Technical.ly Philly » Startups

Curalate wins Philebrity’s Business of the Year [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 08:30:25 +0000

Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup parses out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with a weekly email newsletter by clicking here and selecting the Startup Roundup button or follow Startup Roundup’s RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES

Ticketleap [find our previous coverage here]: The Center City-based ticketing startup announced integration with Passbook on iOS 6, according to a release.

Solve Media [find our previous coverage here]: Center City advertising startup built a most epic Rube Goldberg machine for its holiday video. Check it out below.

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WHAT’S AFFECTING STARTUPS

Tax policy [find our previous coverage here]: Councilman Bill Green introduced a bill last week that would tax software companies only on sales made inside the city, we reported this week. Find our analysis here.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Whims [find our previous coverage here]: The local startup, which calls itself “Instagram for words,” gets featured in Geekadelphia.

Curalate [find our previous coverage here]: The Pinterest analytics firm based in University City won Philebrity’s award for Business of the Year. We’re not bitter at all. (Curalate also won the Philly Geek Award for Startup of the Year.) Also check out Curalate cofounders in the hilarious First Round Capital holiday video, which also features the cofounders of local startup Perceptual Networks and the Monetate team (in a barn).

SnipSnap [find our previous coverage here]: Keystone Edge and Nibletz cover the couponing app’s recent update to version 2.0, which we covered last week.

Monetate [find our previous coverage here]: An infographic by the Conshohocken ecommerce optimization company gets named as one of Econsultancy’s best infographics of 2012. In other news, Monetate cofounder David Bookspan, who also cofounded DreamIt Ventures, gets profiled in Keystone Edge.

Clutch: Try this new mobile shopping app that we covered this week. It was built by a startup based out of Lansdale, Pa.

Belly: A Chicago-based loyalty rewards app recently expanded to Philly, we reported this week.

First Round Capital launches “common app” for its portfolio companies [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 08:00:53 +0000

WHAT’S AFFECTING STARTUPS

First Round Capital’s Common App [find our previous coverage of First Round here]: Venture capital firm First Round Capital launched a “common app” for its portfolio companies, managing partner Josh Kopelman wrote on his blog. It’s one application that engineering students can use to apply for a job at First Round’s more than 170 portfolio companies. Check it out here.

Minority entrepreneurs [find our previous coverage here]: We asked the entrepreneurs who were part of DreamIt Access, DreamIt Ventures’ minority-led startup program: what’s the hardest thing about being a minority entrepreneur? Here’s what they said.

The longevity of Philly’s tech scene: Longtime Philly tech scene member Mike Krupit wonders if Philly’s current tech scene will last longer than the first.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Co-Ed Supply [find our previous coverage here]: The monthly subscription service for college students gets a shout in Business Insider’s list of “50 Great Holiday Gifts Under $50.”

Curalate [find our previous coverage here]: The Pinterest analytics firm based in University City gets more love from Business Insider, which named them one of the coolest businesses in America. The startup is also partnering with The Recording Academy for a social media contest that’s giving away tickets to the Grammy’s, according to a release.

SnipSnap [find our previous coverage here]: Check out SnipSnap’s version 2.0, which CEO Ted Mann told us has been five months in the making. Read about the new features on the SnipSnap blog. The update has gotten love from TechCrunch and BetaKit, which also reported that the Callowhill-based couponing app has hit 350,000 users.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES

Lokalty [find our previous coverage here]: The Center City-based local loyalty rewards startup is shutting down — here’s why. The team is pivoting to a local business discovery platform, we reported this week.

ElectNext [find our previous coverage here]: The NYC/Philly/SF politics startup is retiring its 2012 candidate matcher, according to a blog post, and is working on new features with an eye toward state and local races.

Vineloop [find our previous coverage here]: Check out this new mobile app from a South Jersey startup that promises to deliver recommendations only from friends that you trust, we reported this week.

Monetate’s hiring boom named as one of Inquirer’s top business stories of 2012 [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:30:05 +0000

WHAT’S AFFECTING STARTUPS

Bootstrapping [find our previous coverage here]: Why bootstrap in Philly? We spoke to a handful of entrepreneurs to find out. Find our story here, featuring Mike Krupit of Real Food Works, Chris Alfano and John Fazio of Jarv.us, Yasmine Mustafa of 123LinkIt, a WordPress plugin she sold last fall to Netline, and the Penn undergrads behind Firefly.

