Art Technology Group Inc., an e-commerce platform company, has tapped four finalists to compete for a $50,000 prize in its first ever e-commerce ingenuity business plan competition, the company said on Wednesday.

Cambridge, Mass.-based ATG (Nasdaq: ARTG) selected four business plans that each include an e-commerce element that is a critical element of the company's success.

The finalists are BestGiraffe, a Website for user generated advertising content; Clickity Split, a visual marketing and search engine; Minute Bank, a management system for prepaid mobile minutes; and TrustPilot, a Website that gives information to e-shoppers on product ratings and reviews.

Finalist presentations will take place in front of a panel of judges on April 29 and the first place winner will receive $50,000 in cash. An additional "People's Choice" winner will receive $10,000.

"We are thrilled with the volume and variety of well-crafted business plans we received. Our four finalists represent superior examples of creativity and innovation in next generation e-commerce experiences," said Cliff Conneighton, ATG senior vice president of marketing, in a statement.

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With the quality of our talent pool and the caliber of our business and political leadership, it’s not all doom and gloom. With home-grown powerhouses like Genzyme and Biogen leading the way, our position as a biotechnology cluster appears to have strengthened recently and we are increasingly attracting out-of-state employers who want to tap into the world-class scientific talent residing here. There are early signs of hope that we are well-positioned to lead in the nascent but potentially robust Green industry, with companies like Evergreen Solar and EnerNOC leading the way. And one of our most promising information technology "up-and-comers", Akamai, appears poised to achieve the magic $1 billion in sales in the next two to three years, dominating the Web content distribution market.

I am thus hopeful that we are on a stronger path in Massachusetts than ever before, so long as we have the continued leadership of the business, financial and political community to show the way.

Event based social network Going.com has taken an additional $5 million in funding, in a round led by the sites original investors General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

Going.com recently passed 500,000 users, up from 200,000 users in early June and an impressive feat considering the service currently only operates in four cities: New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

George Bell and Bob Davis from General Catalyst and Highland Capital respectively will remain on the Going.com board of directors.

Going.com competes with Minglenow, Socialzr and LateNightShots. Going.com was previously known as HeyLetsGo.

David Aronoff

General Partner

David is a General Partner at IDG Ventures Boston whose investment interests and experience include semiconductors, enterprise systems, and security sectors.

He currently represents IDG Ventures Boston on the boards of Acinion, CHil Semiconductor, and VidSys. David was recognized by Forbes on their prestigious Midas List as one of the top 100 venture capitalists in 2004 and 2005.

David's blog, the diary of a Geek VC, can be found at www.geekvc.com.



Background

Prior to joining IDG Ventures in June 2005, David spent nearly a decade focusing on early-stage investing at Greylock Partners where he led several of the firm's successful investments in the communications and systems markets. During his time at Greylock, he built a strong investment track record including investments in Akara (acquired by CIENA), Cimaron (acquired by AMCC), e-Dial (acquired by Alcatel), Ikanos (IPO), Sandburst (acquired by Broadcom), SiTera (acquired by Vitesse), Xedia (acquired by Lucent) and Xros (acquired by Nortel).

Prior to Greylock, David held management roles at Chipcom, an enterprise network equipment vendor where he led development efforts in Ethernet bridges, switches and routers. While working full-time on his MBA, David co-founded the Attitude Network (acquired by TheGlobe.com), an Internet content startup with the top two game sites of the day. Earlier in his career he held technical positions at Bell Labs where he developed secure network systems for DoD customers.

"The distinction between what Facebook and an MMO looks like is going to disappear," Wu says. "All social interaction online will be driven by game mechanics. My goal in doing these conferences and blogging about this subject and trying to find companies to invest in is, how do I bring these two segregated universes together? There are all these Web 2.0 conferences, and Web entrepreneurs basically talking amongst themselves in this insular environment, and I see the same thing in the gaming industry, which has always been a cottage industry and very segregated. I see so many different parallels going on in these two communities, and my goal is to bring them more closely together."

128 has largely died as a haven for startups, just some VCs left behind there now. But meanwhile Cambridge seems like it has hit a tipping point. Now Google Boston is here, Ideo moved in from Lexington to Central Square, and there are even rumors some of the VC crew out in Waltham may be eyeing the area.

It seems that the combination of Harvard & MIT, the relatively (for this
close to the city) inexpensive rent, and efforts like Cambridge
Innovation Center (CIC) have really helped spur this growth. And I don't want to underestimate the help CIC has given to this effort. CIC started out as a doomed incubator concept and was reborn after the dot-bomb as a mixture of flexspace & entreprenuer support network.  They now take up something like six floors of a fourteen floor building and host 100+ companies.

