.com
Marrone Organic Innovations discovers and develops effective and safe natural products that fill unmet needs in weed and pest management.
- As part of our seed program, Labrador invested in Marrone's Series A financing in April.
|
|
|
Nexthop Technologies, Inc.
www.nexthop.com
NextHop provides the definitive source for network routing software solutions.
- NextHop closed a Series D funding for $4 million in July. New Enterprise Associates, Duchossois Technology Partners, Labrador Ventures, and Parker Price Venture Capital provided the latest investment, bringing total company funding to $45.8 million.
|
|
|
Shotspotter, Inc.
www.shotspotter.com
ShotSpotter is the world leader in Gunshot Location Systems and Technologies. ShotSpotter’s flagship product detects and locates gunfire in urban areas, helping law-enforcement officers rapidly respond to a shooting without waiting for it to be reported.
- ShotSpotter closed a $12 million Series C round of funding. Levensohn Venture Partners led the round, joined by existing investors Labrador Ventures, Claremont Creek Ventures, City Light Capital and Lauder Partners. This new financing was at an increased valuation.
|
|
|
Solaicx
www.solaicx.com
Solaicx is making solar electricity cost effective. Solaicx is developing breakthrough manufacturing technology yielding low-cost, high-efficiency silicon wafers for the photovoltaic (PV) industry.
- Solaicx closed a $27.1 million Series C financing in May led by the D.E. Shaw Group. This new financing was at an increased valuation.
|
|
|
Veeker, Inc.
www.veeker.com
Veeker is focused on transforming the camera phone into a tool for mobile video and photo messaging. Veeker.com provides users with an online interface that lets them exchange and manage videos and photos received from and sent to mobile phones.
- In March, Labrador invested in Veeker as part of a Series A financing.
|
|
|
Yardbarker, Inc.
www.yardbarker.com
Yardbarker is a social news site focused on sports. There are no editors, just sports fans. Users submit links to the best sports content from around the web. It's sports media by the fans, for the fans.
- As part of our seed program, Labrador invested in Yardbarker's Series A financing in March.
|
| LABRADOR
PORTFOLIO NEWS |
|
|
Altierre Corporation
www.altierre.com
Altierre Corporation is developing wireless business solutions for consumer retail chains that dramatically reduce operational costs and improve revenue generation.
- Altierre received the 2007 "Red Herring 100 North America" award.
|
|
|
Eoplex Technologies, Inc.
www.eoplex.com
Eoplex Technologies creates and mass produces complex 3D structures from combinations of metals, ceramics, and polymers for applications.
- EoPlex received the 2007 North American Specialized Manufacturing Technology Innovation of the Year Award by Frost & Sullivan.
- EoPlex was named a "Cool Vendors in Semiconductors 2007" in a March Gartner report.
|
|
|
Everyone.net
www.everyone.net
Everyone.net is a leading provider of outsourced email solutions for individuals and companies around the world.
- OpenTable, Inc. selected Everyone.net as a preferred email service partner for its more than 7,000 worldwide restaurants.
- Everyone.net showcased a number of custom email and messaging solutions for cable providers at The CABLE Show 2007 in
Las Vegas
on
May 7-9.
- Everyone.net unveiled in March new Rich Web Mail enhancements to the company’s line of hosted email solutions. The new features are designed to deliver a more intuitive, desktop-style Web mail experience and are available free of charge with all Everyone.net services.
|
|
|
Jangl Inc.
www.jangl.com
Jangl is a consumer voice service application company focused on a suite of unprecedented lifestyle services that integrate mobile and Internet communications. Jangl services are designed to be agnostic to telephony carrier and access type, yet still deliver tomorrow's utility, today.
- Jangl received the 2007 "Red Herring 100 North America" award.
- Jangl announced in April that it is bringing calling and texting capability to the more than 40 million member and visitors to Tagged.com, one of the world's largest and fastest-growing social networking sites.
|
|
|
MeeVee, Inc.
www.meevee.com
MeeVee is the premier developer of personalized search and recommendation engines for television programming. MeeVee helps consumers search for, find and watch TV in an easier, smarter, and more efficient way.
- MeeVee's Neil Kjeldsen was featured in a March 25 Boston Globe article titled, "Start-ups and stalwart tackle unwieldy task of finding, organizing content."
|
|
|
Pandora Media, Inc.
www.pandora.com
Pandora provides music navigation and recommendation software in which the search is based on the music itself and driven entirely by the unique tastes of each individual.
- A June Wall Street Journal article featured Pandora and how it is working with Sprint Nextel to make its services available on mobile phones and also working on its own player.
- Pandora was honored in CNet’s first “Webware 100” awards.
- PC World Magazine named Pandora one of "The 100 Best Products of 2007" in its May issue.
- The Louisville Courier Journal featured Pandora in its May 19 Gizmo column.
- Pandora received the 2007 "Red Herring 100 North America" award.
- Pandora's Tim Westergren was featured on CNN and in Newsweek discussing the growing popularity of music on the Internet and the proposed new royalty rates.
|
|
|
Solaicx
www.solaicx.com
Solaicx is making solar electricity cost effective. Solaicx is developing breakthrough manufacturing technology yielding low-cost, high-efficiency silicon wafers for the photovoltaic (PV) industry.
- Solaicx was named an "AlwaysOn 100 Top Private Company" in its "Green" category. The AO100 winners were honored at the Stanford Summit on July 31st.
- Solaicx announced in July that the former CEO of BP Solar, Harry Shimp, joined its Board of Directors.
- Solaicx received the 2007 "Red Herring 100 North America" award.
- Bill Yerkes of Solaicx was quoted in a March 8 story in the Economist titled, "Bright prospects. "
|
|
Labrador Ventures is one of Silicon Valley's oldest seed stage venture capital firms and has invested in more than 85 companies over the last 17 years. Labrador invests in privately-held technology companies, including information services, software, communications/networking, messaging and semi-conductors. Some of these investments include: Jareva (VERITAS), MyPoints.com (NASDAQ: MYPT), InfoGear (Cisco), Digital Impact (NASDAQ: DIGI), Four 11 (Yahoo), Internet Devices (Alcatel), Hotmail (Microsoft) Sonic Innovations (NASDAQ: SNCI).
Please Note: This
e-mail newsletter was sent to a list compiled from our internal
contact database. If you would like to be removed from our database,
you may opt-out by clicking
here. If you would like to add a colleague to our newsletter
distribution list click
here.
|