Philly Startup Leaders [find our previous coverage here]: Is the PSL listserv “losing its mojo”? That was the question posed by one community member last week. Check out this infographic by Ben Farahmand, who mapped the frequency of terms used on the listserv to attempt to answer the question.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Monetate [find our previous coverage here]: The ecommerce optimization company was named on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s list of the “top business stories of 2012.” “Monetate’s Help Wanted ads on Paoli Local trains,” the Inquirer’s Joe DiStefano wrote. “More proof that your kids should study computer science instead of stuff like political science, or marketing, or ‘communications,’ whatever that is.” [Editor's Note: And, yeah, you can find on our jobs board]

DreamIt Ventures companies: Two companies that just graduated from DreamIt’s fall Philly cycle got shouts this past week. Betterific, a customer feedback site, was featured in TheNextWeb and NinjaThat, a vetted jobs board for students, was featured in SoCalTech. Neither startup is staying in Philly. Read about the rest of the DreamIt Ventures companies that recently graduated in our story here.

HigherNext [find our previous coverage here]: Guy Friedman, founder and CEO of the startup that created a standardized test for business knowledge, was featured in Keystone Edge. HigherNext left Callowhill incubator Venturef0rth for Bethlehem, Pa. this fall.

AboutOne [find our previous coverage here]: Joanne Lang, founder of Paoli, Pa.-based organizer app, was featured in Keystone Edge.

ElectNext [find our previous coverage here]: The Philadelphia Business Journal features the New York City and Philadelphia-based politics startup (behind a paywall).

WHO’S MAKING MOVES

Cloudmine [find our previous coverage here]: The Callowhill-based mobile app backend is now focusing on enterprise businesses, we reported last week. It also recently hit its 1 million end-user mark, said CEO Brendan McCorkle, meaning that more than 1 million people have now used apps built with Cloudmine.

SnipSnap [find our previous coverage here]: SnipSnap, the couponing app based in Callowhill, just launched a new version of its iOS app, according to a spokeswoman. The update allows users to bundle coupons and to follow other users.

Yorn [find our previous coverage here]: The real-time feedback startup relocated from West Conshohocken to Center City West, we reported yesterday, citing Philly’s talent pool and Councilman Bill Green’s proposed bill to ease the tax burden on software companies.

Innovation Choice: This Q&A portal for researchers and scientists, which has yet to launch, recently relocated from San Francisco to Philly, we reported this week. CEO Robert Arauz said it’s because his girlfriend just started attending Wharton.

Orhea: This health-based ecommerce and gift-giving site, headquartered in the Northeast, launched recently, we reported this week.

Monetate named one of the best places to work in Pa. [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:30:42 +0000

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Monetate [find our previous coverage here]: The ecommerce optimization company was named one of the Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania, according to a Monetate blog post.

Spruceling: The current DreamIt Ventures company that lets users buy and sell gently used baby clothes gets featured in TechCrunch.

Curalate [find our previous coverage here]: The Pinterest analytics firm is in the running for Philebrity’s “Business of the Year” award, and psst, so are we (Technically Media is our parent company). We won’t try to sway you… In other Curalate news, CEO Apu Gupta was quoted in a Digital Trends story about the Pinterest and Instagram economy. Digital Trends predicts we’ll be seeing Curalate for Instagram soon.

ElectNext [find our previous coverage here]: The New York City and Philly-based politics startup’s CEO Keya Dannenbaum spoke at TedxWomen on a panel of women who are “using technology to transform democracy.”

Real Food Works [find our previous coverage here]: The healthy eating meal subscription service based in Conshohocken and New York City got featured on PHL17. Watch the video below.

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SnipSnap [find our previous coverage here]: The Callowhill-based couponing app gets featured in the Washington Post’s TechBits column.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES

Kembrel [find our previous coverage here]: The ecommerce startup that also has two Philly brick and mortar storefronts is opening another store in Wayne, Pa., according to Patch and Kembrel’s Facebook.

ThingWorx [find our previous coverage here]: The Exton, Pa.-based company that focuses on the “Internet of things” was chosen to work with State College, Pa. traffic safety company All Traffic Systems to develop applications that allow law enforcement agencies to remotely monitor and interact with traffic safety signs, according to a release.

DuckDuckGo [find our previous coverage here]: Gabriel Weinberg, founder of the Paoli, Pa.-based search engine, said that Google is unfairly using its power in the market to hurt competition, according to Reuters. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating similar complaints from Google critics, the article said.

Firefly [find our previous coverage here]: The screen-sharing startup run by three Penn undergrads raised $20,0o0 in its first round of funding from First Round Capital‘s student-run Dorm Room Fund, we reported yesterday.

