Christopher Calnan

It’s taking venture capitalists longer to cash out of startups, causing firms to invest more in their own portfolio companies than in new deals, data shows.
The increased use of so-called inside rounds, in which no new investors join in a private equity funding, not only means less capital for entrepreneurs seeking first-time funding, but also means tech startups are having a harder time determining a current valuation because a company’s valuation is often recalibrated as new investors join an investment round.
Experts say a vicious circle is being created as a result: An accurate valuation is critical in making a merger or acquisition deal happen, but with no new investors, most potential acquirers are taking a harder line on what a potential acquisition is truly worth — and that is slowing M&A deals, industry experts say.

Entrepreneur Jeff Vyduna launched his Cambridge company, PollEverywhere Inc., in April. But he realizes that the odds are against him finding a local investor and remaining in New England.
The three-person company developed an application designed for organizations to gather feedback through text messaging. But Vyduna, who dropped out of the MIT Sloan School of Management to found PollEverywhere with a $20,000 investment from micro venture capital firm Y Combinator, said he’s not expecting local investors to back his business.
That means a move to Silicon Valley, where angel investors are aplenty and the interest is stronger in pre-revenue, consumer-focused startups, which is Y Combinator’s sweet spot. Indeed, only one local VC firm has invested in any of Y Combinator’s 102 companies.

Virtualization technology has made its way to servers, applications and desktop computers.

Next week, a Westford-based tech company plans to fire up operations for a product that would flip-flop the conventional virtualization model with software that replicates the components of a laptop within the laptop itself.
Old Road Computing Corp. plans to publicly launch as Virtual Computer Inc., but the company isn’t revealing many specifics about its virtualization product, nor when it will be released.
The software would be designed to isolate a laptop’s four major components — hardware, operating system, applications and user data — and create versions on the laptop of those components that operate remotely, without a network connection, said CEO Dan McCall, who previously founded Guardent Inc., a Waltham-based security services firm.

With a business model that is about upscale, off-price and online, a Boston-based retailing company that started by selling off-price merchandise has expanded to high-end, invitation-only boutique sales, an approach to e-commerce that first caught on in Europe.
Retail Convergence Inc., backed with a $25 million funding round that closed in April, launched RueLaLa.com, a website that operates two- or three-day private sales for boutique stores. The high-end e-commerce business is the second website that Retail Convergence has launched as part of a plan that eventually calls for several such sites, CEO Ben Fischman said.
The RueLaLa business model is similar to one employed by France-based Vente-Privee.com, a 7-year-old company in which Boston-based Summit Partners has a 20 percent ownership stake. But it’s also a business model that is attracting many web-based imitators, mostly in Europe where off-brand stores such as Marshalls or Filene’s Basement are uncommon.

Inspired by the business world, Worcester State College is outsourcing its e-mail system to Google Inc. to cut costs and reduce a drain on support services.

The shift from having e-mail hosted on-site to having it managed by Google marks the first time a four-year college in New England has switched its e-mail system to Google’s Apps for Edu service.

The switch is the latest example of IT departments — which began in small and midsize businesses but have now moved to large enterprises and other traditional late-adopters, such as the college campus — becoming more comfortable with allowing third parties to manage systems formerly held strictly in-house.

Worcester State’s decision is expected to save the college up to $120,000, or 5 percent of its IT budget, the first year, and about $70,000 in subsequent years.

Replacing the college’s 6-year-old Microsoft Exchange system with Google has increased e-mail storage from 15MB to 6GB per user, and increased data storage from 250MB to 6GB, college CIO Donald Vescio said.

The switch was made last month, just after the spring semester ended.