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Transphorm Nabs $20 Million From Google Ventures, Kleiner

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:00:40 +0000

Yet another “stealth” start-up came out of hiding today with a big Silicon Valley funding.

That would be Transphorm, a power conversion technology company, that has raised $20 million more in a Series C financing led by Google Ventures and including Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital.

That adds to $18 million already raised.

Said the Transphorm about its goals:

“Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses.”

Here’s the official press release:

Transphorm emerges from stealth to redefine energy efficiency

Company backed by $38 million from leading venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital

New approach to electric power conversion eliminates multi-billion dollar efficiency losses

Mountain View, Calif. February 23, 2011–Transphorm Inc., redefining energy efficiency with the most efficient and compact power conversion technology, emerges from stealth mode today at a private event at Google Ventures. The company announced it completed a $20 million Series C financing led by Google Ventures, with participation from existing venture investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital. This brings the total capital raised from all rounds to $38 million.

Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses. From HVACs to hybrids, from servers to solar panels, Transphorm enables significant energy savings across the grid.

“We founded Transphorm to re-imagine what enhanced efficiency in the generation and use of electrical energy can do for our economy,” said Umesh Mishra, CEO of Transphorm. “Why put up with needless energy waste in every electrical system and device, when we can quickly and cost-effectively design products that are inherently energy efficient? Transphorm’s next-generation power modules cut waste, increase efficiency, reduce system size and simplify overall product design.”

“Since we deliver a complete solution from the original materials through to the final modules, we are in a position to rapidly innovate and deliver product in quick response to demand,” said Primit Parikh, President of Transphorm. “We look forward to helping our partners open a new era in ultra-efficient and compact power conversion.”

Founded by the experienced entrepreneurial team of Umesh Mishra and Primit Parikh, Transphorm boasts world-class engineers as well as top business and manufacturing executives who will guide the commercialization of Transphorm’s technology.

“Solving the enormous problem of power waste will create immediate, long-term shared value for Transphorm’s customers and investors,” said Randy Komisar, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “It was imperative for our firm to get behind Transphorm because it is the first company with a viable, commercial-scale solution to energy losses associated with high-voltage power conversion.”

Transphorm delivers custom-designed power modules that are easy to embed in virtually any electrical system, from consumer electronics products, to industrial motor drives, to inverters for solar panels and electric vehicles, and sells these modules to power equipment manufacturers. The company will unveil its first product at the upcoming APEC conference, taking place in Fort Worth, Tex. from Mar. 6 -10, 2011.

“We recognize the need to innovate to uncover new opportunities for optimal energy efficiency,” said Toshihiro Sawa, Managing Director, Technology & Development Division of Yaskawa Electric Corporation. “The time is right to develop power conversion technologies that can cut power waste and reduce excess heat, and Transphorm provides a viable solution today.”

“It is imperative that power conversion efficiency be increased both to cut unnecessary losses and to save energy, but also to reduce waste heat which has negative impact on volume, weight, cost and reliability,” said Dr. Leo Casey, CTO, Satcon Corporation. “The innovations made by Transphorm offer an attractive solution to this problem.”

For the Person Who Has It All, Skyara Sells New Stuff to Experience (Video)

Drake Martinet — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:10:31 +0000

Does tea with Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway and 1990s rap legend MC Hammer sound too legit? What about spending the day harvesting crabs under the Golden Gate Bridge? Or maybe a hands-on coffee-crafting session with an expert barista?

Skyara, a buzzy little start-up has created a marketplace for people to sell experiences to folks who are looking to do something other than the same old thing.

“It’s sort of like Airbnb for experiences,” co-founder Dennis Liu explained, referencing another buzzy start-up.

He continued: “It’s one part Etsy, some Expedia and a little of Groupon built on top of our own robust scheduling platform.”

In practice, users log in and are asked if they want to purchase or provide a service. The providers are taken through a process of describing their offering, providing images, setting up times and providing enough personal info so the Skyara team can contact them and verify they are legit. Skyara takes a 12 percent fee on the transaction on the seller’s side.

