FINANCING
Current Surgical of Irvine has received a $400,000 investment as part of its acceptance into the SciFounder Fellowship program for early career scientists who want to start their own business.
It was one of five companies out of 400 selected into the first cohort of the program, which is led by leadership hailing from Y Combinator, Color Genomics and Mammoth Biosciences.
The company is developing a micro-needle for use in minimally invasive surgeries. It aims to address liver cancer first, because tumors in the liver are often located near critical anatomy and thus difficult to perform surgery on.
“With Current Surgical’s technology, we are giving the tools doctors don’t have right now to treat a tumor that’s near critical anatomy, like arteries or bile ducts,” Chief Executive Al Mashal said.
The micro-needle is paired with X-ray guidance to reach its intended target. Once the needle is inserted into a tumor, it uses ultrasound energy to heat and precisely kill the tumor without affecting other vital organs and tissue.
The company has “the opportunity to deliver something that’s straightforward to use and allows surgeons to address previously un-addressable tumors,” added Chief Technology Officer Chris Wagner.
The company, part of the Wayfinder incubator at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, recently received $256,000 in a Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 grant from the National Science Foundation.
OnePlan, an event management software maker, raised $3.8 million in a Series A round of financing led by Pembroke VCT and Eppes Creek Ventures.
Proceeds from the round will support product development and international expansion plans.
OnePlan was founded in London in 2019. The company opened its U.S. headquarters in Laguna Beach in 2020, ahead of several planned partnerships in the Southern California region.
The company provides mapping and other visual planning tools to help event planning teams and their clients create one plan and shopping list of their event needs. Products span infrastructure, event staff and traffic management.
Subscriptions range from $35 to $69 a month with add-ons for premium features such as Venue Twin, a product that creates hyper-realistic 3D digital twins of venues using CAD designs and satellite imagery.
OnePlan unveiled a social distancing toolkit with Covid testing and vaccine passport checks as triathlons, festivals, sports games and other events return.
Over 2,000 events across 50 countries have used OnePlan. Clients include London soccer clubs Arsenal and Chelsea, the Brooklyn Nets and Commonwealth Stadium.
Bling Financial of Irvine has raised over $350,000 in a new round of financing.
The seed round of financing was led by Coinbase Ventures, which joins pre-seed backers Wavemaker Genesis, Gumi Cryptos Capital and Blocktower Capital. Regulatory filings indicate the company could raise up to $1 million in the new round.
Bling Financial is a developer of mobile games that allow users to earn Bitcoin rewards. In less than two years, it has amassed over 5 million users and expects to generate over $5 million in revenue in 2021.
The company also sells its own software development kit—including its Bitcoin rewards and fraud detection system—to other game developers.
Amy Wan, a former securities attorney, started Bling Financial in 2017 as a dispute-resolution company for smart contracts. The firm added software engineering Dan Rice, who serves as co-founder and chief technology officer, and pivoted to its micro-transaction gaming model in mid-2018.
LAUNCH
Bar Prep Buddy has launched its digital bar exam prep service.
The e-learning company designed its content to complement historically book-heavy materials and enable students to study anytime, anywhere.
The product offers a range of study topics such as torts and criminal procedure and is currently $20 a month.
Bar Prep Buddy believes it is “for a first-year law student on their first day of class, so they cannot only stay ahead of studies but also succeed in classes,” founder Shaun Sanders said.
Sanders earned his juris doctorate from Chapman University School of Law in 2015 and previously served as head representative for a national bar prep organization at Chapman Law. He’s also served as an investment analyst at Tech Coast Angels and is a senior adviser to Aliso Viejo-based business accelerator Octane.
The company is currently seeking tech-focused legal educators and is in talks with law schools ahead of an enterprise version of its application expected to launch next year.
Sanders added, “I believe I can offer law schools the ability to dial into the specific content within the specific body of law that isn’t quite clicking with a student. That enables the school to try to proactively address the student’s misunderstanding of legal concepts before heading into the bar, which would directly improve [the school’s] bar passage rate and overall ranking.”
NEW HIRES
Irvine-based camera software maker Mobilize Solutions has named Jason Norris its new head of media.
Norris was previously vice president of social for software firm Service Management Group. He has also served in marketing leadership roles at AMC Theatres, H&R Block and Sprint.
“His expertise in digital marketing and passion for interactive advertising comes at the right time as the company prepares for another major activation this fall,” the company said.
Mobilize Solutions is the creator of a platform that offers camera-generated media based on geolocation. It produces filters, stickers and GIFs to enhance photos taken on a smartphone.
The platform is similar to photo-sharing app SnapChat. However, Mobilize Solutions aims to let users edit their photos in their main camera app, rather than leaving to a third-party app. To that end, it plans to launch its software on millions of devices of a major wireless carrier this fall.
The company raised a $100,000 investment from the Tech Coast Angels OC in February and counts Irvine’s Cove Fund as a backer.
jCyte Inc. of Newport Beach brought on Adam Walsh as chief financial officer.
Walsh was most recently chief financial officer of biotech-focused investment bank Catalytic Life Sciences LLC. He was previously a managing director of biotech equity research at Stifel and Jeffries.
“I am thrilled to join jCyte and look forward to working closely with its team of highly skilled professionals with decades of pharmaceutical industry experience to ensure we successfully deliver our transformative jCell platform therapy to the many [retinitis pigmentosa] patients who currently have no treatment options,” Walsh said in a statement.
jCyte is developing a stem cell therapy for blinding-eye disease retinitis pigmentosa. The condition impacts an estimated 100,000 people in the U.S. and 1.9 million people worldwide.
The company is well-capitalized to take its jCell therapy to phase 3 trials. It received $50 million in upfront cash as part of a licensing deal it struck with Santen Pharmaceutical Co. last May. The total deal is valued up to $252 million including future milestone payments. It’s raised an additional $47 million since its 2012 inception.
