Private Equity Week Wire for 10/8

SANTA ROSA, CA – Fotiva Inc., a business dedicated todramatically simplifying and improving consumers’ digital photographyexperience, today announces the company’s formation. Fotiva boasts aseasoned and accomplished management team led by CEO and former IntuitSVP, Jim Heeger; a top-notch engineering team with leading digitalimaging expertise; and several pending patents. To date the company hasraised $4 million in funding led by the venture firm New EnterpriseAssociates.

GERMANTOWN, MD — Megisto Systems, a leading developer of carrier-class Mobile Internet infrastructure equipment, announced today that it has closed Series B funding from a top-tier syndicate of business partners. These new investors bring Megisto’s total capital commitment to more than $50 million. Venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners is the lead investor for this round and was joined by new investor New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Series A investors Columbia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Lucent Venture Partners also fully participated in the round. With this announcement, Megisto has closed an additional $21.6 million in funding since the company’s $12 million Series A in June of 2000. Megisto is slated to close on $17.7 million more, bringing the total capital committed to the company to more than $50 million.

MENLO PARK, CA — Doll Capital Management today announced that Carl Amdahl has joined the firm as a Technology Partner. Most recently Mr. Amdahl served as CTO of F5 Networks (Nasdaq:FFIV), where he was also a member of the Board of Directors. He was a founder of NetFRAME Systems, and served as Chairman and Chief Technical Officer from 1987 to 1996. He was a founder of Trilogy Systems Ltd., and served as Vice-Chairman and Director from 1981 to 1984. He was a founder of Magnuson Systems Inc., and served as Executive Vice President of Engineering and Director from 1976 to 1981.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — The Scandinavian venture-capital firm Slottsbacken has concluded a second investment of 5 million SEK in the Swedish-based Internet guardian company Secode. This new investment supplements the initial Slottsbacken funding of 8 MSEK in October last year, bringing the total investment in Secode by Slottsbacken to 13 MSEK.

WOBURN, MA — Acme Packet, an emerging company building a carrier-class solution for network service providers, today announced it has raised $16 million of second round funding, led by Menlo Ventures and including Canaan Partners. The capital will be used for the continued development, marketing and sales of Acme Packet’s products and services. The company also announced its executive team, an impressive group of professionals with proven expertise in IP networking, signaling protocols, distributed systems and high-availability architectures. Acme Packet is developing solutions that enable network service providers to optimally transport premium, interactive voice, video and multimedia applications across and between IP networks. Such applications include presence and instant calling/conferencing, IP PBX and Centrex, video conferencing, multimedia collaboration, interactive, multimedia Customer/Supplier Relationship Management (C/SRM), distance learning, gaming and many more. Both businesses and consumers, however, are demanding that these applications span multiple IP networks – public and private, wired and wireless. Facilitating the transport of these high value applications represents significant revenue and profit opportunity for service providers.

CORONA DEL MAR, CA — Miramar Venture Partners announced that Heiner Sussner Ph.D., will join Miramar as its fourth partner. Dr. Sussner currently serves as a Senior Managing Director for H&Q Asia Pacific, a global private equity firm with $1.8 billion under management. Dr. Sussner’s prior experience includes 16 years at IBM where he directed IBM Research’s advanced programs in storage technology and co-founded the corporate venture arm of IBM Europe.

LEHI, UTAH — NextPage Inc., a leader in Peer-to-Peer Business Networking, announced today that Oak Investment Partners, CIBC Capital Partners, Dominion Ventures, Intel Capital, Tidal Ventures and Visa International have invested $13 million in NextPage in a recent funding round led by Oak. In addition, NextPage has signed a four-year, global strategic alliance with Visa to formally explore opportunities to implement NextPage technology.

SAN FRANCISCO — Tenex Greenhouse Ventures LLC (theGreenhouse) today announced the first closing of its innovative life sciencesfund established to support new opportunities which leverage the knowledge andnetwork of the members of Tenex Medical Investors. The investors in thisclosing were members of Tenex Medical Investors, Sanderling Ventures Partnersof Menlo Park, CA and Diaz & Altschul of New York City. Tenex MedicalInvestors is the largest life-science angel investor network in the UnitedStates. This gives the Greenhouse access to the knowledge base of TenexMedical Investors, which includes over 180 of the most experienced technicaland managerial professionals in the life sciences field. This network willgive the Greenhouse a distinct advantage in its mission to identify andsupport compelling investment opportunities in the emerging field of lifesciences.