Technically Philly » Startup Roundup

RJMetrics buzz, Quorum marks a year and PitchSwap debuts [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:01:22 +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.

MUST READS

RJMetrics has received a friggin’ lot of buzz (search Twitter) over the past week for a study checking in on Google Plus engagement of 40,000 users. According to the report, the average post receives less than one +1, less than one reply and less than one re-share. BusinessWeek asks if Google Plus is a ghost town. Publishing these kinds of reports has been sound strategy for RJMetrics, delivering huge audiences direct to their doorstep. Our Entrance Exam with RJMetrics’ new chief marketer Ted Bockius, published yesterday.

It’s been a year since the University City Science Center opened its entrepreneur clubhouse Quorum. The organization is celebrating that its hosted 170 events and 8,000 attendees in that time.

The organizers of Philly Startup Weekend will be hosting a PitchSwap on June 14th: an event aimed at learning to pitch someone else’s business in order to learn from the process. RSVP here. They call it “karaoke for entrepreneurs.”

GIVE A GLANCE

DuckDuckGo has a new Chrome extension that allows you to embed DuckDuckGo’s one-click search results directly in Google’s results. Cheeky. In related news, the company’s founder Gabe Weinberg is featured on PhillyMag’s PhillyPost.

As we reported yesterday, SnipSnap has raised $480,000 on an angel round. SnipSnap has been making the rounds on mobile app blogs like iMore and Simonblog.

Fast Company has a bigger profile on Daymon John, star of ABC’s Shark Tank, mentioning his new role as brand ambassador to local startup TicketLeap. Its a good look at the rise of celebrity support of startups.

As we mentioned earlier this week, DreamIt Ventures is now accepting applications for its fall Philadelphia program.

On that note, Startup Beach House is now accepting applications as well.

LTLPrints is featured in a video series for CEO IntroNet, a members-only social network for CEOs.

Following last weeks report that PalmLing is headed to TechStars Boulder, co-founder Ryan Frankel tells us that they’re not tied down to Philadelphia and will be shopping around for potential locations after TechStars.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

VirtualPiggy, the safe commerce site for children and parents is continuing to grow its merchant roster, having announced 30 new additions.

Monetate‘s engineering blog has a report on web browser market share, analyzing data from a quarter-billion online shopping sessions over a 30-day period. Internet Explorer is still the champ.

PlaySay, the language-learning gamification company that split for Washington D.C. and then San Francisco, is the number one education app in Apple’s App Store.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Pinterest analytics platform Curalate raises $750,000 in seed round [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:30:42 +0000

Startup Roundup has had some technical difficulties for the past couple weeks, so we’re playing catch-up this morning. Consider things officially back on track.

MUST READS

Curalate, a marketing and analytics platform for Pinterest, has announced that it has received $750,000 in seed funding, TechCrunch reports. The round is backed by NEA, First Round Capital and MentorTech. The company features former leadership of storage space startup Storably, as we reported last month.

GIVE A GLANCE

Flyclops, the small iOS company that first built Brainarang, a zombie-killing game, has launched Domino!, a turn-based dominos game, in Apple’s App Store. Download it for free here.

tweeted:

DocPhin, a medical journal and research aggregation hub startup, has been aggressively pursuing a national footprint, having launched in 10 more medical centers nationwide, TechCrunch reports. We covered the company’s technology last December.

TicketLeap has announced that it has brought on Daymond John to serve as a “brand ambassador and advisor.” John is most recently known for his post on ABC’s Shark Tank, but is perhaps more widely known for founding clothing brand FUBU.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Family organization startup AboutOne has launched an app exclusively for Windows Phone.

As we reported last week, SnipSnap, the Ben Franklin Technology Partners-backed and Inquirer/Daily News-housed startup has seen more than 70,000 downloads since launch during Philly Tech Week.

Safeguard Scientifics-backed Internet-of-Things startup ThingWorx has upgraded its platform to version 3.0, according to a release.

RJMetrics writes about improvements to its dashboard visualizations.

According to a study apparently published by the Kauffman Foundation and being promoted as an infographic by DocStoc, a company dedicated to small business services, Pennsylvania is one of the “worst” states to be an entrepreneur, and among the states that have the fewest entrepreneurs per 100,000 people. Take a look at the infographic here.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Mobile Monday opens registration for Demo Night during Philly Tech Week [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:30:20 +0000

MUST READS

Mobile Monday has announced more details and opened up registration for its annual mobile startup Demo Night on April 23 during Philly Tech Week. The winning startup of the event will have the opportunity to present at Switch Philly, with Mayor Michael Nutter, First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman and Robin Hood Ventures’ Ellen Webber. That winner will receive an impressive prize pack. Tickets are moving fast, so register for Switch soon.

