Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Bidding Process – Procedures for the Sale of Syncapse Corp.- its Assets and Intellectual Property

Further to Gerbsman Partners e-mail of July, 25, 2013 regarding the sale of Syncapse Corp.’s assets and intellectual property (the “Syncapse Assets”), I attach the draft legal documents and refundable deposit wire transfer information that we will be requiring of bidders for the Syncapse Assets.  Gerbsman Partners – http://gerbsmanpartners.com/ has been retained by MNP Ltd., in its capacity as Court-appointed receiver (the “Receiver”) of the property, assets and undertakings of Syncapse Corp. (“Syncapse”, or the “Company”) (http://syncapse.com/), to solicit interest for the acquisition of the Syncapse Assets.  All parties bidding on the assets are encouraged, to the greatest extent possible, to conform the terms of their bids to the terms and form of the attached agreements.  I would also encourage all interested parties to have their counsel speak with Harvey Chaiton, counsel to the Receiver

For additional information please contact Harvey Chaiton of Chaitons LLP, counsel to the Receiver.  He can be reached at 416-218-1129 and/or at harvey@chaitons.com.

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of the Syncapse Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that the bid is actually received by the Receiver no later than August 16, 2013 by 12:00 p.m.Toronto Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at the Receiver’s office, located at 300-111 Richmond Street West , Toronto, ON CANADA M5H 2G4 to the attention of Arif Dhanani.  Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com with any bid.  For additional information regarding bid requirements and considerations, please contact Steve Gerbsman at steve@gerbsmanpartners.com.

Wire Transfer information for refundable deposit required to Bid – 15% of the offer amount (payable to the Receiver, in trust).  The deposit must be wired to the Receiver’s account in advance (information will be provided), or paid by certified cheque, money order or bank draft drawn on a Canadian bank.  The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. The deposit will be held in trust by the Receiver.  Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within 3 business days of notification that they are an unsuccessful bidder.

Bank Name:  TD Canada Trust

SWIFT address for TD: TDOMCATTTOR
Correspondent bank is Bank of America, NY, NY
SWIFT address for Bank of America: BOFAUS3NXXX
Fedwire ABA # 026009593
Address: 100 33rd Street West, New York, NY  10001

US dollar account:
Account name: MNP Ltd.
IBAN (institution #) 004, transit #10852, account # 7328451
Branch address: 100 – 220 Commerce Valley Dr. West, Markham ON  L3T 0A8

For your convenience, I have restated the description of the Updated Bidding Process.

The key dates and terms include:
The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers

Interested and qualified parties will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (attached hereto as Attachment A) to have access to certain members of management and intellectual capital teams and the due diligence “war room” documentation (“Due Diligence Access”). Each interested party, as a consequence of the Due Diligence Access granted to it, shall be deemed to acknowledge and represent (i) that it acknowledges and agrees to the bidding procedures described herein; (ii) that it has had an opportunity to inspect and examine the Syncapse Assets and to review all pertinent documents and information with respect thereto; (iii) that it is not relying upon any written or oral statements, representations, or warranties of the Receiver, Syncapse or Gerbsman Partners, or their respective staff, agents, or attorneys; and (iv) all such documents and reports have been provided solely for the convenience of the interested party, and the Receiver, Syncapse and Gerbsman Partners (and their respective staff, agents, or attorneys) do not make any representations and warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy or completeness of the same.

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of all or part of the Syncapse Assets. Each sealed bid must be submitted so that it is received by the Receiver no later than Friday, August 16, 2013 at 12:00pm Toronto Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at the Receiver’s office, located at 300-111 Richmond Street West , Toronto, ON CANADA M5H 2G4 to the attention of Arif Dhanani.  Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com with any bid.  For additional information regarding bid requirements and considerations, please contact Steve Gerbsman at steve@gerbsmanpartners.com.

Any person or other entity making a bid must be prepared to provide independent confirmation that they possess the financial resources to complete the purchase.  All bids must be accompanied by a refundable deposit in the amount of 15% of the offer amount (payable to the Receiver, in trust).  The deposit must be wired to the Receiver’s account in advance (information will be provided), or paid by certified cheque, money order or bank draft drawn on a Canadian bank.  The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. The deposit will be held in trust by the Receiver.  Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within 3 business days of notification that they are an unsuccessful bidder.

