Donald Caldwell on suing Facebook and making deals in Ireland

Donald Caldwell

In his 13 years at the helm of Cross Atlantic Capital Partners Donald Caldwell has fended off Y2k, multiple recessions and, lately, he’s taken on Facebook.

The early stage technology investment firm has wins like GAIN Capital, which brought a 20 to 1 return when it went public earlier this year, to its name.

Part of the long-reaching family tree of ex-Safeguard Scientifics employees, Caldwell founded the firm in 1999 to invest in deals in the United States and Ireland with offices in Radnor and Dublin. However, with its next fund, Cross Atlantic is having a change of heart.

“Increasingly our focus has been on America, the Irish economy has fallen upon such hard times,” said Caldwell.

In addition to pivoting the fund, Caldwell and the firm are locked in a legal battle with Facebook over a patent they hold for a “System for Creating a Community for Users with Common Interests to Interact In.”

After Cross Atlantic’s recent investment in the Bay Area’s Rootstock Software, we sat down with Caldwell to discuss his investment philosophy, battling two recessions and getting “Amazoned.”

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Viridity Energy and SEPTA partner on batteries to capture and reuse lost electricity: Links

• Saving Electricity on a Philadelphia Subway Line [Green: New York Times] — “in Philadelphia, on the Market-Frankford line of the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority, a new company called Viridity Energy will install batteries to capture a lot of that electricity and hold it while the train is in the station. Then it can deliver the power when the train starts up again or store it for a time of day when it is needed more.”
• NuPathe gets more funding to launch Zelrix migraine patch [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• FTC seeks more information on Teva, Cephalon deal [Reuters]
• New chair for Science Center [Philadelphia Business Journal] — “University of Pennsylvania Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli has been elected chairman of the University City Science Center’s board of directors, succeeding Richard P. Jaffe, a partner with the Philadelphia law firm of Duane Morris”
• GPTMC drops advertising with Travel + Leisure after it calls Philly dirty [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• BioNanomatrix Opens West Coast Headquarters, Expands Senior Team to Accelerate Commercialization of its Whole Genome Analysis Platform [press release]
• Lockheed Martin’s space business to cut 1,200 jobs [AP] — “The cuts will most heavily affect areas where Lockheed Martin is winding down its contract work, such as Sunnyvale, Calif., the Delaware Valley region of Pennsylvania, and Denver.”
• Philadelphia2035 Master Plan Approved [Flying Kite] — It includes mention of broadband access, something Technically Philly pushed on with this coverage. Watch video below.

Thanks to our weekly sponsors

Technically Philly is made possible by advertisers and sponsors that are important to Philadelphia’s technology community. This week we’d like to thank:

Caffeine Fish – Caffeine Fish develops the Trainboard iPhone app and offers iPhone development consulting in the Philadelphia area.

Newsworks — NewsWorks is the online home of WHYY News and its growing network of journalism partners. This public media service covers the Philadelphia region, Delaware and South Jersey, with a focus on regional issues, neighborhoods, health and science, and arts.

Morgan Lewis — Morgan Lewis provides comprehensive transactional, litigation, labor and employment, regulatory, and intellectual property legal services to clients of all sizes—from global Fortune 100 companies to just-conceived startups—across all major industries.

Alteva — Reduce your total cost of telecom ownership and improve employee efficiency and customer satisfaction with Alteva’s cloud-based Voice over IP phone systems and services.

The University City Science Center — The Science Center has officially opened Quorum, a central gathering space to enable the entrepreneurship and innovation communities to meet, share and learn.

Splat Productions — Splat Productions provides smart, brand-centric website design and internet marketing services to privileged clients in the Philadelphia region and beyond.

Interested in joining these organizations and individuals in supporting Technically Philly? Check out our ad packages and contact our Ad Sales Manager. Can’t find something that fits? We’ll customize a package for you.

Angel Interviews: Valerie Gaydos wants to lend you a hand

Welcome to Angel Interviews, a series dedicated to debunking the assumption that entrepreneurs need to look outside of Philadelphia for angel and early stage investment. Every so often we’ll interview a local angel and ask him or her about investment criteria and how to get in contact. If you’re an angel investor that deals primarily with technology companies or you have any suggestions about how we can improve this series drop us a line.

Speak to Valerie Gaydos for a few minutes and you’ll see that she is all over the map in more ways than one.

Gaydos has worn multiple hats in her career as a publisher of a venture capital trade publication, the owner of a government relations consultancy in Harrisburg and, most relevant to Technically Philly readers, she serves as director of the Angel Venture Forum.