GIVE A GLANCE

As Flying Kite Media reported, the first Healthcare Startup Weekend was announced recently and will take place at Venturef0rth on June 1.

Startups and their developers are in ample attendance at Philly’s big Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise conference, happening now. The Business Journal covered the event here.

News incubator Project Liberty, housed for now at the Inquirer Building on N. Broad, is seeking an incubator manager, after announcing a second round of incubation this week. That class will be housed at the company’s new office at 801 Market St.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Are you an indie, angel or venture company, asks Duck Duck Go’s Gabe Weinberg.

Keystone Edge writes about travel startup Ajungo. The startup demoed at Philly Tech Meetup last October, as we reported.

TicketLeap has announced analytics reports that are automatically delivered to Dropbox.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Wharton Venture Award winners announced with a focus on healthcare [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:53:37 +0000

MUST READS

The Wharton Venture Award, which has seed-funded successful startups like Warby Parker and Invite Media, has announced this year’s award recipients, many of which are focused on healthcare technology.

1 Doc Way: Video conferencing between doctors and patients.
Rajiv Mahele won across his two ventures: accessMD.com, which helps patients seek a second opinion from doctors, and Catalogue.com, a marketplace for interior design inspiration. Neither URL currently work for the proposed businesses.
Cloudable.me: A social and sharing hub.
Grant Round Table: a collaboration and resource platform for doctors.

The Phorum 2012 Demo Pit, which showcased cloud-based startups and services awarded UXFlip as the “Best in Show” winner. tweeted:

.

GIVE A GLANCE

tweeted:

, formerly of Storably.

Adpropo has launched its social entertainment platform to connect brands with consumers, led by Stephanie Rosenlund, formerly a marketing director at StarCite.

Flying Kite writes about Peter Groverman, formerly of DreamIt Ventures startup Tapinko and founder of the Relief Foundation [See our coverage here]. He’s now running Grovara, an international agricultural supply and food distribution company and and a new gamification startup called Points.ly.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Knowledge@Wharton interviews ElectNext CEO Keya Dannenbaum.

A group of Philly startups, including CloudMine, Lokalty, ElectNext, Curalate and others tweeted:

. Get at them.

Keith Armstrong has an in-depth story about CloudMine’s inception, from Startup Weekend, to DreamIt Ventures and beyond.

Kembrel gets love on Fox29.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Tonight: 12 local education ventures will compete for prizes, including $5,000, at PhillySEED [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:17:01 +0000

MUST READS

This evening, Philly SEED ((Supporting Entrepreneurship in Education), a crowd-sourced platform to help fund education entrepreneurs, will host a competition for a $5,000 prize pack and pro-bono services, which will go to two of several new or established Philly-based ventures aimed at improving education.

Those competing, announced by Councilman Bill Green on Saturday, include, in two categories:

Emerging Entrepreneurs:

ApprenNet – A learning platform for mentoring and collaboration. We covered the venture last July.
Investing in Ourselves – Community organization growing strength in nutrition, fitness, finance, workforce development and leadership. WHYY covered the organization earlier this month.
Lessonsmith – Collaborative platform for lesson planning and material development, which is based in the new Venturef0rth accelerator space, as we reported. The organization’s conception story is here.
PhilaSoup – Education entrepreneurs pitch for modest micro grants at these $5-admission dinner parties. See previous winners here.
Teacher Action Group Philly – Hoping to educate educators on the value of policy-making. Coverage in the Inquirer, here.
YES! for Schools – Healthy bodies, healthy minds, and healthy lifestyles for students in 10 major U.S. cities.

Expanding/Established:

Education-Plus Inc.’s High School – Nonprofit celebrating three decades of existence, which helps schools determine best-practice needs for improvement.
Springboard Collaborative – Helping create education programming for students throughout the dead months of summer, where, advocates say, learning is often lost.
Startup Corps – Installing the value of entrepreneurship by way of launching an actual business. We covered the organization in July 2010.
the school collective – An online network for education professional development. The founders are helping to organize PhillySEED.
The Student Leadership Project – Empowering student leaders at Philadelphia charter schools.
Urban Blazers – Science-focused organization that introduces students to nature through volunteer efforts.

RSVP for the event, which costs $40 (proceeds of which go to the winners) here. Hosted at WHYY in Old City. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is a sponsor of the event].

GIVE A GLANCE

The Business Journal’s Peter Key writes about PackLate’s recent pivot from last minute vacation rental sales to supplier of vacation rental properties to third-parties.

MetaLayer presented at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference last week.

In response to our post last week about startup Sqoot’s controversy over sexist remarks on an event flyer, founder Mo Yehia had this apology to issue by way of email: “As you know, we’re a startup. Often, we trip and fall. This is one of those times. In hindsight, our comments were reckless. They don’t reflect who we are. Please accept our wholehearted apology.”

