Tuesday, October 4, 2011

InnoCentive keeps adding to $7.5M planned financing

By Rodney H. Brown

Waltham-based InnoCentive Inc., a developer of an incentive platform technology, has boosted to $3.4 million a previously reported funding round that is planned for a top end of $7.5 million, according to federal documents.

Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show that InnoCentive took the first tranche of the round in August, pulling in $844,000. In the intervening month and a half, the company has bumped up the round three times, to the current $3.4 million level.

Since that first tranche, InnoCentive has gone from eight backers in the round to a massive syndicate of 53 investors. That is a pattern the company has used before. In August  2009, InnoCentive raised $7.3 million in new equity financing, adding about 50 new angel investors in an extension to a Series B round of funding.

According to InnoCetnive CEO Dwayne Spradlin, the new round is made up of both angels and institutional investors, but “mostly angels.” Spradlin declined to talk further about the round, but did say it would completely close out within a month, and would have more details then.

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive announced in August that it was teaming up with Popular Science to help promote science education through a $25,000 challenge. Under the deal, anyone can try to design a science lesson plan for students in grades 6-8 through the Popular Science Open Innovation Pavilion, available on both InnoCentive.com and PopSci.com.