News Archive

Startup Maryland (www.startupmd.org) today announced appointment of serial entrepreneur Shahab Kaviani as Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EiR).

A recognized leader of startup communities globally, Kaviani brings over a decade of first-hand entrepreneurial expertise and leadership experience most-recently as co-founder and CEO of Rockville, MD based CoFoundersLab (now Onevest). Previously, Kaviani served on the executive management team growing another Maryland company, HyperOffice, into a cloud-collaboration software leader.

PharmAthene Inc. now knows how much money it stands to get in its long-running lawsuit with Siga Technologies Inc.: A judge Thursday said Siga must pay PharmAthene $195 million and $30,663 per day in interest if Siga loses its appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court.

The case dates to 2006, when Annapolis-based PharmAthene sued New York-based Siga after the companies’ planned merger fell apart. PharmAthene claimed it was entitled to some of the profits from Tecovirimat, Siga’s smallpox antiviral.

Nick Culbertson was a Green Beret. Robert Lord worked at a hedge fund in Connecticut. Then after a career change, both found themselves in medical school at Johns Hopkins University. But while there, the pair met and discovered a much greater need.

The most significant announcement that Apple made in 2014 wasn’t a larger-sized iPhone. It was that Apple is entering the health-care industry. With HealthKit, it is building an iTunes-like platform for health; Apple Watch is its first medical device. Apple is, however, two steps behind Google, IBM, and hundreds of startups. They realized much earlier that medicine is becoming an information technology and that the trillion-dollar health-care market is ripe for disruption.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the largest owner and developer of real estate for the life-sciences industry in the nation wants to raise up to $20 million to build digital health startups in San Francisco, SFGate reports. Last year, the real estate developer announced that it would start three new accelerators nationwide to focused on agriculture, biotech and digital health. The biotech space is already up and running in New York City and has attracted giant pharma companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lily & Co with $51 million in funding. The agriculture space is scheduled to open later this year in North Carolina. 

Roche said today it will acquire Trophos for up to €470 million (about $543 million), in a deal that will expand the pharma giant’s portfolio in neuromuscular disease with high medical need, anchored by the Phase II/III-completed spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) compound olesoxime (TRO19622).

AOL founder Steve Case predicted last January that the region east of the Mississippi River would raise more venture capital than Silicon Valley in 2014.

And the winner is … Silicon Valley. By a friggin’ landslide.

Please join us in wishing her well as she embarks on retirement and new adventures.

When:

January 20, 2015 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (Remarks at 5:15 p.m.) La Tasca – Baltimore – 201 East Pratt St. (Parking validated at 100 Pratt St.- $5) Cash bar; light horse d’euvres

and/or

January 28, 2015 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Remarks at 4:15 p.m.; BioBuzz networking ’til 7:30 p.m.) Growlers – Gaithersburg – 227 West Diamond St. Cash bar; light horse d’euvres

Venture capital funding hit its highest annual mark since 2001 as venture investors participated in $47.3 billion across 3,617 deals. Even versus 2013, the past year was huge as venture capital skyrocketed 62% YoY due to multiple $500M+ mega-rounds while deal growth was more modest, climbing 8%. Of note, two quarters each – Q2’14 and Q4’14 – notched over $13B in funding.