From TechJournalSouth http://www.tech50.org/companies.html
Once again we present 50 technology and biotechnology companies TechJournal South believes are worthy of your attention. Some things to note: analytics - of text, of video, of voice - are of growing importance in this new media age. Among biotechnology companies, bringing the immune system to bear on cancer and inflammation is being approached from a number of directions. Effective new treatments for diseases that do the most damage, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and deadly infections remain Holy Grails much sought after. Software that saves money, energy, or time is still a hot commodity. Software that increases efficiency is equally important and again has a measurable ROI. And, just about anything associated with cleaner energy or more efficient energy use is increasingly on the forefront.
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 | App River, Gulf Breeze, FL www.appriver.com AppRiver was founded in April of 2002 to provide simple, yet powerful email security solutions to businesses of any size. We now protect more than 35,000 customers around the world from spam, viruses, and internet pollution. |
 | Archer Pharmaceuticals, Sarasota, FL www.archerpharma.com Archer Pharmaceuticals Inc. was founded in 2008 and specializes in targeted drug discovery for Alzheimer's disease. It is testing a drug approved in Europe for treating high blood pressure called Nilvadipine, which also lowers levels of the amyloid proteins that cause Alzheimer's, in two different compounds. The company is working on other therapeutic approaches to the disease as well. |
 | Belief Networks, Charleston, SC www.beliefnetworks.net BeliefNetworks was founded by Silicon Valley and Microsoft executives to transform real time, structured and unstructured data - such as marketing campaign data, customer behavior information and social network conversations - into actionable knowledge for improved customer experience. |
 | BioMarck Pharmaceuticals, RTP, NC www.biomarck.com BioMarck Pharmaceuticals is developing new drugs for pulmonary diseases and disorders associated with the over-secretion of mucus and pulmonary inflammation. BioMarck has chosen chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (specifically chronic bronchitis) as its first target, but other diseases including asthma, and cystic fibrosis are later disease targets. |
 | BioResource International, RTP, NC www.briworldwide.com BioResource International Inc. (BRI) is a global biotechnology company focused on harnessing the natural power of enzymes to address unique agricultural and industrial concerns. They make a powdered enzyme product that turns poultry feathers into a high-protein poultry feed. They ship it to Thailand and other countries where poultry is prized but cropland to grow poultry food is especially scarce. |
 | Blue Stripe Software, RTP, NC www.bluestripe.com Blue Stripe Software, sells application service management solutions to help migrate and manage enterprise applications in a virtual server environment. With the economy forcing companies to save every penny, virtualization appeals to them because it lowers costs. The company has won a handful of media and industry recognitions for its approach to helping companies go virtual. |
 | Broadsoft, Gaithersburg, MD www.broadsoft.com Since acquiring two of its major competitors in the last year, BroadSoft has become the leading provider of VoIP applications to the telecommunications industry. Founded in 1998, the company has raised nearly $90 million from venture investors. |
 | Callminer, Fort Myers, FL www.callminer.com Call Miner sells speech analytics services. Founded in 2002, the 40-employee company helps its clients analyze customer service calls, pinpointing key words, angry speech, and competitor's names. It raised a third round early in 2009. Its clients include Continental Airline, Daimler Financial Services, and Comcast, among others. |
 | Calyptix, Charlotte, NC www.calyptix.com Calyptix manufactures AccessEnforcer, an all-in-one network security appliance that cut costs, boosts productivity and protects networks for small and medium businesses such as financial, healthcare, accounting, and legal, manufacturing, nonprofit and other service organizations. |
 | Centice, RTP, NC www.centice.com Centice is a medical device company commercializing a spectroscopy device developed at Duke University that tests the accuracy of prescriptions at point of sale. Called Pass Rx, the device puts drugs through a simple three-step process that verifies the drug tpe and strength of tablets and capsules being dispensed through a vial in seconds. |
 | Cernium, Reston, VA www.cernium.com Cernium develops and sells products that extract useful information from video for applications ranging from business intelligence to homeland and physical security. It is based on a technology called "advanced video analytics." Customers represent a range of industry sectors that include Fortune 100 manufacturers, government, health care, transportation, hospitality, education, entertainment and major cultural institutions. |
