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.

MUST READ

Also in SEC filings, King of Prussia-based ChoozOn has raised $1.2 million. As reported by the Philadelphia Business Journal the service, started by Yahoo vets, helps curate deals from around the web.

In case you missed it, we reported on a job posting by First Round Capital suggests that the company is considering a move to Philadelphia.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Comcast Interactive Capital is among many firms in SnagFilms’ $7 million round. The company, started by Washingting Wizards and Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, is an independent film publisher focused on leveraging new media platforms.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners has released its Annual Performance Profile for 2011. See your tax dollars at work by reading the PDF link here.

Artists and Instigators wakes from its slumber and is among the firms to fund Dwolla, the Des Moins-based payment service. The Series B round is for $5 million. See more from our good friends at Silicon Prarie.

GIVE A GLANCE

DreamIt Ventures is now actively looking for five Israeli startups.

First Round Capital is among the investors to fund UrbanSitter’s $1.75 million Series A round. The company is a matchmaking service for babysitters and parents.

A screenshot from Zonoff's iPad remote control software.

Mike Harris has been down this road before.

The former CEO of AnySource Media has been laying low after his last company exited to Divx in 2009. The company helped make software to connectt TVs to the Internet, a precursor to the long-rumored Apple TV set. But now, he’s taking that idea to the next level.

“Zonoff is the next frontier of that, connecting everything else in the house to the Internet,” says Harris. And he means everything. “Thermostats, blinds, refrigerators .. you name we want to connect it.”

Zonoff CEO Mike Harris

Zonoff (named for connectivity protocols that often start with “z” combined with “on and off”) is a platform based on Drexel University technology to create a network of all of your household objects so they can interact with the Internet and each other. This means blinds that automatically adjust to the sun’s position when the TV is turned on or a security system that is smart enough to text you when someone enters your front door.

The concept of connecting our homes to the web, often called the “Internet of Things,” is a growing trend says Harris. Yet there’s not a system to make it easy on hardware makers.

Zonoff debuted its latest “Intuitive Home” product at CES that Harris calls the company’s “coming out party.” The company set up a small model home to demonstrate its iPad home remote control, among other products, the result of nine months of tinkering with the platform, designing a UI and tinkering with a business model that relies on licensing fees, web service fees and sales commissions. Eventually, we won’t need remote controls or iPads. Our home will just know what to do.

The company is now trying to raise a $5 million Series A round and is actively hiring in its Malvern offices that are down the street from the fast-growing search engine DuckDuckGo.

“The plan is to grow rapidly,” says Harris. “We need product and project management, engineers, software development, UI and web development expertise. Everything.”

Even in the company’s infancy, Harris says he feels good and hopes to bring another success story to Philadelphia.

“I think we’re building another big winner in the Philadelphia area,” he says.

Edit, 12:48 p.m.: added context, corrected Drexel note.

Now that the Super Bowl is over, we’re all counting down to pitchers and catchers, right? Before you dust off your Chase Utley there are lots of technology events happening in Philadelphia to keep your mind off of the Winter doldrums.

Also, before we get to the events, the kind folks at the Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference have extended a discount for Technically Philly members to attend the conference. The promo code “tech5off” will give you $5 off, bringing the “professional” ticket to $80. Buy your tickets here.

This week: find your co-founder in Philadelphia (not King of Prussia), learn HTML/CSS and shop our user groups.

Co-Founders Wanted – You may remember from our profile of the group last year that CFW was looking to bring the event from the ‘burbs into the city. This week marks the first time ever the entrepreneurial meetup with be held in city limits. Join the group at Quorum to talk about creating the next great company. Wednesday. 6:30 p.m. University City. RSVP.

Intro to HTML/CSS - Designer Jen Lukas of award-winning design firm Happy Cog will be on hand to give you the basics of front-end web development starting with HTML and CSS. The class, organized by Girl Develop It is a bargain at $80 and is intended for those who need  to start from square one. Monday. 7:00 p.m. University City. RSVP.

TP Groups – The user groups of user groups meets again in the Municipal Services building. Come out to sample the best of Philly’s technology scene and cross-pollinate with other meetups. To get involved, drop a line to the Google Group. Tuesday. 6:00 p.m. Center City.

An excerpt from the Readyforce job listing (click to enlarge).

According to a job posting on ReadyForce.com First Round Capital is openly considering a move to Philadelphia. The job post is searching for an executive assistant and notifies the applicant that “the firm is contemplating a move to the city of Philadelphia in the next year.”

The Conshohocken-based venture capital firm is one of the most respected and active early stage investors in the nation and occasionally invests in local businesses. Philly-born portfolio companies past and present include Invite Media, Solve Media, ClickEquations, Monetate and Packlate. Currently the firm also has offices in San Francisco and New York City.

Various sources have approached Technically Philly suspecting a First Round move. However, in an email to Technically Philly in October, Managing Partner Josh Kopleman would only confirm that the firm’s current lease is up in late 2012.

If First Round moves to the city, it would be a big win for the growing effort of centralizing the city’s venture capital resources. A common refrain from local entrepreneurs is that many companies are started within city limits yet most Philadelphia venture capital firms are located in suburbs like Wayne and Conshohocken.

First Round Capital portfolio company Packlate is also likely to move from Conshokocken to Center City. When we asked founder Steve Barsh about the move in December, he said that top technology talent typically wants to live in urban areas like Philadelphia. Also aligning with the trend is RJ Metrics. The company made lots of noise after its funding about doubling down on Philadelphia.

(Thanks to Tim for the tip)

AirTime, founded by Penn students Dan Shipper and Patrick Leahy, is hoping to revolutionize the way we look at e-mail signatures by enabling companies to update company-wide email signatures on the fly.

