Google’s venture unit looks to N.E.
Search giant backing Mass., N.H. start-ups
Since it was launched last year, the venture capital arm of Internet search titan Google Inc. has invested millions in 10 high-tech companies, four of which are in New England: one in New Hampshire and three in Greater Boston.
“I think that area in particular has always been a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship,’’ said Bill Maris, a partner in Google Ventures, which held a media teleconference yesterday to discuss its first wave of investments.
Google launched the fund with the goal of investing $100 million per year. Maris would not say whether Google Ventures has invested the full amount in its first year, but he said the fund continues to search for companies with the potential to launch new industries or transform existing ones. “We look for people who are working on big problems,’’ Maris said.
The New England start-ups being backed by Google include Recorded Future, a Cambridge company that analyzes time and event information from websites; English Central Inc., of Lexington, which uses YouTube videos and speech-recognition software to teach English to nonnative speakers; SCVNGR Inc., of Boston, developer of location-based game software; and Adimab Inc., a Lebanon, N.H., company that uses computers to identify antibodies that can be used in treating a host of diseases.
Recorded Future founder Christopher Ahlberg declined to talk about his company and would not disclose how much it received from Google Ventures. Adimab chief executive Tillman Gerngross said his company had received $8 million from Google in exchange for 3 percent of the company, making Adimab’s total value $267 million.
Google Ventures’s two other New England portfolio companies would not disclose how much they received, but executives said the chance to leverage Google’s technical expertise was just as important to them as the mon ey.
English Central’s chief executive, Alan Schwartz, said his company has enjoyed good access to Google’s YouTube video service, making it easier to create language training exercises based on popular online videos.
Seth Priebatsch, chief executive of SCVNGR, said that when the company began building a new user interface, Google sent one of its top designers to Boston to assist. “It’s probably one of the most valuable things that any venture firm could have done for us,’’ Priebatsch said.
Adimab’s Gerngross said Google’s expertise in running massive computer centers could help his company improve the performance of its antibody-hunting system.
Maris said Google Ventures’s ultimate goal is the same as any other venture investor’s: to eventually cash in when the companies are acquired or their stock is sold to the public. “This is a financially driven, for-profit venture firm,’’ he said.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
