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DED awarded a Montgomery County Economic Development Fund grant providing up to $12 million in property tax incentives for customers of BYTEGRID®, a leading data center company located in Silver Spring that is focused on the nationwide acquisition, development and operation of premier multi-tenant data center facilities.

“Montgomery County is focused on increasing our attractiveness to large private and public enterprise organizations seeking to optimize costs by outsourcing IT infrastructure,” said Steve Silverman, Director of Economic Development for Montgomery County. “This strategic grant for BYTEGRID’s data center customers shows our commitment to fostering a pro-business climate that already includes leading digital age businesses in healthcare, financial services, IT services and cyber security. The key takeaway here is that Montgomery County, Maryland is in the regional and national big data game to win.”

Paul Thompson, director of IT innovation at Medtronic, explained how he held on for four years to bring the “hospital of the future” to life. His work is part of the company’s larger push to move from a device maker to a healthcare services provider, which he compared to IBM’s move from hardware to services.

At the end of this session at CONVERGE, an audience member asked what metrics Thompson and his team must meet each year to be considered a success.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski toured the MedImmune laboratories in Frederick on Monday morning and talked with employees.

Mikulski told the workers she was proud of what they are doing, creating medical solutions to health problems. She also talked with company executives about the company’s future.

When Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) Innovation debuted about a year ago, R&D chief Paul Stoffels promised to build an interconnected, global operation that would sink some deep roots into the world’s busiest biotech hubs. On Thursday, the group showed off just how far it had come in a short time, highlighting a slate of a dozen new deals, ranging from fresh research collaborations to new investments in a range of upstart drug and device developers–all aimed at putting the multinational pharma giant on the cutting edge of new product development.

The first half of 2014 has seen less job-cutting by biopharma companies than a year earlier, at least according to one recent report.

The latest monthly job report by Challenger Gray & Christmas, released July 3, showed that biopharmas announced plans to eliminate 4,215 jobs between January and June of this year, down more than one-third (37%) from the 6,709 jobs announced as being jettisoned in the first half of 2013.

Founder salaries

Q.: Is it okay to pay yourself (and other founders) a salary when you’ve only raised money from friends and family? If so, how much is reasonable? What’s an acceptable salary to pay yourself once a non-family seed round is raised?

In biotech’s early days, telling a story to a wide audience used to be part of the path to success. Founders would share a compelling early narrative to potential investors, reporters, and just about anyone else who would listen. Nature papers were the coin of the realm.

But far from shouting to the rooftops, lately it seems that more and more biotechs are pursuing a different approach. Instead of keeping their technology under wraps until a first financing happens, these companies go into what we call “permanent stealth mode.” The principle here seems to be, “say no more publicly than necessary, and even then, keep it vague.” Meantime, let your actions speak for you: Raise money. Sign partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, hand consumers and investors a finished product or service.

Date:  Monday, September 22, 2014

Location: North Carolina Biotechnology Center 15 TW Alexander Drive Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3547 http://www.ncbiotech.org/

Background:

NHLBI’s Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC) hosts this semi-annual Regional Innovation Conference that brings together small businesses, angel investors, venture capitalists, strategic partners, and business leaders from the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. NHLBI staff will be available to describe the details and impact of recent changes in the Federal SBIR/STTR program, as well as note other funding opportunities and resources for NHLBI small businesses.

Previous conferences have been held in Boston, MA, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, and Rockville, MD.

On a recent tour of the latest addition to University City Science Center’s campus in Philadelphia – an innovation hub in an established building on its campus set to officially open next week — I unexpectedly came across an office belonging to Merck.

It’s all the more interesting because it’s just a few doors down from DreamIt Ventures and its accelerator DreamIt Health, which has a second class of health IT entrepreneurs moving in next week. The Science Center’s own digital health accelerator will also be working in the building.

New Enterprise Associates averaged a U.S. funding deal every three days in the first half of this year, the hottest six months for the industry since the end of the dotcom boom in 2001.

Not far behind NEA’s 64 first half deals were Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (54), Andreessen Horowitz (52) and Google Ventures (50), according to a report from investment database research firm CB Insights.