The Receiver is free to conduct the sale process as it determines in its sole discretion (including, without limitation, terminating further participation in the process by any party, negotiating with prospective purchasers and entering into an agreement with respect to a sale transaction without prior notice to you or any other person) and any procedures relating to such transaction may be changed at any time without prior notice to you or any other person.  For greater certainty, the Receiver reserves the right to, in its sole discretion, accept or reject any bid, or withdraw any or all assets from sale.  Interested parties should understand that it is expected that the highest and best bid submitted will likely be chosen as the winning bidder and bidders may not have the opportunity to improve their bids after submission.

The Receiver will require the successful bidder to close within 5 days after Court approval of the transaction. The Syncapse Assets will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis, with no representation or warranties whatsoever.

All sales, transfer, and recording taxes, stamp taxes, or other taxes, if any, relating to the sale of the Syncapse Assets shall be the sole responsibility of the successful bidder and shall be paid to the Receiver at the closing of any transaction.

Read Full Post »

logo-1

NEW APP   Applications » Tools

Spotflux Introduces Advanced Security And Privacy Solution For Mobile Devices, Protecting Consumers And Small/Medium Businesses From Malicious Activity On The Internet

Malicious software targeting mobile devices has risen 185 percent in less than a year, according to a 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office. Published reports have also warned that 2013 is the year in which mobile security threats will increase. To combat this issue, Spotflux,a leader in security and privacy solutions for the Internet, today announced the completion of the worldwide roll out of its proprietary cloud-based advanced security and privacy solution for Apple iOS mobile devices now available in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. This simple-to-use and affordable download protects consumers and small and medium-sized businesses from malicious activity with the same rigor once reserved only for large corporations. The Spotflux mobile solution for Android devices will be available this June.

Spotflux integrates advanced technologies, including a worldwide geographically dispersed VPN; a robust security stack that identifies and blocks malware, viruses, identity thieves, and unwanted tracking; privacy tools that detect and remove tracking code; and a bandwidth compression paradigm that saves users cost on their data plans.

“Spotflux provides a safe connection to the Internet that immediately reacts to and protects against malicious activity and unwanted tracking before it lands on your mobile device, all while guarding your privacy,” said Chris Naegelin, CEO and co-founder of Spotflux. “Reports have warned that 2013 is the year in which mobile security threats will increase, especially as we see the rise in employees bringing their own device to work. It’s critical that consumers and small and medium-sized businesses throughout the world have an affordable way to protect themselves from all types of malicious activity on their mobile devices.”

Spotflux’s mobile and desktop solutions are now available worldwide and can be downloaded at www.spotflux.com. There is a free trial for the mobile solution followed by a minimal charge of $1.99/month or $5.99/year. The desktop version is free.

Spotflux was conceived and launched by a team of passionate software visionaries who anticipated the evolution of increasingly sophisticated threats that would emerge in the wake of exploding wireless Internet availability on mobile devices. By taking rigorous enterprise grade security technologies typically available on costly appliances and adapting them to a scalable and proprietary cloud architecture, Spotflux brings the unification of threat management and privacy protection into the hands of consumers and SMBs. The Spotflux service provides a managed and trusted connection to the internet that immediately reacts to and protects against emerging threats and unwanted tracking that affect mobile devices and desktop computers. Since its launch in March 2012, the service has acquired more than a million users around the world.

Read Full Post »

Venture Capital Dispatch

An inside look from VentureWire at high-tech start-ups and their investors.

 

The Daily Startup: VCs Buy In to Mobile Game Maker Supercell

 

Top stories in today’s VentureWire:

 

dailystartup_D_20090806101628.jpgArt by Mike Lucas

 

Eager to own a slice of the wildly profitable Finnish mobile game maker Supercell, venture investors have purchased existing shares totaling $130 million at a $770 million valuation. Index Ventures led the deal with participation from Institutional Venture Partners and Atomico. Founded in 2011, SuperCell is currently the highest-grossing iOS game developer with “Clash of Clans” and “Hay Day” now bringing in $2.5 million of revenue daily.