The forum is an ad-hoc investor group that, instead of holding meetings and investing on a rolling basis, the forum hosts a yearly event where 30 companies pitch to a selected group of angel investors. The Forum was founded in Philadelphia and will be held in Washington D.C. for the first time this year.

“Its taking the network I developed in Philly and expanding it to the DC area and the folks I know there,” says Gaydos.

As a result of her work with the Forum the “semi-retired” Gaydos oversees or is involved in a handful of deals every year in many Mid-Atlantic cities including Philadelphia where Gaydos can often be seen camping out at the Union League.

In this Angel Interview, Gaydos gives one tip for entrepreneurs to find the right angel and shares how she evaluates deals.

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Sponsored Post: Why you should come to the Wharton Web Conference [COUPON CODE]

Temple University physicist can thin human blood with a magnetic field to fight heart attacks

Rongjia Tao

Powerful news from Temple University that could help prevent heart attacks:

If a person’s blood becomes too thick it can damage blood vessels and increase the risk of heart attacks. But a Temple University physicist has discovered that he can thin the human blood by subjecting it to a magnetic field. Rongjia Tao, professor and chair of physics at Temple University, has pioneered the use of electric or magnetic fields to decrease the viscosity of oil in engines and pipelines. Now, he is using the same magnetic fields to thin human blood in the circulation system.

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In 2008, Tao developed a mechanism that uses an electrical field to boost fuel efficiency, which has begun drawing licensing fees.

Comcast partnerships with Skype, Facebook: Roundup [VIDEO]

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup. Get an e-mail subscri ption for our Comcast news updates.

DEFINITE READS

• Comcast to Offer Customers Skype Video Calls on Their TVs [New York Times] — “In the cable television industry’s latest extension into home communication, Comcast and Skype  announced on Monday that some Comcast customers would soon be able to video chat on their TV sets from the comfort of their living rooms. ” VIDEO below
• Comcast Taps Facebook for Enhanced TV Experience [Hollywood Reporter] — “Comcast Corp. is working with Facebook, Intel and other technology firms to create what it calls a next-generation TV experience, which will make the TV screen more interactive by adding Internet features and apps. “
• @ Cable Show: Comcast’s Roberts Shows Off 1Gbps Potential [paidContent] h/t Philly Tech News

Below, video of Comcast/Skype partnership, plans to profit off the Olympics and more.

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Phila.gov business services portal to add 75% of licenses and permit applications online by 2012, interactivity

Before its second birthday in November, the City of Philadelphia’s Business Services Center website will add more interactivity and have the majority of licenses and permits available, officials tell Technically Philly.

“The portal was the first step in the overhaul of Phila.gov, collecting and sharing all business-related information for business users, rather than asking them to hunt through multiple departmental sites to get what they need,” said Sara Merriman, the director of policy initiatives for the city’s Department of Commerce.

The next release of the portal, internally scheduled for late summer, will include three major ‘interactive’ features: (1) a wizard tool to help direct businesses to the licenses they may need, (2) a wizard output into a dashboard that users can save and return to as they work through their tasks and (3) a business registration feature that will in future releases be used as the basis for further interactivity like online permit delivery and payment tracking, Merriman said.

In addition to the added interactivity, by the end of 2011, the portal is planned to house most city license and permit applications.

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Alexandre Scialom takes top prizes at Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan, NFTE sends winner to the White House

First place winner Alexandre Scialom smiled as he accepted his award plaque for his winning business plan, theCourseBook.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

theCourseBook, billed by its founder as “Yelp for adult education” won Thursday the two top prizes at the second annual Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan, netting San Francisco entrepreneur Alexandre Scialom a cool $50,000 $25,000.

Thursday’s event, held by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, was a business plan competition that challenges young entrepreneurs to apply their innovative business ideas in educational formats.

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Startup Roundup: Groupon partners with Cherry Hill’s iCueTV

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’sRSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

Updated 6/16: Fixed spelling of Ryan Meinzer’s name. Also updated that the company is not currently seeking funding.

MUST READS

Groupon is moving its deals offerings to television, in thanks to Cherry-Hill based iCueTV, the Chicago Tribune reports. As we wrote in 2009, iCueTV launched an interactive cable platform, tru2way, with Comcast Media Center’s labs. The platform enables viewers to interact with video advertising, including making purchases on their television. In Groupon’s case, iCueTV will be an email lead solicitor for the startup, which is considering an IPO. [h/t PhillyTechNews]

Invite Media is one of Google’s fastest growing acquisitions, according to Google Vice President of Product Neal Mohan, AdExchanger reports. At the Conversational Marketing Summit last week, Mohan said that he has “never seen a technology ramp up as fast as real-time bidding.” Mohan says that Google plans to go fully global with the platform, as 88% of advertisers are interested in real-time buys.

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