The purchasers can currently browse or search through about 200 different experiences, ranging from a boudoir photography session (Skyara checked–the photographer is well known in the arena) to the less understandable half-hour of punching dozens of plastic inflatable clowns that someone has collected in an apartment.

But according to Liu, the service has an almost three percent conversion rate from visit to actual sale on their Web site, including all the diluting traffic it gets from outside of the San Francisco area, Skyara’s only market so far.

He said that about 10 percent of all visitors do something valuable on the site, whether that’s offering a service, buying one, telling Skyara where they live and that they’d like to have the service there or signing up for updates.

An interesting wrinkle has emerged in the last few days, as Skyara has partnered with the ongoing UCSF Children’s Hospital charity challenge. This is where the current deal to meet Conway and Hammer came from–which you may enter to win by donating to the UCSF challenge. It brings the “experience sales” idea right back to its ancestral home–charity auctions.

Skyara came together as the brainchild of Liu and Jonathan Wu, former classmates at the University of Pennsylvania, who had moved to New York for jobs as business consultants.

They originally conceived of it as an Expedia for outdoor activities and brought on Steven Ou, the third co-founder, to help them build out the scheduling platform.

The trio was accepted into the i/o Ventures incubator this past March and decided to pivot into Skyara’s current “experience marketplace” model shortly before its first public demo in late September.

“It was like two weeks of fighting, but we decided to pivot because we’d all spent several weeks cold-calling outdoor activity businesses and it was really slow,” Liu said.

Wu, who now heads business development, explained that the founders were concerned that they were going to have an “Open Table” problem, referring to the restaurant reservation service.

“We didn’t want it to take 10 years to have it be really useful,” said Wu.

The whole team agrees that their growth model will be all about expanding into new markets, the first of which will be New York and Chicago. Skyara plans to raise capital to expand early next year.

Besides new markets, the company is adding tools to help people come up with ideas for experiences to offer, and to boost the community aspect of the experience, building a little more of Etsy’s users-as-both-buyers-and-sellers model to its service.

Said Liu: “I’ve met some incredible people on these experiences, and that should be a part of it.”

We spoke with the fresh-faced Skyara trio at Park Chow restaurant in San Francisco. Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

Mac Quicken Gets Deductions for Iffy Upgrade

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:04:27 +0000

Despite all of the success Apple (AAPL) has had with its Macintosh computers, the Mac has lagged behind Windows in personal-finance software.

The most popular program in the category, Intuit’s Quicken, comes in a Mac version. But it isn’t as good as the Windows version, dates from 2006, and requires an often tedious and flawed process for converting your data from the Windows version.

[ See post to watch video ]

As a result, many PC owners who consider buying a Mac but rely upon Quicken resist switching. Or, they resort to work-arounds, such as installing Windows on their new Macs or keeping around an old PC—solely to run the more robust Windows version of Quicken.

This week, Intuit (INTU) hopes to alleviate this situation with an all-new $60 version called Quicken Essentials for Mac, or QEM for short. The company describes QEM as the first version of Quicken developed specifically to run on a Mac, as opposed to being copied from a Windows product. It also says the product was influenced by a Mac-savvy team from Mint, a Web-based personal-finance service Intuit acquired late last year.

I’ve been testing Quicken Essentials for Mac, and have seriously mixed feelings about it. In general, it worked well and kept its promises, and it largely solves the crucial data-conversion problem. Unlike its predecessor, Quicken for Mac 2007, it looks and feels like a modern Mac program. It also can download transactions from over 12,000 banks, brokerages and other financial institutions—about triple the number supported by the prior Mac version and double the number supported by the base version of Quicken for Windows.

However, this program is still no match for the Windows version in the breadth and depth of its features, and is even a step backward in some features from the old 2007 Mac version. It is really a stripped-down version of Quicken, for basic tracking and managing of your finances. It isn’t likely to satisfy hard-core family financial planners, especially those who like to keep an eagle eye on investments or create detailed budgets and reports.

