May 15, 2008, 10:09 am EST
Diagnostics-For-All, a non-profit venture aiming to provide low-cost diagnostic tools to global health workers, won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition last night. It’s been a week of business plan and entrepreneurship prizes, as we have chronicled in a series of articles. But the 19-year-old 100K competition is the granddaddy of them all. Organizers say the event has spurred the creation of more than 85 companies with a combined market capitalization of $10 billion-plus—and it has trained hundreds of other would-be entrepreneurs. All teams have to include at least one MIT member. This year, the competition took on a new form, splitting into seven industry tracks: astro/aerospace, biotech, development, energy, mobile, products and services, and Web 2.0/IT. Last night the seven track winners (see list below), each of which took home at least 10K for winning its sector, vied for the grand prize. Diagnostics-For-All, built around patent-pending technology developed in […]
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May 15, 2008, 6:00 am EST
If you ride a bike to work this week, chances are that somebody will give you, if not a free lunch, then at least a free breakfast. The meals are one of the activities organized during Bay State Bike Week. If not even a muffin and a cup of coffee will convince you to start pedaling there might be a less strenuous, but still eco-friendly, two-wheeled alternative in the not-too-distant future: a foldable, electric scooter. Or rather, thousands of scooters, available for use just when you need them. That, at least, is the vision of Smart Cities, a business concept from a group of students and researchers at MIT’s Media Lab. The electric foldable scooters are more than just an idea, group member Ryan Chin told me. “We have a collaboration with a Taiwanese manufacturer, SYM, and they are ready to produce them. We also showed a prototype scooter […]
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May 14, 2008, 6:50 pm EST
It’s been a big week for FloDesign Wind Turbine. On Monday the company placed first in the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Ignite Clean Energy Competition, winning $100,000 in cash and services. On Tuesday, the company netted an additional $200,000 in cash by winning the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize Competition. Which means that the company, a spinoff of aerospace technology consultancy FloDesign in Wilbraham, MA, earned a total of $300,000 in a little more than 24 hours. And there are hints of much more money to come. Xconomy has learned from a source with insight into the company that Al Gore, the former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner who is now a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has offered FloDesign venture financing totaling as much as $10 million. FloDesign CEO Stan Kowalski volunteered in passing earlier in the week that […]
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May 14, 2008, 6:14 pm EST
Greenfuel Technologies, the Cambridge, MA-based algae farming company temporarily headed by Polaris Venture Partners general partner Bob Metcalfe, said today that it has collected an additional $13.9 million in venture capital from inside investors in an extension of its Series B funding round. The money, which will be used to retire debt and scale up an algae farm project begun in January, comes from Polaris as well as Access Private Equity and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. As we reported last summer, Greenfuel was forced to shut down its algae bioreactor systems, which are designed to convert carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel plants into clean-burning algae-based biofuels, after the reactors began producing more algae than the company could properly process. The snafu resulted in the layoff of half of the company’s staff as well as the departure of CEO Cary Bullock, who was replaced by Metcalfe for an “interim” period […]
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May 14, 2008, 10:30 am EST
Greentech Media, an online media company based in Cambridge, MA, announced that it has raised $2.75 million in Series B funding. EGORA Holding and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund co-led the round. Greentech Media, which launched last September, covers news and research in the clean energy and technolo[…]
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May 14, 2008, 5:14 am EST
There was a lot of energy in the room. And why not? It was the finals of the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize competitition—and five finalists were vying for the $200,000 cash grand prize. Some 150 folks attended the event last night at Le Meridien Hotel in Cambridge, MA. And when it was over, the winner was FloDesign Wind Turbine Corp., of Wilbraham, MA, which has a plan, as you might have guessed, for a wind turbine that will significantly eclipse the performance of existing turbines. FloDesign also took home the first prize (50K in cash and a like amount in in-kind services) at Monday’s Ignite Clean Energy Competition, a separate cleantech contest run almost concurrently with the 200K—and earlier this spring was awarded a $500,000 convertible loan from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to help launch the company. Two other teams claimed $20,000 prizes last night: Covalent Solar […]
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May 12, 2008, 11:03 am EST
Last Thursday, I met Chad Lovell, a first-year student at MIT, standing in a small lobby on the third floor of a State Street office building in downtown Boston. It was the day of the semifinals of MIT’s Clean Energy Entpreneurship Prize competition, which carries a $200,000 award for the best business plan. Lovell, one of the organizers, was welcoming the teams that had made it so far. He seemed quite at ease, especially when one bears in mind he also was a member of one of the competing teams, MIT-based Hundred, aiming to produce a lightweight four-seat car capable of going 100 miles per gallon of gas. Wearing two hats at the same time meant that Lovell had to wait outside in the walkway while his teammates made their pitch behind closed doors to one of the judging panels. Yes, he admitted, not being able to take […]
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May 12, 2008, 6:30 am EST
New England’s corporate attorneys must have been working overtime, because the last week saw an unusual amount of deals activity—particularly in public and private stock offerings. —Citing market conditions, Elixir Pharmaceuticals pulled its IPO. The Cambridge, MA-based firm, which is developing treatments for diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic diseases, had already postponed the offering back in January. —Two other New England firms evidently missed the memo about those market conditions. Essex, CT, wind-power firm Noble Environmental Power filed for an IPO worth up to $375 million. And Lexington, MA’s Gomez, which offers “web experience management services” filed for an offering worth up to $80.5 million. —Boston-based cellulosic ethanol firm Mascoma announced it has received a $10 million equity investment from oil giant Marathon, as par of its Series C round. The announcement sent Wade on a marathon math session aimed at accounting for all the components of […]
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May 9, 2008, 4:01 pm EST
Brookfield Renewable Power, a Canadian energy company, is planning to open a new US headquarters in Marlborough, MA. The firm has a $13 billion portfolio in hydroelectric plants and wind farms across North America and Brazil. It is owned by Brookfield Asset Management, based in[…]
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May 9, 2008, 1:13 pm EST
It’s not just pollen in the air these days. Renewable energy projects are blooming throughout New England. Now, Noble Environmental Power, a fast-growing wind-power company based in Essex, CT, has filed for an initial public offering worth up to $375 million. (On the heels of yesterday’s IPO filing by Lexington, MA-based web management services firm Gomez, maybe the market for IPOs really is coming back). According to its filing with the SEC, Noble Power is “focused on developing, financing, constructing, owning and operating windparks in attractive energy markets in the United States.” The company’s plan is to sell energy and energy-capacity generated by its wind parks. Its first three parks have been up and running in New York since March, and the firm hopes to quadruple its total power capacity by the end of 2009, with more parks under construction in New York and Texas. By […]
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