Dan Primack

Tullis Health Investors (fka Tullis-Dickerson) last week informed limited partners that Tom Dickerson and Joan Neuscheler had resigned as general partners of the firm’s second and third funds, peHUB has learned. The firm confirmed the resignations in a brief statement, adding that “Both had previously indicated in January 2008 that they would not participate in future Tullis-Dickerson funds and had resigned from Tullis-Dickerson & Co., Inc. in January 2009 and September 2008, respectively.”

Craig Cooper has stepped down as head of Saban Ventures, peHUB has learned. He will continue to work with the group in an advisory role, but also will pursue unrelated ventures. For example, Cooper's LinkedIn profile lists his current role a managing partner of something called Cooper Capital Partners (unclear if it's a real firm, or just a personal investment vehicle). Cooper is a veteran venture capitalist and entrepreneur, having been a venture partner with VantagePoint Venture Partners, a partner with Softbank Capital and co-founder of Boost Mobile. In early 2008 he was recruited by Haim Saban, the Israeli media mogul whose companies produced such things as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the theme music to Inspector Gadget. Saban already had a Los Angeles-based investment firm focused on acquisitions and later-stage deals, but asked Cooper to help launch an early-stage practice focused on digital media. Saban also hired Blueprint Ventures alum Richard Yen as a San Francisco-based director.

Yesterday I asked you not to sign an NVCA petition asking Congress to retain current tax treatment of carried interest (i.e., keep it as capital gains instead or ordinary income). But tons of folks obviously did so anyway. Most of the signees are venture capitalists, but there also are some entrepreneurs and service providers in there. Here is a copy of the letter sent today to every U.S. Senator, including more than 1,700 signatures.

The National Venture Capital Association is circulating a petition that asks senators to maintain existing carried interest tax treatment for venture capital returns. In other words, the NVCA wants general partners investment profits to keep getting taxed at a rate around half that of ordinary income. The trade group has gotten more than 1,500 signatures so far, with today being the last day to add your John Doerr. I sincerely hope you don't do so. To explain why, I've posted the petition after the jump with my thoughts in regular type:

Chipmaker Wintegra filed for an IPO on Friday, making it the sixth VC-backed company to do so since we last looked at the VC-backed IPO pipeline. The other newbies were Ellie Mae, RealPage, Tangoe, Amysis Biotech and Neophotonics). There also have been five VC-backed companies that went public during that time period -- Convio, Alpha & Omega, Codexis, Alimera Biosciences and SPS Commerce -- and one that canceled its offering (Telegent). That means the VC-backed IPO pipeline remains static with 42 registrants, although the net targeted raise increases by $36 million. Overall, VC-backed companies in registration to go public are aiming for more than $4.6 billion. Get full pipeline after the jump...

One of the more buzzworthy talks at TED 2009 came from David Merrill, whose MIT research project revolved around cookie-size “smart” tiles that could be used as the basis for a tabletop gaming console. Not like an iPad or those old sit-down Pac-Man games, but rather something that melds the best of offline educational gaming with modern […]

Last month we wrote about Corefino, an outsourced accounting company that was heading toward a divorce with its venture capitalists. And, like with most splits, each side blamed the other (CEO felt VCs didn’t understand the biz, VCs felt CEO couldn’t run lean enough ship). Now we have resolution. The company today will announce that most of its assets have been acquired by a group of private investors led by Virginia Turezyn, a former venture capitalist with American Capital Strategies, Constellation Ventures and Infinity Capital. Also participating is Corefino CEO Karen Watts and Renee Courington, founder of IT support company All Covered. Both Turezyn and Courington will join the Corefino management team.

It's been 13 years since Mitch Thrower helped launch The Active Network, an online community and application technology provider for the active lifestyle/sports market. Now he's back with Bump.com, a reverse communications platform that "allows consumers and companies to communicate with people and vehicles via unique identifiers." Thrower's new company so far has raised $1 million in seed funding, from Digimedia, Tal Kerret (chairman of Oberon Media), Christophe Vandaele (chairman of Vandaele Holdings), Charlie Baker (partner with DLA Piper), Bill Hein (former SVP at EMI) and Bob Ezrin (music producer). It also is in talks to raise a $6 million Series B round and has made an acquisition in the imaging technology space. "Bump is like AAA meets Facebook meets communications infrastructure," Thrower says. "Kind of like a national, social-networked 1-800-How's-My-Driving?"

An OpenTable for takeout? That’s the new plan for Exit41, a Massachusetts-based company that has quietly raised $6 million in VC recap funding. New investors include GrandBanks Capital, Contour Venture Partners and Dace Ventures, while existing shareholder Fidelity Investments also participated (others, like Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, did not). The company was launched in 1998 as Elm Square Technologies, as point-of-sale enterprise software for restaurants and caterers to manage orders. It later changed its name to Exit41, and began supplying fast-food chains with technology that better enabled drive-thru ordering systems.

Apple yesterday acquired Siri, a virtual personal assistant for the iPhone. No financial terms were disclosed, but a source tells peHUB that it was in the ballpark of $200 million. Siri was a VC-backed spinout of SRI International, a non-profit R&D lab whose past hits include Nuance Communications and Intuitive Surgical. The person in charge of the group's ventures, licensing and strategic programs is Norman Winarsky, who also sat on the board of Siri. So we've got five questions for him: 1. Siri was borne of the much-larger CALO project. What convinced you that this sliver was right for spinout and commercialization? Our venture process innovates constantly not simple of technology, but on what are the disruptive technological solutions we can help provide. And, typical of any tech solution, you must have a market vertical that makes sense and where there is a terribly important need. In the information technology space it was clear, even during CALO, that the concept of a virtual personal assistant was a great market opportunity. We originally wondered if we should go into the mobile phone or PC space, but we had one very telling offsite where we decided mobile because of the market pain. It’s so difficult to ask for Web services when on a phone – particularly if you’re in motion -- whereas on a PC you can just type.