Lokalty also named one of Philly’s coolest new businesses, plus features on CallGrader, Wodify, Charity Gift Market, SnipSnap [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:30:23 +0000

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Charity Gift Market [find our previous coverage here]: The socially-minded ecommerce site based in Camden, N.J. gets featured in the Philadelphia City Paper‘s annual gift guide.

Lokalty [find our previous coverage here]: Our sincere apologies, as the local retail rewards startup was featured as one of Philly’s Coolest New Businesses by Business Insider (we reported on the list last week), but we failed to mention it.

CallGrader [find our previous coverage here]: The current DreamIt Ventures company that focuses on call-tracking gets featured in the Silicon Hills News. CallGrader came from San Antonio, Tx., and is currently seeking funding, which will determine where the startup is headquartered, according to the report. The team of four has applied to Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners for funding but hopes to find investment in San Antonio, so the founders don’t have to relocate, they said.

SnipSnap [find our previous coverage here]: The couponing app based out of Venturef0rth in Callowhill was featured on The Today Show recently, according to a tweet.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES

Wodify [find our previous coverage here]: Wodify, the South Jersey crossfit app, teamed up with the Aspire crossfit team to build a house with Habitat for Humanity, according to a release.

Curalate and Kembrel named two of Philly’s coolest new businesses [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:30:43 +0000

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Curalate, Kembrel, Brideside: Business Insider just released its list of the 25 coolest new businesses in Philadelphia. The list is food-heavy, with at least half of the list being restaurants or bars, but Pinterest analytics firm Curalate, ecommerce shop Kembrel and bridesmaid dress-focused ecommerce shop Brideside made the cut. Not to get too picky, but Brideside won’t be a Philadelphia company for long. The current DreamIt Ventures startup is moving back to its homebase of Chicago, the cofounders told us, once the cycle ends next month.

SnipSnap: The couponing app is being billed as one of the best apps for Black Friday by dozens of local news outlets, like Metro, the Memphis Daily News and YourErie.

Charlie: This DreamIt Ventures company that provides users with information about personal contacts was named one of “The World’s Most Promising Companies” by CNBC. The startup is originally from Chicago, but we hear from cofounder Aaron Frazin that the team is deciding whether to return to Chicago or stay here. So, psst, tell Frazin why he should stay.

ElectNext: Our frenemies over at Geekadelphia chatted with Dave Zega of the political matchmaking startup about what’ s next for the company after the election and more.

DuckDuckGo gets featured in the Washington Post, and more news from Real Food Works, Cipher Prime and Cloudmine [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:30:59 +0000

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

DuckDuckGo: Media outlets can’t stop talking about the Paoli-based search engine that says it won’t track your searches. Seemingly spurred by its recent experiment that tested the theory that there’s no such thing as impersonal Google results, DuckDuckGo got a major shout in a feature in the Washington Post, as well as nods in DiscoveryNews and SearchEngineLand. Also take a peek inside DuckDuckGo’s offices and hear what’s new with the startup in our story here.

Real Food Works: The healthy lifestyle startup that delivers meals to your doorstep recently announced its full launch and got some love in Flying Kite. The article notes that the company is hiring.

Cipher Prime: The indie game developers based in Old City won Pocket Gamer‘s iOS or Android Game of the Week with their game Splice: Tree of Life, according to their blog. Splice was also chosen for The Humble Bundle, a choose-your-own-price package of games whose proceeds in part go to a charity of your choosing, according to the Cipher Prime blog.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES

Cloudmine: The Callowhill mobile backend startup is all about partnerships. Its latest is with Singly, an aggregated social API platform, according to a release. Cofounder Brendan McCorkle also has a post up on the Cloudmine blog about how to “put together a killer Startup Weekend project.” And anyway, McCorkle would know: he met cofounder Marc Weil at a Startup Weekend.

Voters reluctant to take a stand on energy, foreign policy issues, according to ElectNext data [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:30:07 +0000

MUST READS

What’s the number one issue that ElectNext users decline to take a stand on? Energy followed by foreign policy, according to the startup’s blog. The data is based on what percentage of questions users skipped an issue. Check out ElectNext’s blog for more election analysis.

In other ElectNext news, read the story of how the startup was founded over at BusinessWeek. Also check out ElectNext CEO Keya Dannenbaum‘s opinion piece on DailyMuse about how targeted marketing is bad for governments.

Get more election analysis from local startups over at Monetate‘s engineering blog. Turns out Pinterest users are really into Romney (also see: Ann Romney’s huge on Pinterest, according to Curalate) and Chrome users are more likely to vote for Obama.

GIVE A GLANCE

DuckDuckGo pushes on with its experiments to see how skewed Google results are depending on your previous searches. Find the latest results here. The Wall Street Journal did its own study and found similar results.