Most important, Quicken Essentials doesn’t display, or even allow you to enter or edit, individual transactions in investment accounts. It only shows a snapshot of the current status and value of the overall investment account and of the securities or funds it holds. It also lacks a bill-paying feature. And it can’t export your data to Intuit’s popular TurboTax program. Even the much-maligned older Mac version could do these three things.

While QEM is easy to use and has colorful, understandable charts and graphs that show your financial situation, its budget and reporting capabilities are rudimentary, and it has no planning features for helping you reduce debt or save for retirement.

The new team from Mint, now in charge of Intuit’s Personal Finance group, concedes that QEM lacks some important features, but says it hopes to add detailed investment-tracking and bill-paying to a future edition.

The company claims the new QEM will satisfy the needs of users who aren’t deeply into investment management or planning, or who are new to personal-finance software.

For my tests, I entered my own various bank, credit-card, retirement and brokerage accounts, and the program was able to automatically download transactions for my checking and credit-card accounts, and snapshot views of my investment accounts, in most cases. In a few instances, I had to go through an intermediary step of downloading a file from a bank or brokerage Web site, and then importing it into QEM.

Quicken Essentials can update each account separately, or all your accounts at once. But I couldn’t find any way to schedule automatic downloads of data.

The company boasts that one of its big advantages is that it automatically categorizes transactions you download. It knows a purchase at Safeway is probably “groceries.” It remembers these for the future, but won’t retroactively apply the categories to past transactions.

To me, the biggest plus in QEM is its greatly improved conversion ability. I was able to successfully convert files from Quicken for Windows, Microsoft Money and the older Mac version using sample data from those programs provided at my request by Intuit, since I don’t use these programs and lacked my own data.

Each conversion took 30 minutes or less. The process requires you to export your data from the other programs and then use a special conversion utility that comes on the QEM disk. You then import the files created by the converter into QEM. For conversions from Money, you need to have the program installed on your PC.

Some information, such as individual investment activity, and various reports and plans that QEM doesn’t support, won’t transfer. And, after the conversion, you have to reenter your log-in information for banks and brokerages.

Overall, I consider QEM just a start in bringing a better version of Quicken to the Mac. Devoted users of Quicken for Windows will likely still resist the Mac, or be forced to resort to work-arounds so they can keep using the Windows version.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Running Windows Programs on Macs

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:57:15 +0000

If I purchased an Apple Mac that runs both Apple’s OS and Microsoft Windows, is there a way to move my Windows files and applications over to the Mac side? If that was done, would those applications need to be run in Windows? Is there a way to “convert” them so they could run under the Apple OS?

A: Windows programs cannot be “converted” to run directly in the Mac operating system, which is called Snow Leopard. But, if you use virtualization software like Parallels or VMware fusion, and install Windows, then a Windows program like Microsoft Outlook can run simultaneously with your Mac programs. Technically, you are running it in Windows, but the two operating systems are active at the same time. With both of these virtualization products, you can even hide the entire Windows desktop, so that the Windows program you are running simply occupies a window on your Mac like any Mac program does. You don’t even notice that Windows is running.

In the case of files you created in Windows, the situation is even simpler. Most of the common types of files consumers use—including Microsoft Office documents, MP3 music files, MP4 video files, JPG picture files, text files, Adobe PDF files, and others—can be run in native Macintosh programs without conversion and without the need to run Windows programs. So you can just copy them to the Mac side and use them in Mac programs like iPhoto, iTunes, or the native Mac version of Microsoft Office, which uses the same file formats as the Windows version.

If you have an unusual or proprietary Windows file for which there isn’t an equivalent program on the Mac, you would run it in a Windows program, as described above.

If I am planning to upgrade a Windows XP machine to Windows 7, can I buy the upgrade copy of 7 or must I buy the full version?