 

Enlighted raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Rockport Capital for its lighting-controls technology, as it operates in a quickly changing market where the price for lighting emitting diodes is declining. The company makes sensors and software that is installed in commercial spaces and that helps decide when to dim lights. A newer application of the technology would also allow the sensors to measure temperature and occupancy, and control not just lighting but also air conditioning.

 

Also in today’s VentureWire, Reduxio Systems has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures. Reduxio is developing storage systems that make use of both flash memory and hard drives…Smart-home startup Zonoff has secured a $3.8 million Series A round for software that makes all kinds of smart-home devices work smoothly together and makes them easier to set up and control…and Crowdtilt has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz to bring a new twist to crowdfunding. Crowdtilt’s apps give groups an easy way to fund their own initiatives, rather than asking for money from strangers online.

 

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving startups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, visit our homepage, scroll to the bottom and click “try for free.”)

 

Elsewhere around the Web:

 

Launching mobile game apps is getting expensive. Case in point: ZeptoLab says it will spend about $1 million to launch “Cut the Rope: Time Travel” but it spent almost nothing to promote the first “Cut the Rope” game’s release in 2010, The Wall Street Journal reports. What has changed is the mobile games business, which is now so competitive that word-of-mouth marketing is no longer enough.

 

 Jon Flint, a founder of venture firm Polaris Partners, got into the hair-care business after his stylist suggested that he take a meeting with a colleague in New York who wanted to start a company. Flint and his partners turned to MIT”s Robert Langer to come up with innovative products. Flint talks with WSJ about the company that resulted, Living Proof, which is co-owned by actress Jennifer Aniston.

 

Silicon Valley startups are increasingly hiring testing companies to vet apps before releasing them to the public, WSJ reports.

Read Full Post »

Apr 10, 2013, 12:03pm PDT

Foundation’s Paul Holland: Smaller fund, smaller fundings right for times

Foundation Capital Partner Paul Holland says the firm’s latest fund is smaller than the previous ones by design, a reaction to how little startups need these days to get off the ground.

Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal

A lot has happened in the year that Foundation Capital started raising money for its seventh fund, according to Partner Paul Holland.

Instead of what had been reportedly planned as a half billion fund, the Menlo Park firm on Tuesday closed a $282 million pool to invest from.

“Startups don’t need as much money now, thanks to the cloud and other factors,” Holland told me. “Startups are using about 40 percent less capital, on average, so we don’t need as much capital to invest.”

He said the smaller fund size was a conscious reaction to the changing startup environment.

“We raised our last fund, which was $750 million in 2008, when we thought we would be doing more cleantech and later-stage deals,” he said. “It took us five years to invest, which is frankly too long. We wanted to have a fund that we thought we could finish investing in three years.”

The new fund will be targeting about 60 percent of its cash at IT startups, about 30 percent to 35 percent at consumer startups and up to 10 percent in cleantech.

“We do about two-thirds of our investments in seed or Series A rounds but we will invest in later rounds when we find something that suits us,” Holland said.

There will be right of the firm’s 13 partners investing from the fund, including new partner Anamitra Banerji, who developed Twitter’s ad platform as one of the micro-blogging company’s earliest employees.

“We have a heritage of partners who stay around for quite a while after they have finished actively investing,” Holland said. “They stay involved with the firm and with the companies they have invested in.”

General Partner Rich Redelfs is the only partner who has newly stepped back from investing, he said.

Despite working with a smaller fund, Holland said he is more excited about the startups he sees now than he was 10 years ago.

“There is a real tailwind behind early stage investing right now,” he said. “The difference between now and 10 years ago is night and day. It’s a lot easier to create returns on small amounts of money now than ever in my experience.”

Click here to subscribe to TechFlash Silicon Valley, the daily email newsletter about startups, venture and angel investors.

Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1823.

Read Full Post »

Spotflux: Finally, A Free VPN

Spotflux: Finally, A Free VPN

on March 22nd 2013

Cloak is a fantastic little VPN that protects your privacy and allows you to browse the Internet safely on your Mac. Unfortunately, you must pay a price for quality.