Ambient was born in CIC in those dark of 2001, and they are still here now. Who else is here? I pinged Tim and got a quick list of a couple of the guys I could run into in the kitchen:
- iSkoot (CRV-backed VOIP over your cell phone, including Skype)
- Great Point Energy (raised a $30m A round from Kleiner and others to gassify coal)
- Visible Measures (General Catalyst-backed metrics for online video)
- Sconex (MySpace for the high school set)

Hell, there's even an NPR show (currently being recorded in Second Life) that's on the third floor. Walk out of the building and you can hit Tabblo, Vanu, Harmonix, Brightcove, E-Ink and many others in less then a mile radius.

The New York Times’ article, When it comes to innovation, geography is destiny, Greg Zachary, a former colleague writes that “where you live often trumps who you are.”

While I was hoping to read a piece about how your geography can define your innovation and technology. Instead it turned into a piece that took an all familiar route: Silicon Valley is destiny manifest, since it attracts the best ideas and there are venture capitalists who are ready to fund them. Sure, Silicon Valley’s advantages cannot be underscored, but everything isn’t as black and white.

To argue that India and China will replace SV as the center of tech universe is just a futile exercise. And to argue that innovations happen more in SV is also not quite on the mark either. Lets use Zachary’s own examples.

I visited the thriving code-writing communities in Tallinn, Estonia; Reykjavik, Iceland; and Helsinki, Finland, three Nordic cities that were being transformed by advances in cellphones, mobile computing and the Internet. Their tight-knit network of engineers seemed poised to create the tools required to make good on a much-hyped prediction: the death of distance… Yet these Nordic innovators were blindsided by two Silicon Valley engineers whose tools we experience whenever we “Google” the Web.

Is that really so?

Everytime my Nokia phone rings in New Delhi, though someone called me on my New York number trying to reach me in my San Francisco office, it proves that the distance is dead. And remember Skype! It was a nordic creation that killed the distance, and for a few million, made voice calls free.

As Vinnie reminds us, an ecosystem is not just the innovators, but the actual end users, who have a very active role to play in defining what innovations succeed.

For a while the technology was easily available to those of us in the West, especially in the US. Naturally, Silicon Valley, became the super hub. Now Asians and Europeans are adopting faster broadband and mobile technologies, and it is natural to see innovations come from these locales.

No wonder I am in 100% agreement with the title of Zachary’s piece: When it comes to innovation, geography is destiny!

In particular we need to build huge, standalone companies in the northeast. We need more independent, large-scale companies in gaming, consumer web services, consumer products and even consumer electronics.

It's going to happen. I believe that. These days I'm seeing super Boston/NYC entrepreneurs taking on enormous ideas. Some are part of our portfolio and some aren't.  And I'm super excited about that.

Google’s astonishing rise and Apple’s reinvention are reminders that, when it comes to great ideas, location is crucial. “Face-to-face is still very important for exchange of ideas, and nowhere is this exchange more valuable than in Silicon Valley,” says Paul M. Romer, a professor in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford who is known for studying the economics of ideas.

In short, “geography matters,” Professor Romer said. Give birth to an information-technology idea in Silicon Valley and the chances of success seem vastly higher than when it is done in another ZIP code.

Boston's largest Harvard-affiliated hospitals are setting up a $35 million venture capital fund, an aggressive effort to push their inventions out of the laboratory and into the market.

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Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, through their nonprofit corporate parent, Partners HealthCare, launched the Partners Innovation Fund this year with an initial installment of about $3 million and plan to reach the target size within 10 years.

The first investment the fund made was small, between $200,000 and $500,000, and in a product of modest medical importance: removable tattoo ink. Partners says investments in drugs and devices targeting disease will follow.

"The main goal is to get the technology to the right place faster and not have early science languishing because you can't find $200,000," said Christopher H. Colecchi, vice president of research ventures and licensing at Partners, who oversees the venture fund.

The Web Innovators Group (WebInno) is comprised of people engaged in
internet and mobile innovation in the Boston area.  We aim to support
entrepreneurs, visionaries, and creative thinkers in the field by
holding events which foster community interaction.

Our regular meetings provide a forum for entrepreneurs from
self-funded/early-stage startups to present new services to their peers,
as well as an opportunity for everyone in the community to share and
exchange ideas.

Everyone interested is welcome to join us for our upcoming events.
Attendance is free, but RSVP'ing on our wiki is encouraged.

WebInno was founded and is currently led by David Beisel of Venrock.  We are currently seeking other leaders and
participants to help contribute to and shape the group.  If you are
interested, please contact us.