A: According to Microsoft’s Web site, XP is one of the older versions of Windows upon which you can indeed indeed use the less expensive upgrade versions of Windows 7. The company’s online store says: “All editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista qualify you to upgrade. So, if you’re running either on your PC today, buy a package labeled ‘Upgrade’.”

I’ve been holding out (for what feels like forever) on purchasing a Netbook because I read that Apple was coming out with one. Can you tell me anything about when they might really begin selling them?

A: Apple executives have said repeatedly and emphatically that they don’t plan to offer a netbook, which is essentially a cheap, small laptop. Instead, Apple is widely believed to be working on a small slate or tablet device that would be controlled via a fingertip touch screen. This would be sort of like a larger iPhone or iPod Touch. The company hasn’t confirmed that such a product is in the works, but many analysts and Apple bloggers predict it will debut early next year.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Palm: Put a Sock in It, McNamee

John Paczkowski — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:37:04 +0000

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. Think about it–If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.”

– Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee

Roger McNamee’s hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion rates didn’t go over too well at Palm. Appalled by McNamee’s inflated, indecorous claims about its forthcoming smartphone, the handset maker on Monday filed a Free Writing Prospectus with the SEC that distances the company from McNamee’s claims and categorically refutes his your-next-iPhone-will-be-a-Pre foolishness. There are 10 “clarifications and corrections” in the prospectus, among them these two little gems:

5. With respect to the statements in the tenth paragraph of the transcript that the Palm Pre is “going to be a million times–well, not a million times–several times faster” than Apple, Inc.’s iPhone products and is “going to run rings around them on the web,” the Palm Pre is still under development and it is premature to state the speed at which the device accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre compared to the smartphone products of competitors.

8. The statement in the second paragraph of the article that “not one” person who bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date “will still be using an iPhone a month” after the two-year anniversary of that day is an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.

Ouch. That was CRAZY talk, Roger.

An embarrassing retraction for McNamee and for Palm (PALM), which was understandably uncomfortable with the silly levels to which the investor raised expectations for the Pre. The next time McNamee appears on Bloomberg TV, he’ll be accompanied by two Pinkerton guys with tranq guns….

eBay: Plenty of Options to Unlock Value

Eric Savitz — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:03:37 +0000

On Wednesday, eBay (EBAY) will hold a meeting with analysts to discuss the current business and strategy. There is little expectation that the company will announce any dramatic moves, and concern about the health of the business remains high, as expressed by eBay’s surprisingly low P/E–the stock trades at just seven times expected 2009 results. Of the 29 analysts tracked by Thomson who follow the company, only four rate the stock a Buy or Strong Buy.

But Marianne Wolk, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, one of the few outright bulls on the stock, asserts that eBay actually has a variety of options which could unlock substantial shareholder value. In a research note this morning, Wolk runs through a variety of ways that eBay could potentially re-energize the Street about the stock:

Boost the value of PayPal through a strategic partnership with Google (GOOG). She notes that PayPal and eBay have massive amounts of data on consumer online shopping behavior that could be tremendously valuable in terms of ad targeting. “With PayPal’s conversion and spending data, Google could significantly improve ad targeting, raise click-through rates” and increase cost per click rates, she says.

Read the rest of this post

House: You Will Go Digital on Feb. 17 and You Will Like It

John Paczkowski — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:37:23 +0000

Looks like the transition to digital TV will happen on Feb. 17 whether you like it or not.

The U.S. Senate voted unanimously Monday to delay the nation’s transition to all-digital television. Arguing that a major economic crisis might not be the best time for a congressionally-mandated switch, legislators pushed the mandatory conversion date from Feb. 17 to June 12.

But the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t buy that argument. Today, it torpedoed the legislation, saying a delay like the one proposed would confuse consumers and be a burden to wireless companies and public safety agencies waiting to use the spectrum the transition will free up. “In my opinion, we could do nothing worse than to delay this transition date,” said Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Commerce Committee. “The bill is a solution looking for a problem that exists mostly in the mind of the Obama administration.”

Take Me Away From All These … Layoffs

John Paczkowski — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:00:17 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]