Marketcetera just announced a $4 million series A round of venture funding with Shasta Ventures and Jack Selby, managing director and co-founder of Clarium Capital. There's something highly appropriate in a hedge fund investing in a software company set up to help hedge funds (and others).
Marketcetera, as I've opined before, is one of the coolest open-source companies on this planet. It provides an open-source trading platform for hedge funds and others to process and deliver trades.
Marketcetera can start with algorithmic trades for hedge funds, but that's just the beginning. As Dana at ZDNet suggests, open source is increasingly "the traditional way" that software will get done. The fact that Marketcetera is open source will help it, and certainly won't pigeon-hole where it takes the technology or its business.
Congratulations to the Marketcetera team!
Calling all entrepreneurs: follow the money.
If you did, that road down the IT path would likely lead you to clean-tech and Internet-specific businesses, according to results of the 2007 MoneyTree Report released Friday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.
U.S. venture capitalists invested a total of $29.4 billion in 2007, up 10.8 percent from the previous year. That marked the fourth consecutive year of growth. The number of deals reached 3,813 last year, a modest rise of 5 percent over a year earlier.
Clean-technology companies attracted $2.2 billion in investments last year, a 47 percent jump over the prior year. And the number of clean-tech deals rose by 58 percent to 202 venture financings last year, compared with 2006 .
Internet companies, which rely on a business model that's largely dependent on the Internet, also attracted a substantial slice of venture funding last year, according to the report. This sector attracted $4.6 billion in funding, accounting for a 12 percent increase over the previous year.
The software sector, which historically grabs the largest slice of venture funding, had less than spectacular year in 2007. Funding levels for the software sector remained virtually flat, rising to $5.3 billion with 905 deals, compared with $5.1 billion for 920 deals in 2006.
"Software is still the largest segment for funding, even though it is flattening out," said Deepak Kamra, a venture capitalist with Canaan Partners. "Within software, software as a service and open source are doing well. Open source is a cheaper way for companies to develop applications."
Venture capitalists get their investment back through an IPO or sale of their portfolio company. Last year, venture capitalists were able to ride the IPO ride on several notable deals.
"The market was good for IPOs in 2007, but now we're concerned about the IPO market shutting down," Deepak said. "Ultimately, the IPO market will come back."
SolFocus, a solar technology company that was incubated at the Palo Alto Research Center (now an offshoot of Xerox), has raised $52 million more dollars to help it launch in Europe.
The company, which had previously raised $27 million, specializes in solar concentrators, which direct more sunlight onto solar cells that would ordinarily fall on them. The more sunlight, the more electricity the solar cell can generate. The more electricity a cell can generate, the more economical solar energy--which generally still costs about twice as much as regular grid power--becomes.
SolFocus' concentrators magnify the light 500 times. Several companies make solar concentrators, and SolFocus' figures are in the general ballpark of efficiency. Some, such as GreenVolts, claim higher efficiency, but others sport lower. Buyers, though, are also concerned about durability and maintenance. Concentrators move with the sun to maximize output.
The company's products are aimed at the commercial market, such as retail stores or office parks. Placed on a roof, solar concentrators can cool off a building and generate power on-site. SolFocus also intends to build large-scale power generation, where a field of panels could generate several hundred megawatts of power.
SolFocus Europe will concentrate on the European market, which is larger than the U.S. solar market. The company will also start to develop products for the solar thermal market. In solar thermal technology, heat from the sun is converted to electricity. SolFocus' original products work with photovoltaic panels, which convert light to electricity.
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