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

two.one.five covers retail startup Kembrel’s popup shop in Rittenhouse.

Delaware Online writes about stealth healthcare startup Kurbi, behind a paywall.

Lose It or Lose It has launched features to maintain weight loss after losing it, according to a company blog post.

NYTechWeekly covers Mount Laurel-based startup UFeud, which provides a platform for debate about new technologies. [h/t PhillyTechNews]

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Tech firms in Philly growing fast, former Philly startup Sqoot in hot water over sexist remarks on hackathon flyer [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:00:37 +0000

MUST READS

The Business Journal’s Peter Key penned a print piece in-depth on tech companies that are hiring at an accelerated pace in 2012. On his blog, he writes about some of the factors behind the report and some of the great stuff that didn’t fit in the print edition.

Sqoot, the DreamIt Ventures-based startup that moved to New York after graduating from the program, has been in some hot water for sexist remarks it made on an event flyer promoting a hackathon. ReadWriteWeb has a good roundup of the situation, noting that even the company’s apology fell short, leaving one person to begin collecting negative response to the apology letter. Ouch. CloudMine, the locally-based development toolset pulled sponsorship of the event and penned a thoughtful response to the situation.

GIVE A GLANCE

GHacks.net notes DuckDuckGo‘s significant increase in web traffic in the first quarter of 2012, as the company is unofficially endorsed by the famous hacker group Anonymous. Founder Gabe Weinberg also recently documented DuckDuck Go’s annual open source donations.

Venmo, the mobile payment startup which got its start in Philadelphia, moved to New York and has been quiet as of late, recently is making noise to drum up interest in a public launch. The company has brought on 20 employees and is processing $250 million in annual payments, the company says.

Great story about vacation rental booking startup PackLate from the Inquirer featuring the company’s weekly boxing policy for team building.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Lokalty, the mobile rewards up for local businesses was featured last week on 6ABC.

LifeHacker features RezScore as a tool to help you fix up that dusty resume.

ProgrammableWeb writes about CloudMine’s services.

Flying Kite covers ApprenNet, which we covered in in July of last year.

Monetate CMO Rob Yeogel talks content marketing.

Cipher Prime is two weeks into its fundraising campaign for Auditorium 2, and so far has raised $32,176. We featured the company last week.

Philly Tech News features new Q&A site Quewey‘s private beta.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Biotech startup Vascular Magnetics raises $7 million, young LiftDNA acquired by OpenX [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:25:32 +0000

MUST READS

Vascular Magnetics, the biotech startup that was spun out of Children’s Hospital raised a $7 million Series A round last week, according to a press release.

The Inquirer’s Mike Armstrong reports that LiftDNA, a young ad inventory startup based in King of Prussia founded by a former myYearbook employee was acquired for undisclosed terms by OpenX Technologies, the well-known ad serving technology.

BusinessInsider has video with myYearBook founders Catherine and Geoff Cook about how their lives have changes since selling the company for $100 million.

GIVE A GLANCE

Flying Kite writes about Leadnomics and its growth since launching in 2007, noting that the company now has 25 employees.

Mobile tech magazine Going Mobo covers DreamIt Ventures startup OneAway and the founders’ decision to drop out of Wharton for a year … and going.

NBC10′s coverage last week of LoSo, the real-time social app based in Philadelphia, earned the company its highest traffic yet.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Warby Parker, the startup e-commerce dealer for eyeglasses that is so buzzed about, gives its founder story to TechCrunch TV.

Monetate has brought on new Chief Marketing Officer Kurt Heinemann, who previously led marketing efforts at Perimeter eSecurity and was Vice President of Priceline.com.

Internet-of-Things startup ThingWorx has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to bring its technology to the world of R&D, according to a press release.

LevelUp, the spin-off of SCVNGR which has its roots in Philadelphia through the DreamIt Ventures incubation program and which has an office here, ran a marketing campaign at Reading Terminal last week in celebration of the landmark’s 120th anniversary. The campaign was intended to show off the company’s new mobile payment tool.

KinderTown gets covered in Hack Education, a blog about new ed technologies.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Villanova University part of $2.4m grant to inspire engineering entrepreneurs, PalmLing launches demo [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:30:38 +0000

MUST READS

The Business Journal reports that Villanova University and three other institutions together received a $2.4 million grant from the Kern Family Foundation to help grow entrepreneurial interest in engineering students.

PalmLing has launched a demo of its mobile translation service, but an attempt to demo it this morning found no available operators. We’re anxious to play with this one, so give it a try for us.

GIVE A GLANCE

DocDep, which creates tools for companies to improve management, has launched a capitalization table application to help companies track investment and store investment documents. The app follows last week’s news that TicketLeap CFO Tim Raybould had launched Capography, a cap table management system for startups.

NearVerse is pivoting its Lokast “local” social networking application as a tool for application providers rather than a stand alone app, according to a new blog post.