 | Clarabridge, Reston, VA www.clarabridge.com Clarabridge sells text analysis software used to improve customer relationship management. It helps companies pinpoint exactly what a customer wants by analyzing email or other customer communications. Its customers include Marriott International, United Airlines, Gap Inc., Intuit Inc., Sage Software, H&R Block and Lowe's Companies, among others. |
 | Cylex, Columbia, MD www.cylex.net Cylex is the leader in the development and manufacture of in vitro diagnostic products intended to illuminate immunity. The Company's patented technology provides an innovative platform allowing clinical researchers to simply and reproducibly assess immune cell function for the development of new diagnostics, biomarkers, and companion assays. |
 | Datacraft Solutions, Durham, NC www.datacraftsolutions.com By automating a digital kanban system and selling it as software as a service, Durham-based Datacraft Solutions has produced dramatic inventory management cost reductions for its clients. The company's product orders materials based on actual need rather than forecasts and can slash inventory management costs by 50 percent. |
 | Diakine, Charlottesville, VA www.diakine.com Diakine is designing treatments to drive Type 1 diabetes into remission by promoting the growth of new insulin-producing cells and protecting them. In addition to angel investments, it received a number of grants, including ones from the Lee Iaccoa and Ella Fitgerald Foundations Fitzgerald and Iaccoa's wife both suffered from diabetes. |
 | Energyware, Blacksburg, VA www.energyware.com A Virginia Tech spinout, Energyware sells software based on patented technology that reduces energy insfrastructure and is currently targeting top tier data centers, where it believes its software can lead directly to over $500,000 a year in savings for the client in energy costs. Saving money, saving energy. Sounds like a winner. |
 | Enertech Environmental, Atlanta, GA www.enertech.com EnerTech's patented technology, the SlurryCarb process, economically produces a renewable fuel from biosolids and other high-moisture wastes. The company has raised more than $200 million to get a California plant up and running. |
 | ESP Systems, Charlotte, NC www.espsystems.net About 13 percent of restaurant diners won't return to a given establishment, most often due to poor serve. ESP creates a wireless bubble over the entire restaurant and connects everyone within that bubble through advanced wireless technologies. By connecting everyone within the restaurant, each guest can summon waiters or staff and the staff can communicate with the kitchen and so on. It increases both staff productivity and customer satisfaction. |
 | Exigent Pharmaceuticals, Durham, NC www.exigentpharmaceuticals.com Exigent Pharmaceuticals, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill spin-out company, is developing a new type of anti-bacterial treatment that could help stem the tide of deaths and complications from hospital acquired, drug-resistant infections. The compounds the company is developing as a new type of anti-infective treatment target an enzyme in bacteria that the bugs use to spread their genes - particularly those that make bacteria more resistant to current drugs. |
 | Expression Genetics, Huntsville, AL www.egeninc.com Expression Genetics Inc. (EGEN), is a biopharmaceutical company specializing in nucleic acid (DNA and RNAi) delivery and therapeutics aimed at specific disease targets. The Company, with laboratories and headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama, is focused on developing therapeutics for the treatment of human diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease. |
 | Fishbowl, Alexandria, VA www.fishbowl.com Fishbowl sells permission-based email marketing to the restaurant industry. Founded in 2000, Fishbowl serves 700 restaurant chains in North America and Europe powering email marketing to over 28,000 locations. Fishbowl's broader marketing solutions provide restaurants with fully integrated mobile promotion, online ordering and online reservations. |
 | FTRANS, Atlanta, GA www.ftrans.net FTRANS sells a platform that works as a clearinghouse and interface for lenders and businesses seeking to borrow against accounts receivables and other types of the $1.3 trillion trade credit sector. Its revenue increased 300 percent in 2008. |
 | Gigatrust, Herndon, VA www.gigatrust.com Gigatrust sells cutting-edge email security and content protection. It is the only provider of Intelligent Rights Management - an innovative, next-generation content security approach built on the foundation of Microsoft's Windows Rights Management Services. |
 | Gridpoint, Arlington, VA www.gridpoint.com GridPoint Inc. is testing SmartGrid, a product that lets utilities buy electricity at nonpeak prices to store for deployment during peak demand hours. During peak demand periods, Gridpoint's platform enables utilities to efficiently balance supply and demand by discharging stored power or reducing loads with minimal impact on customers (i.e., controlling temperature versus shutting down air conditioners). The platform serves as a virtual peaking power plant, enabling utilities to avoid the regulatory, environmental and "time-to-build" hurdles. |