Or must you? The team at Spotflux doesn’t think you should pay for privacy, so they have developed a great little VPN that works on Mac, Windows, iOS, and soon Android. As with anything that’s free, there must be a downside, right? Let’s find out.

Bare Bones VPN

Spotflux is enabled upon launch.

Spotflux is enabled upon launch.

Spotflux has two main features: security and privacy. In other words, if you’re on a WiFi network that has no encryption, it’s the perfect way to ensure your sensitive information isn’t easy to access wirelessly. Any ill-doer could intercept your information if it’s being transferred over a public network. For the sake of your security, it’s worth using a VPN at the local coffee shop or library.

As with most companies these days, Spotflux says it’s using “the cloud” to protect your data. Since that’s now the generalized term for all computing on a remote server, this is indeed so, but it’s mainly a marketing technique. You can also run things through a proxy and then through Spotflux if you like using that additional server. However, the actual service is quite good on it’s own. You can choose between using it as just a VPN or with added functionality using filters.

Filters Block Ads, Malware, and Tracking Code

Spotflux has one very unique feature: filters. Instead of using an ad blocker like I do, you can just switch on the VPN and it will remove them from the pages for you. I didn’t find it as effective as some of the browser plugins out there, but it’s definitely useful when browsing the Net.

Use filters or keep them disabled.

Use filters or keep them disabled.

There are other filters, too. The service tries its best to stop malware from downloading to your computer. With a Mac, this isn’t as much of a problem, but it is nice to have that extra layer between the virus’ server and your computer. Lastly, the app blocks tracking code, or “cookies” as they’re more commonly known. I personally don’t need any of these “filters” — most people don’t, and they might even break some web apps — but they do act as an extra layer of security and not a whole lot of resources are used to have them running.

Regarding Reliability

For a free service, you can’t expect perpetual uptime. It’s good to want consistency, but never complete reliability. Spotflux, thankfully, is one of those services that maintains consistency. I did experience some random disconnects, but overall daily usage has been very smooth. My only complaint is that when I’m downloading a file, it stops and I’m unable to start it at that point. Since it takes a good 45 seconds for Spotflux to switch back on after a disconnect, things can sometimes become inconvenient.

What About This Whole “Free” Concept?

Lately, a lot of services have started out by being unconditionally free. From the perspective of a user, this is a great trait to see in an app or company. And it’s evident that, when the consuming party gets what it wants, all is well in the eyes of everyone else. Sadly, when you take time to look at the core, things are falling apart.

Apple's banner on an App Store promotion.

Apple’s banner on an App Store promotion.

As Michael Jurewitz explained in an editorial related to the matter, the free mindset that developers have can be harmful to the company, and even sometimes end user. The problem is that, while beginning well, the process of a free business model goes downhill due to one flaw: most companies don’t want to be non-profit. That’s why Twitter took the sponsorship approach, Facebook went crazy with advertisements, and App.net was born. It is possible to offer a service for free, but the price is one that users must pay.

Spotflux has it's money on mobile.

Spotflux has it’s money on mobile.

With Spotflux, I found it very hard to understand what the company would do for revenue. To help things along, I spoke with Chris Naegelin, co-founder of the service. Naegelin said that Spotflux is currently only free on the desktop; if you’re using a mobile device, the service is paid. “We also monetize during the install process if a user opts-in to one of our bundle partners such as Dashlane,” he noted.

Thankfully, the co-founder said that the company “[plans] to always have an unlimited free tier”. There will be a “premium” version available on the desktop later this year, but currently the free option is all that’s offered as a sort of starting point.

I asked Naegelin what the company’s plans for the future are and, while he said that most of them are confidential, he made it a point for users to know that there will be much more focus on safe and private browsing.

Simple and Functional

Spotflux is a great app. You won’t easily find another truly free VPN out there that’s the quality of this one. There’s not a lot in the app to go on about because it’s really quite simple. It’s not like the average user needs more in a VPN than what this one offers. The privacy features and malware protection are really nice and the servers have always been speedy enough for my needs. As for the moments of downtime, they’re not that bad — it just takes longer to enable the service.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »