Just two days after its most recent and biggest fundraising, VC-backed pharmaceutical company Chimerix Inc. has locked in millions more in the form of a federal contract. The Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority (BARDA) has committed funding of $24.8 million to a medical treatment of smallpox, which could grow to more than $80 million [...]

As two of the venture industry’s founders, they were a hit Wednesday night in the showroom of Tesla Motors, where Johnson received the first annual Innovation Catalyst Award from the VC Taskforce and a standing ovation from around 100 VCs.

But the most entertaining part of the evening was a long speech by Bill Draper, age 81, on how he and Johnson, who met working at Inland Steel in Indiana in the 1950s and are still best friends, borrowed $75,000 each from their families and started Draper and Johnson — one of the first venture capital firms in Silicon Valley — in 1962, when “venture capital” was a word that most people had never heard.

“We drove into the orchards — we’d each leased a Pontiac — and knocked on doors. We said, ‘We’d like to talk to the president,’” Draper said. “If it had a sign that said ‘lemon distributor’ we avoided it, but if it looked like something electronic, we’d give it a shot.

“We’d say, ‘We’re in the venture capital business,’ and they’d say, ‘What’s that?’

If they or a friend or family member have had a medical problem that you help solve, your chance of getting funding may improve, according to a video made recently by the National Venture Capital Association.

This was not the point of the video — the NVCA made it to highlight innovation created by venture capitalists in light of the threatened regulation of their funds by Congress. But VCs’ experience with healthcare problems does influence their funding decisions, according to what they said on-screen.

Kate Mitchell of Scale VP, for example, backed a company that made catheters to zip-close vericose veins because her family has a history of diabetes. “The fact that we took something that was a nutty professor idea and made it accessible to my mother and her friends, and are really solving a problem out there, is pretty exciting,” she said.

Napo Pharmaceuticals Inc. of South San Francisco has raised an undisclosed amount of VC funding from Asset Management Company. The capital will be used to fund a wholly-owned subsidiary of Napo, which is in late-stage clinical development of an anti-diarrheal compound.

Edvantage Group, an events agency based in Brighton, England with backing by Alliance Venture, Asset Management Co., Foinco Invest, Northzone Ventures and Reitan Invest, has purchased the e-learning division of Futuremedia. Press release: BRIGHTON, England, Sept. 24, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Futuremedia plc (OTCBB:FMDAY), a leading design, exhibition and events agency, announced today that it [...]