 | iContact, Durham, NC www.icontact.com iContact has attracted 50,000 customers to its email marketing services. It allows for easy creation of email newsletters, RSS feeds, surveys, and autoresponders. In 2008, the company was named the fastest growing software company in North Carolina and ranked 85th on the Inc. magazine 500. |
 | JackBe, Chevy Chase, MD www.jackbe.com JackBe delivers trusted mashup software that empowers organizations to create, customize and collaborate through enterprise mashups for faster decisions and better business results. Its innovative Enterprise Mashup platform, Presto, provides dynamic mashups that leverage internal and external data while meeting the toughest enterprise security and governance requirements. The company has won several other awards. |
 | LivingSocial.com, Washington, D.C. www.livingsocial.com If you're always looking for the next great read, another band you might like, or even a new beer to try, DC-based LivingSocial can hook you up with recommendations from people who have similar or different tastes. Founded in the summer of 2007, LivingSocial is a social discovery and cataloging network that allows people to review and share their favorite movies, books, games, music, restaurants and beer. It's a good idea that's rapidly gaining traction. |
 | Lotame Solutions, Elkridge, MD www.lotame.com Lotame sells solutions within social media. Its crowd control technology offers social media sites the most advanced monetization techniques and allows brands to build and target customizable consumer audiences. It aims to increase revenue for its publishers and allow advertisers to target unique users across multiple social media sites. |
 | Lulu.com, RTP, NC www.lulu.com Founded by CEO Bob Young, who co-founded Red Hat, Lulu eliminates traditional entry barriers to publishing, and enables content creators and owners – authors and educators, videographers and musicians, businesses and nonprofits, professionals and amateurs – to bring their work directly to their audience. First, they use Lulu's tools to format their digital content. Lulu's dedicated marketplace, custom storefronts and advanced listing and distribution services make their books, videos, CDs, DVDs, calendars, reports and more available to as many, or as few, people around the world as they like, earning 80 percent of all creator revenue, of which millions of dollars has already been paid out. |
 | Metastatix, now Altiris, Tucker, GA www.metastatix.com Metastatix is developing compounds that block a receptor implicated in inflammation - now known to lead to many serious diseases. But its treatments may also fight late stage cancer. |
 | NeoCytex, Orlando, FL www.neocytex.com NeoCytex is developing novel therapeutics to promote the repair and rejuvenation of damaged tissues. The lead drug candidate NBI-18 is being developed for speeding up recovery from neurodegenerative (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's) and cerebrovascular diseases. The product works by accelerating the production of healthy new cells from endogenous stem cells, enhancing the body's natural ability to heal itself. |
 | Oversight Systems, Atlanta, GA www.oversightsystems.com Founded in 2003, Oversight Systems, Inc. is a privately-held, Atlanta-based software company whose continuous transaction monitoring solutions help Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries solve problems related to governance, risk and compliance. |
 | Pathfinder Technologies, Nashville, TN www.2pti.com Pathfinder is a medical device company developing surgical GPS systemsd. Its firs commercial application is the only one to have received FDA clearance for navigating liver surgery with pre-operative medical images. |
 | Petrobeam, Raleigh, NC www.petrobeam.com PetroBeam is an energy technology company and is the leading developer of electron beam processing techniques to upgrade heavy petroleum feedstocks. The company is migrating a well established industrial process to the midstream and downstream sectors of the petroleum industry. That's important because light crude resources are not enough to supply worldwide demand, which will have to come from heavy crude. |
 | Planar Energy Devices, Orlando, FL www.planarenergy.com Planar Energy Devices develops, manufactures and markets metallic-lithium solid state battery products forelectronic and automotive applications. Bringing together innovative technologies from several research organizations, Planar, an NREL spin-out with an extensive patent portfolio, has developed a platform for fabricating, in a scalable, low-captital-cost environment, a new generation of high-energy-density, long-life batteries that are safe, compact and can be deployed in very flexible arrangements. |
 | Prenova, Marietta, GA www.prenova.com Prenova's Clean Tech energy management solutions deliver hard dollar savings through sustained reduction in energy consumption and carbon gas emissions. Prenova is revolutionizing energy efficiency by creating sustainable asset efficiencies. |
 | Purewire, Atlanta, GA www.purewire.com Purewire is a security as a service company. Purewire's SaaS-based secure Web gateway protects users from malware, phishing, identity theft, and other harmful activity online – in effect, providing a pure wire to the Internet. |
