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We all know that venture capitalists help entrepreneurs create and grow great companies. Those great companies create jobs and improve our standard of living. Yet what many don’t realize is that the traditional venture industry is consolidating.

Washington area private firms, such as New Enterprise Associates, Grotech, New Atlantic Ventures and Novak Biddle, that raise money from third-party investors are becoming fewer and farther between, with just over 500 such firms in the U.S. last year. Yet, our country’s most promising start-ups continue to get funded in part because of the rise of corporate venture capital.

Startup Maryland (www.startupmd.org), a state-wide initiative FOR Entrepreneurs…BY Entrepreneurs, today announced a partnership with CoFoundersLab (www.cofounderslab.com) to provide the Maryland entrepreneur community with a free way to find a co-founder/business partner.  To meet this need Startup Maryland and CoFoundersLab combined efforts and brands to develop a TeamFinder portal – which is also unveiled today as a new Resource at: http://startupmd.org/buildmyteam/  

The branded TeamFinder portal is the first component of Startup Maryland’s Connection initiative.  Connection joins Celebration, Coaching and Capital as four primary Areas of Concentration for Startup Maryland throughout 2013 and beyond.  These four guiding initiatives were officially announced last week at a White House reception during which Startup Maryland highlighted past successes and future plans for Presidential advisors and officials from several government agencies.

Patrick O’Shea, Vice President for Research at University of Maryland, urges Congress to protect research students and ensure america’s future by stoping the sequester.

Startup Maryland (www.startupmd.org), a state-wide initiative for Entrepreneurs … by Entrepreneurs, will be recognized today during a White House briefing that corresponds with the two-year anniversary of the Startup America Partnership, a national entrepreneurship initiative in which Startup Maryland is a leading region.

Startup Maryland co-chairs Julie Lenzer Kirk and Michael Binko will join officials from Startup America, entrepreneurs from other high-performing regions, as well as Region Champions from three startups that represent the rich diversity of Maryland’s innovation economy:

• Brian Murphy, founder/CEO of Smith Island Baking Co. (http://smithislandcake.com)
• David Troy, CEO of 410Labs Inc. (http://www.410labs.com/#products)
• Johnny Shockley, Co-founder, Hooper’s Island Oyster Aquaculture Co., (www.cgoysters.com)

The University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) was recently named as the 5th “Best Value in Public Colleges” by Kiplinger, trailing only the College of William and Mary, the University of Florida, the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Maryland was ranked 5th for in-state students and 10th for out-of-state.

The annual Kiplinger study bases its ranking on a combination of financial factors, including total cost-per-year and cost after need-based aid for in-state students, total cost-per-year and cost after need-based aid for out-of-state students and average debt at graduation. Kiplinger also factors in the schools’ admission rates and four-year-graduation rates.

US venture capital (VC) funding in the life sciences sector, which includes the Biotechnology and Medical Device industries, dropped 14 percent in dollars and 7 percent in deals during 2012 according to a new PwC US report, “Double-digit dip” that includes data from the MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.  Venture capitalists invested a total of $6.6 billion in 779 Life Sciences deals during the year, compared with $7.7 billion in 836 deals during 2011. The number of Life Sciences companies receiving VC funding for the first time reached the lowest level since 1995 with only 135 companies receiving funding in 2012.

Compared to the prior quarter, Life Sciences venture funding rose 11 percent in Q4 2012 to $1.9 billion. Deal volume also increased, rising 12 percent to 187 deals compared to the prior quarter.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the British pharmaceutical company, reported lackluster fourth quarter earnings for 2012 this morning, with a 3.5% drop in revenue. But the company’s performance would have been much worse if it hadn’t successfully avoided a looming threat that every brand-name pharmaceutical maker faces from time to time: the end of a patent on a blockbuster drug.

GSK’s Advair inhaler (called Seretide in most of Europe and India)—used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—lost its patent at the end of 2010. Ordinarily, a cheaper, generic version of a patented drug comes out shortly after the patent expires, and the generic quickly eats away at the marketshare and revenue of its branded progenitor. But Advair still brings $8 bln in sales to GSK, making it the third highest grossing drug worldwide. The only other off-patent pharmaceutical in the top ten is Lipitor, used for treating high cholesterol, which earned its maker, Pfizer, less than half as much in 2012 as it did in 2011, the year its patent expired (in spite of Pfizer’s unprecedented campaign to keep Lipitor a top-seller by strategically slashing prices).