Can you name the two Boston-area companies that just went public ? That would be Enanta Pharmaceuticals and Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals, both from Watertown, both with IPOs on the Nasdaq, and both with over $100 million valuations. Yet neither is close to being a household name. See, in the biotech world, companies are a little quieter than their Facebook tech cousins. Their stock also tends to be a little more stable. And by the way, those are the only IPOs in the entire biotech industry this month.
In other innovation news….
-- IT performance management is heating up as a tech sector , with companies like AppNeta and CloudHealth getting new venture money.
-- Our deal of the week is a $240 million partnership between Cambridge startup Moderna Therapeutics and drug giant AstraZeneca. Moderna is getting the cash upfront to develop a new class of drugs that could be produced in the body.
-- Xconomy’s Mobile Madness conference this week surfaced some of the big themes in mobile tech , including new kinds of app strategies, advertising, connected devices, and the rise of mobile games.
-- And speaking of gaming, the PAX East expo opens in Boston today , and a number of local studios are showing off new games. One of these is Tiny Tycoons, a location-based mobile game set in a virtual world from Cambridge startup The Tap Lab. Those of us who can barely handle the real world will stick to our day jobs.