 | Qualtre, Atlanta, GA www.qualtre.com Qualtré Inc. is commercializing the next generation of inertial motion sensors, further broadening their applicability in CE devices like cellular handsets, personal navigation devices, and gaming controllers. |
 | Razorsight, Fairfax, VA www.razorsight.com Razorsight Corp sells on-demand financial business intelligence and analytics solutions for communications services providers. Razorsight's Software-as-a-Service automates workflow from invoice receipt to payment with zero touch by eliminating paper and arduous manual processes, while providing detailed visibility into carrier cost and revenue data. |
 | Revolution Money, St. Petersburg, FL www.revolutionmoney.com Revolution Money is an Internet payment firm launched by AOL co-founder Steve Case. Its investors include Ted Leonsis, David Pottruck, and David Golden. Revolution Money reduces costs to merchants for accepting credit cards by up to 75 percent. The company hopes to grab market share from traditional credit card companies and online payment services such as Paypal. The company raised a $50 million second round and $42 million in April 2009. |
 | Schooldude, Cary, NC www.schooldude.com SchoolDude is the nation's #1 provider of on-demand operations management solutions designed exclusively for the unique needs of schools, colleges and universities. The company has 3,700 clients and 140 employees. |
 | Sharklet Technologies, Alachua, FL www.sharklet.com Sharket develops and markets surface technologies designed to inhibit or enhance microorganism growth. Inspired by the antimicrobial properties of shark skin, Sharklet, the company's core surface technology, is the first no-kill, non-toxic surface developed to control bacteria. It can be used in healthcare environments and on medical devices to prevent development of biofilms and help fight dangerous antibiotic resistant infections. |
 | SilkRoad, Winston Salem, NC www.silkroad.com SilkRoad Technology sells software that helps companies manage their talent from the recruiting stage through on-boarding, training, evaluations and post-employment. |
 | siXis, RTP, NC www.sixisinc.com siXis has pioneered the silicon circuit board, paving the way for smaller, higher performing, scalable, lighter, and more reliable electronics that use less power and are less expensive. Its silicon-connecting-silicon techniques, lower costs and improve reliability over traditional electronic circuit boards. Bare silicon die are mounted directly on large-area silicon substrates - a feat thought impossible until recently. |
 | Skycross, Viera, FL www.skycross.com Skycross is a global wireless company providing advanced antenna-centric RF solutions to the mobile phone, home entertainment, and computing industries. SkyCross provides high-performance, frequency-agile, protocol-independent antenna technology bundled with RF system-level expertise and responsive regional support. |
 | StrikeIron, RTP, NC www.strikeiron.com StrikeIron's Web Services Marketplace provides a technology platform, micro-transaction management and a consistent interface across many XML-based Web services from multiple, diverse sources. |
 | Suniva, Atlanta, GA www.suniva.com Suniva develops, manufactures and markets its ARTisun series high-efficiency silicon photovoltaic cells for clean, earth-friendly power generation and is dedicated to driving down the cost per watt of solar generated power. It has begun production of its high efficiency solar cells at its Norcross, GA facility. |
 | Transgeneron Therapeutics, Gainsville, FL www.transgeneron.net Transgeneron Therapeutics Inc., was founded in April 2007 to apply a novel pharmacological approach to regenerative medicine; the company develops therapeutics that promote tissue regeneration by reprogramming healthy tissue. This therapeutic reprogramming causes cells to "trans-differentiate" into cells that can replace diseased or degenerated organs. |
 | Vaxin, Birmingham, AL www.vaxin.com A small Birmingham, Alabama company, Vaxin, is testing a revolutionary new flu vaccine that could lessen or end flu vaccine shortages, prevent getting the wrong mix of strains, and end fears of deadly pandemic flu. It also has vaccines to prevent anthrax, Avian Influenza, tetanus, and Alzheimer's. |
 | Vendormate, Atlanta, GA www.vendormate.com Vendormate provides technology and compliance-monitoring services to assist companies in their relationships with vendors. Through its patent-pending process, Vendormate provides a standardized private-labeled solution for customers to manage the composition and risk of their supplier-base with very little impact to their budget. Vendormate VISION is a streamlined system of vendor registration, screening, rating, and cataloging. |
 | Zymetis, College Park, MD www.zymetis.com Zymetis is testing genetically modified bacteria that efficiently convert biomass into sugar. The company uses the marsh grass bacterium S. degradans, which releases an enzyme that can degrade waste materials such as brewing byproducts, papers, husks, and corn cobs into ethanol for fuel. |
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Howie Rhee, MBA
Managing Director
Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Room E167J
919-923-7113 mobile
hwr2@duke.edu
www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/cei
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