Early Stage Venture Roundup

Compiled by Alastair Goldfisher

SAN FRANCISCO (Private Equity Week) - Startups that help to manage applications over the Internet for corporations, a service known as cloud computing, were the focus of early stage investors last week.

Of the seven young companies nationwide that announced last week that they raised startup capital from VCs, four are cloud computing companies: Eucalyptus Systems Inc., Good Data Corp., Opscode Inc. and Symform Inc.

Of the bunch, Eucalyptus raised the largest amount of funding, $5.5 million. The company, which develops an open-source private cloud computing platform, was launched as a research project at the University of California Santa Barbara by Rich Wolski in 2007. Wolski is now CTO of the company.

Here are more details about the startups that raised early stage financing last week:

BIOTECH

Palyon Medical Corp.

New York

Amount/Round: $21M/Series A

Investors: Baird Venture Partners (led), Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management, Fountain Healthcare Partners, BB Biotech Ventures, Cross Atlantic Partners, Arcus Ventures.

Details: Develops implantable drug delivery systems. Michael Liang, of Baird Venture Partners, Daniel Omstead, of Hambrecht & Quist, and Aidan King, of Fountain Healthcare, have joined the board.

CONSUMER INTERNET

Bonobos Inc.

New York

www.bonobos.com <www.bonobos.com>

Amount/Round: $3M/seed stage

Investors: Sandwith Ventures and individual investors.

Details: Sells men's clothing online. The $3M funding was at a $15M pre-money valuation.

INTERNET MARKETING

Jodange Inc.

New York

www.jodange.com <www.jodange.com>

Amount/Round: $1.2M/Series A

Investors: Big Red Ventures (led) and individual investors Dennis Bennie, Nick Grewal and Eyal Shavit.

Details: Develops opinion-measurement tools (see story, page 1).

STORAGE

Eucalyptus Systems Inc.

Santa Barbara, Calif.

www.eucalyptus.com <www.eucalyptus.com>

Amount/Round: $5.5M/Series A

Investors: Benchmark Capital (led), BV Capital.

Details: Develops an open-source private cloud platform.

Good Data Corp.

San Francisco

www.gooddata.com <www.gooddata.com>

Amount/Round: $2.5M/ Series A

Investors: General Catalyst Partners (led), O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Windcrest Partners, Andreessen Horowitz.

Details: Operates a cloud computing startup. The company was founded in the Czech Republic.

Opscode Inc.

Seattle

www.opscode.com <www.opscode.com>

Amount/Round: $2.5M/ Series A

Investors: Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Details: Provides cloud-computing infrastructure services. Bill Bryant, DFJ venture partner, has joined the board.

Symform Inc.

Seattle

www.symform.com <www.symform.com>

Amount/Round: $1.5M/ Series A

Investors: OVP Venture Partners.

Details: Develops decentralized cloud computing systems. OVP Managing Directors Mark Ashida and Lucinda Stewart have joined the board.