Flying Kite covers Philly-based mobile accessory startup Caseinity, which developed and sells the novel Cord-on-Board iPhone case, which hides a USB connector cord inside.

MobilePhilly, a new event focused on mobile that launched late last year and organized by consulting firm Chariot Solutions, will host its third event Thursday evening featuring CloudMine on Geofencing.

News that DuckDuckGo had reached 1 million searches in a single day last week sparked a cacophony of interest on Twitter, at least according to our feed reader.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Monetate continues its viral marketing campaign to create compelling and sharable infographics like one on startup Pinterest and its impact on e-commerce.

RJ Metrics, too, has the bug for Pinterest. The company released a report about the company’s growth.

Social bookmarking site Snipi gets a quick mention in TechCrunch alongside the popularity of similar startup Pinterest.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

OpenDesks reaches 1,000 workspaces, Spling leaves for New York [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:25:58 +0000

MUST READS

OpenDesks, the service that helps connect freelancers and companies with open, temporary office space, now lists more than 1,000 shared work spaces, according to a press release.

Kembrel.com, the member-only Gilt clone for college students has taken over a retail shop at 18th and Chestnut for the next few months and kicks-off this Friday with a party. The move shows growth and could be an interesting marketing push. We covered the company in September 2010.

RJMetrics is offering 30-day free trials of its e-commerce analytics and service, valued at $500. It’s a marketing decision, for sure, but a bold one none-the-less.

GIVE A GLANCE

Recent tweeted:

tweeted:

for the first time in its history.

Airtime, the startup which allows companies to control and change company-wide email signatures in real-time, has updated its software to work with Apple Mail.

MindSnacks has launched an iOS app for SAT vocabulary words, one of its mobile learning apps.

PackLate gets covered in Tnooz, a travel tech vertical news website, for its recent partnership with Tourico which connects the company’s last-minute listings with travel agencies and tour operators.

Lokadot has released a new version of its mobile tourism app to iTunes. Version 1.0.7 incorporates social functionality ties with Facebook and Twitter and a handful of other new features.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

tweeted:

, an engineer, bringing the company’s total employees to five.

KinderTown gets covered in Wired’s GeekDad column for its ability to curate kid-friendly content.

Viddler shares some of its production cycle, noting that it pushes new updates of the video sharing service nearly every day. Agile.

Philadelphia Facebook game-maker ToonUps announced this week that if its Valentine’s Day marketing campaign reaches 50,000 sent virtual “hearts,” the company will fund the installation of solar-powered generators in two Guatemala villages. The company also was recently covered on RadnorPatch.

ElectNext has put together a clever campaign latching onto the Valentine’s Day dating site crunch by continuing to compare its service to a dating site for political candidate matches.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

DailyWorth partners with Mint, Viddler redesigns and sees 30% increase in sign-ups [Startup Roundup]

Brian James Kirk — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:11:38 +0000

MUST READS

DailyWorth, the Philly-based startup that has raised $2.8 million and is focused on delivering practical financial advice for women, has recently formed a partnership with Mint, home to 8 million users, to provide it with content, TechCrunch reports.

Viddler launched a no-frills, less-is-more redesign last week that is seeing results. If it’s an inspiration for what a redesign of your site could bring, the company has seen a 30 percent increase in sign-ups.

TicketLeap has launched TicketLeap Anywhere for iOS, a new app which allows event organizers to sell, print and scan tickets on-the-spot at events with iPhone and iPad devices.

GIVE A GLANCE

Geekadelphia notes that Indy Hall will host a demo event for the games built during the Global Game Jam with the local chapter of IGDA. The event takes place this weekend.

The Inquirer’s Jeff Gelles covers Cliqsearch, which aims to utilize social media recommendations from trusted friends to curate a better search experience for local results. Only a few weeks ago, the company announced it had raised an angel round of $840,000, as we reported.

LoSo Inc. has launched version 2.0 of its app that aggregates news and social media check-ins at restaurants and bars and allows those locations to control their virtual identify for users. It’s available here.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Temple University will host an event on Feb. 22 dedicated to launching startups and commercializing.

CloudMine, the buzzed-about startup which started at Startup Weekend Philly, and which is focused on more easily delivering back-end services to other startups, is getting the message out by supporting Startup Weekend as a Global Sponsor. Insert here another sentence using the word ‘start.’

ElectNext, the recommendation engine for political candidates that compares itself to dating algorithms like OKCupid’s will present tomorrow at New York’s Paley Center for Media among a handful of exciting new startups.

You’ve probably seen Lokalty‘s promotions at the checkout of area retailers. Campus Philly is calling the company one of 10 new Philly businesses to watch this year.

The San Francisco Chronicle inks health news article aggregator Docphin in a piece about up-and-coming health startups.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.