Check out how Conshohocken’s Monetate handled Hurricane Sandy in this feature from FastCompany.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Curalate CEO Apu Gupta has a Q&A over at CassandraDaily, in which he reveals that he loves startup Happy Socks “for giving [his] feet flair.”

Kwelia is busy pitching, according to a tweet. The real estate data startup was pitching for NestGSV, a Silicon Valley incubator.

Metalayer CEO Jon Gosier gets featured in AfriCulture and talks about his earlier venture, Appfrica, that was eventually combined with Metalayer.

Monetate named 8th fastest growing local company [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:30:42 +0000

MUST READS

Monetate, the Conshohocken-based personalization platform for online marketers, was named the eighth fastest growing company in the Philadelphia region, as per the Philadelphia 100′s list. Other familiar faces on the list include Center City web design shop Zivtech (#20), Center City healthcare payment startup InstaMed (#32) and NoLibs SEO shop SEER Interactive (#44). Monetate was also recently featured in Fast Company.

GIVE A GLANCE

Real Food Works, the Conshohocken-based healthy food subscription service, officially launches, according to a release, while TruckyLove, the Lancaster County-based food truck geolocation service, announces its beta.

Kwelia, the real estate data startup that recently completed a stint at the Startup Chile accelerator, has just moved in to Rittenhouse coworking spot Benjamin’s Desk, according to a tweet.

Pinterest analytics firm Curalate launched a new pin-scheduling feature for its clients, according to its blog. And don’t miss Curalate’s infographic visualizing the presidential election through Pinterest.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Johnson’s Bedtime Baby Sleep app, built by local developer Bula, who works out of Indy Hall, was recently featured in EveryDayHealth.

RJMetrics‘ cofounder Bob Moore has a blog post on Tech Crunch about “lessons for data-driven businesses.” Speaking of RJMetrics, here’s a recap of its internal hackathon.

Current DreamIt Ventures company CloudConfidence is now called Cirrimize (perhaps a play on words referencing the cirrus cloud?). CEO Khushboo Shah, who has previously described her company as “Mint.com for cloud usage,” spoke at the StartupPHL press conference — watch a video here.

Philly’s women-owned firms earn revenues of $28.6M+ [Startup Roundup]

Juliana Reyes — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:30:45 +0000

MUST READS

Best cities for female founders? Forbes names Philly number 9 (cities like Dallas, Tex., New York City and Washington, D.C. topped the list). According to Forbes, Philly has more than 153,000 women-owned firms with revenues surpassing $28.6 million.

GIVE A GLANCE

Whims, the Philly startup billing itself as “Instagram for words,” gets featured in TechCrunch. We last covered Whims when it demoed at September’s Philly Tech Meetup.

Another Philly startup got a mention in TechCrunch this week: Wizehive. The cloud-based business app startup demoed at the Dublin Web Summit, along with nearly 100 other startups, according to TechCrunch. Wizehive has also been growing its team, according to a release, and is still hiring.

PitchSwap, an event where people exchange business ideas and pitch them for one another, has expanded to San Francisco with Philly-founded startup LaunchRock hosting the event. The competition is a pet project of Startup Weekend co-organizer and local entrepreneur Brad Oyler.

Don’t miss our update on political startup ElectNext, which has opened offices in New York City and San Francisco as well as launched a new local politics effort in Philly. Check out Flying Kite and IEEE Spectrum for more on ElectNext.

Kwelia, the real estate data startup that recently completed a stint at the Startup Chile accelerator, gets another mention in national press — this time, in CNN, in a story about Chile being the Silicon Valley of South America. The team’s logo also got an honorable mention in the 2011 Brand New Awards in the “logo animation” category (though all the winning logos are behind a paywall).

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Cloudmine is the most popular API in terms of mashups, says the Programmable Web.

DocASAP, or “Open Table for doctors,” now has a partnership with Secaucus, N.J.’s Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center, according to a release.

Speaking of medical appointment startups, ZocDoc, the New York City-based online doctor’s appointment aggregator that launched in Philly last year, now lets you fill in medical forms before appointments, according to a release.

SnipSnap CEO Ted Mann gets quoted in Essence magazine. On Twitter, he quipped: “Probably the first and last time I’ll be in Essence magazine.”

Alphabuyer, the group-buying service for utilities, announced a partnership with Mark Group, a local “home energy-efficiency solutions company,” to help consumers save on their utility bills, according to a release.

Yorn, a real-time customer survey platform, launched a new version of its product. Read more details in the user’s guide [pdf].