Thursday, April 10, 2014Gores Group Invests In TweddleLos Angeles-based private equity investor Gores Group said Thursday that it has invested in Tweddle, a major provider of publishing and technology for the automotive OEM and supplier market. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed. Tweddle provides owner's anse service manuals to OEMs using its technology. Tweddle is based in Clinton Township, Michigan. The company handles both collecting automotive information from designers and OEMs, but also managing product change processes, d (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2014(Full story)
Former Maker Execs Sue To Stop Disney AcquisitionFormer Maker Studios CEO and co-founder Danny Zappin--along with three other former executives of the company--have filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order seeking to stop the acquisition of Maker Studios by Disney. Disney said it would pay as much as $950M, including earnout, for Maker Studios on March 24th. The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday. The legal documents filed by Zappin name not only Maker Studios, but venture capitalists Mark Suster and Dana Settle, as well as GRP Partne (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2014(Full story)
Insights: Five Secrets to Landing your Dream Job in the Mobile Industry
For this afternoon's contributed article, we're featuring Dale Carr, the CEO of LeadBolt, who offers some tips to score a career in today's high tech industry. LeadBolt is based in Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia. You can read more contributions like this from the local technology community at our Insights and Opinions section.
With a growing reliance on mobile devices in our daily lives, more job opportunities open up as the industry grows. Job seekers may be lured by careers in the m (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2014(Full story)
Media Temple Parent GoDaddy Approaches IPOThe parent company of Culver City-based hosting service Media Temple--GoDaddy--is getting closer to an IPO, based on reports Wednesday that the company has hired on several investment bankers for its public offering. According to Bloomberg, GoDaddy has selected Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan as bankers for its IPO, which is expected sometime later this year. It's unclear how the move would affect MediaTemple, which still has extensive operations in Los Angeles--and apparently has been in hiring mod (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2014(Full story)
TouchCommerce Signs Up Total Gym For Mobile ProductsAgoura Hills-based TouchCommerce, which provides Internet and mobile chat technology and services which helps to engage customers browsing e-commerce sites, reported today that it has signed up Total Gym Fitness as a customer for its new mobile products. TouchCommerce said the win comes as it releases an updated version of its mobile chat product. Financial details of the win with Total Gym were not announced. TouchCommerce is led by Bernard Louvat. The company said that Total Gym is an existing (More info...)
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Sonos Connects With Google PlaySonos, the maker of the whole home audio streaming systems, has connected up its systems with Google Play Music, the music service run by Google, the companies announced this morning. According to Sonos, it now lets users directly stream to Sonos from within the Google Play Music app on their Android device, or directly from the Sonos app. Google Play is Google's online music service, which lets users store up to 20,000 songs in the cloud and stream those songs to their PC, Android tablet or sma (More info...)
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Kareo Names New CFOIrvine-based Kareo, which develops cloud-based, medical office software aimed at small medical practices, said today that it has named Tom Patterson as the company's new Chief Financial Officer. Patterson was most recently CFO of Teletrac, and also had been at Quest Software and Citrix Systems. Kareo is backed by such investors as Greenspring Associates, OpenView Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank, and just raised a bit $29.5M funding in January.
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2014(Full story)
BitAngels Sets Up Formal Investment Fund Worth Around $4.1MBitAngels, the angel investment group which invests in BitCoin related startups, has launched a new, 10,000 BTC structured fund--approximately $4.1 million US dollars at press time--the first, dedicated fund for its BitCoin investments. The angel investment group, whose members include such local Los Angeles investors as Michael Terpin and Brock Pierce, said the new fund is aimed at helping to grow the Bitcoin ecosystem, and is being run with actual Bitcoin. The angel group has been quite active (More info...)
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Zumbox Shutting DownLos Angeles-based Zumbox, a startup which had been looking to store and deliver information which normally would be delivered via mail in a digital form, is shutting down its services, as of next Monday, April 14th. According to a message from the company--first posted by Infotrends--the company said the "time and cost" required to deliver on its concept of "digital postal mail" is "more than the market is prepared to invest." Zumbox had raised at least $28M in funding from such investors as Com (More info...)
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Xencor Gets Milestone Payment From MerckMonrovia-based biopharmaceuticals developer Xencor reports this morning that it has received a milestone payment from Merck, for the initiation of a Phase 1 clinical trail which uses its antibody engineering technology. Size of that milestone payment was not announced. Xencor said the drug candidate is the sixth one using its intellectual property to reach clinical trials. Xencor--which is led by Bassil Dahiyat--develops antibody engineering technology which it says help improve the performance (More info...)
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MSC Software Backs Digital Manufacturing EffortNewport Beach-based MSC Software, is backing the efforts to create a national center focused on digital manufacturing technology, the company said today. MSC Software said it is part of a 41 member consortium, which also includes Boeing, Cray, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft, to create a new center--the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute--to bolster advanced, computer aided engineering, design, and simulation technologies in thier operations. The center is bei (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2014(Full story)