ApprenNet wants to train the next generation of startup lawyers

Drexel professor Karl Okamoto believes that to continue Philadelphia’s entrepreneurial growth, the city will need smarter lawyers.

“Most lawyers who walk the street are very poorly trained on how to help entrepreneurs,” he says. “Law school does a poor job training people how to practice, particularly when their clients are doing business as opposed to suing each other.”

To help young lawyers be better educated, he’s launched ApprenNet, a site that hopes to solve this problem in Philadelphia and elsewhere by directly connecting legal professionals with young lawyers. The site has four employees and is currently searching for beta testers says Okamoto, who sits on the board of Cosi and teaches transactional law at Drexel’s Earle Mack School of Law.

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Franklin Institute gets $250k grant for capital campaign

As the Philadelphia Business Journal reported on Monday, the US Airways Community Foundation provided $250,000 to the Franklin Institute for its museum expansion and $62 million capital campaign, according to a press release.

From the release:

“US Airways’ support is vital in allowing the Institute to further its mission – to inspire a passion for learning about science and technology,” said Don Callaghan, Institute Trustee and Chair of the Inspire Science! campaign. “Their assistance with this campaign allows us to continue to expand our efforts to provide one-of-a-kind, world-class science experiences that impact hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren and families every year.”

myYearbook sold for $100 million

myYearbook, the social network for high school students and one of First Round Capital’s local investments, has sold for $100 million Quepasa Corp. The deal was for $82 million in Quepasa common stock and approximately $18 million in cash, according to a press release.

“We are thrilled to bring our vision of social discovery to a global audience through combination with Quepasa,” noted Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook. “Meeting new people is now — and has always been — one of the Internet’s core activities. This combination creates the scale needed to build the #1 player in social discovery”

Quepasa, based out of West Palm Beach, runs a Latin-focused social network. No word yet on whether myYearbook will move from its New Hope headquarters. According to myYearbook CEO Geoff Cook during a conference call with the media, the two sites will combine to have 70.9 million users. The partnership seems to be an aim of combining MyYearbook’s product and moentazation efforts (the site averages $1 a month per user) with Quepasa’s growing Latin audience.

The news comes on the heels of the sale of ClickEquations, leaving Monetate, Packlate and Solve Media as the remaining First Round Capital-funded companies based in the Philadelphia region.

Reader the 8-K filing about the merger here.

Startup Roundup: Viddler CEO forced out, Science Center does Coffee & Capital

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.

It’s a quiet week for startups, folks. Maybe you ought to take the time away — if you haven’t already — to well, start one.

MUST READS

Viddler CEO Rob Sandie announced on his blog last week that he’d be stepping down as CEO, though the decision was not voluntary. He was asked to leave the company by its board, he says, though he’ll remain an integral part of that board. We’re working on getting ahold of Sandie.

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InterDigital looks for sale or other “strategic partnership”

In a press release today, King of Prussia-based mobile hardware maker InterDigital announced that it was considering “potential strategic options” for the company – a fancy way of saying that the company is for sale. From the release:

Over the past year we have seen the value of intellectual property rise substantially as major players in the mobile industry increasingly understand the strategic and economic value of this type of asset. As a result, the Board believes it is an appropriate time to explore potential strategic options that may enhance shareholder value.

Basically, the company feels that the patents held by the company are more valuable now than ever before. According to the Business Journal, the company’s stock was up on the news as well as news that Apple has purchased 6,000 patents from Nortel Networks for $4 billion.

Maybe one of Apple’s competitors will counter by purchasing InterDigital?

Disclosure: InterDigital was a sponsor of Switch Philly during Philly Tech Week and this reporter handled the relationship with the company’s public relations firm.

Joanne Cheng Exit Interview: “I wasn’t satisfied with the direction the city was heading”

Feds file charges against Haddonfield tech contractor who billed the City $1.2 million

The federal government has filed charges against a Haddonfield-based tech contractor who allegedly billed the City of Philadelphia for $1.2 million in services, about 17,000 hours, for work that was not completed, the Daily News reports.

From the report:

The fake billing ran from 2004 through 2008, when [Bill Jones] had contracts to provide information-technology support to the city Revenue Department and Water Department, and the city-affiliated nonprofit Community Behavioral Health.

The feds are seeking $1.2 million in restitution from Jones for the city. The charges were filed directly by the U.S. attorney, which means a plea deal is likely in the works.

Philadelphia has ninth highest rate of stolen cell phones: Tek Lado

In a survey ranking the highest rates of stolen cell phones in U.S. cities, Philadelphia ranks ninth.

Find more of the survey here.

Source: Tek Lado and Lookout Technology

First Round Capital gets healthy

Welcome to the VC Roundup, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

DEFINITE READS

Vascular Magnetics, a startup, spawns out of Children’s Hospital

Vascular's treatment, displayed on the left, coats artery walls with iron-infused medicine nanoparticles (in red), compared to existing treatment on the right. By zooming, one can see only small red areas of medicine in existing treatment.

Updated Tue., July 19: Updated in response to comment from Woodward: “We don’t use a stent coated with medicine – we use a temporary, catheter-borne targeting device made of the superparamagnetic steel. In the magnetic field, this device develops gradients which force the drug-loaded nanoparticles into the arterial wall. The nanoparticles are delivered through the same catheter that carries the targeting device,” he wrote in an email.

Folks with Peripheral Artery Disease, a circulation disorder that affects more than 27 million older adults in North America and Europe, often have pain involved with simple tasks such as walking.

Stent-based solutions that treat the disease, which force open arteries and release medicines into the passageways to prevent reblockage, are only temporary. The treatments allow reblockage to occur in about 50 percent of cases after the first year.

But a startup company spun out of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says it has created a new system of treatment that does a better job, and might have a future in stem cell research.

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