As Leahy told Technically Philly last week, the duo is obsessed with creating small, nimble businesses that are profitable from day one and require no outside investment to start. Leahy and Shipper have been hacking and testing on the product for months between classes and during late night coding sessions.

AirTime allows companies to insert a single line of code (another obsession of Leahy’s) and then have a universally controlled advertisement as an email signature. The company-wide email signatures can be modified after emails are sent. So when a company launches a new product, every email ever sent with AirTime enables users to change to the new messaging. Users can also target email advertisements based on location or platform, so when you open the McDonalds newsletter on your mobile device, an advertisement could automatically direct you to the nearest restaurant.

AirTime then enables companies to measure analytics such as views and conversions from the advertisement (below).

A screenshot or AitTime's dashboard

Dan Shipper

Patrick Leahy

Shipper, you may remember, was behind DomainPolish, a company he created as side project. The website feedback platform quickly gained steam, resulting in a sleepless but profitable weekend for the Penn sophomore. Leahy previously launched Penn Free Food a service that automatically scans university listservs for mentions of events with free food on campus.

The duo have been working on AirTime, originally called “EyeRedux” for months, and the company has already received buzz on Hacker News and has signed up 63 users.

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.

MUST READ

Four new companies have taken up residence [PDF link] at the University City Science Center according to a press release. DreamIt Ventures Kwelia and new online-only publication Med City News are among the group in the Center’s “bullpen” offices.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a feature on Quanta a Malvern-based maker of high-tech storm windows. The company has received $500,000 in grants from Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

DreamIt Ventures got a mention from TIME magazine in this link roundup.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners VP of Investment Terrence Hicks will visit the Science Center on February 29th for an informal Q and A session complete with coffee and a light breakfast. Just be sure not to ask him anything from the Q and A we did last Summer.

William Crowder, who headed up the Comcast Minority Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program in Philadelphia this Fall, will be in DC to talk about the incubators upcoming NYC class.

According to Mass High Tech, Osage University Partners is among the firms to invest $20 million in MC10, a maker of flexible electronics.

GIVE A GLANCE

Comcast Ventures threw an awesome party on the West Coast, says this guy.

This week: learn Python, learn how to develop on a Windows phone and then put your Ruby to the test.

An introduction to Python for women and their friends - The Philly Python User Group joins Web Start Women and Girl DevelopIt in its quest to even the gender ratio in the development world. Head on over to Devnuts to practice Python basics during the two-day workshop. Friday. 6:00 p.m. Northern Liberties. INFO.

30 Days to Launch - The city’s newest new incubator, Seed Philly, is hosting a series of Windows development courses. Join Brian Johnson, Senior Developer Evangelist at Microsoft in a four week course on making an application from scratch on the growing Windows Mobile OS. Wednesday. 7:00 p.m. Center City. INFO.

Philly.rb Hack Night – At Technically Philly we know from experience: learning Ruby is hard. Learn by doing at this week’s Ruby hack night at CloudMine, located in the Inquirer building. Monday. 6:00 p.m. North Broad. INFO

Sizeseeker co-founder Mona Safabakhsh demonstrates her company's measuring process using an XBox Kinect.

Sizeseeker co-founder Mona Safabakhsh stood in front of a hundred people in her pajamas and began flailing her arms around.

It wasn’t a bad dream, it was the night’s only live demo. Safabakhsh, along with co-founder Ian Campell, were demonstrating  Sizeseeker, the fledgling Wharton-born company that helps users find their clothing size using an Xbox Kinect.

The first Philly Tech Meetup of the new year kept the now-familiar format of last year: startups meet at the University City Science Center’s Quorum space and each get 20 minutes to present and launch their new startup to a room packed with the city’s technology community. Each demo is followed by a brief question and answer session and the night is capped off by a happy hour at nearby Mid-Atlantic.

After the jump, we offer recaps of each company: Kurbi, Sizeseaker and Near-Miss Management.

KURBI

Founded by Wes Garnett during a University of Delaware Startup Weekend, Kurbiaims to help people with multiple sclerosis log their activities and symtoms daily us a four-minute questionnaire. The idea, he said, is that patients can have all of their symptoms boil down to a simple score that they can then send to their doctors to help measure progress.

Garnett said he has several family members who have MS and has already partnered with Christina Care and the MS Society.

SIZESEEKER

Sizeseeker's representation of the images captures by the XBox Kinect

In a night otherwise filled with PowerPoints and mockups, Sizeseeker’s demo drew several “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd.

The platform was still in its early stage but the demo using co-founder Mona Safabakhsh was within one inch of measurements of hips, waist and bust. The measurement took a bit of manual input, but the duo hope to fully automate the measurement process.

“What we’re building is an API of measurements. When the user logs on to a partner website, the sizing chart will automatically be filled,” said co-founder Ian Campbell. The service also helps users that switch bands between retailers that often have “vanity sizes,” or sizes that make the customer perceive themselves as being thinner.

“At least 30 to 50 percent of all online sales are returns,” said Campbell. “Retailers are really excited at reducing these costs.”

NEAR-MISS MANAGEMENT

A slide from Near-Miss Management's presentation

According to Near-Miss Management co-founder Ulku Oktem the imfamous BP Gulf Oil spill may have seemed sudden to outside observers, but the company had several warnings that an explosion was coming. “Some alarms were going off a year before the accident,” she said.  ”Every time before an accident, the data often shows near misses.”

Industrial workplaces, like oil refineries, often collect huge amounts of data, like temperature, to help signal when a plant shutdown is required. Near-Miss has created a “Risk Predictor Suite” to analyze risk based on these data sets and alarm companies when it notices a troubling pattern, helping to warn businesses long before a shutdown.

Near-Miss Management demo was solely in PowerPoint.

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.

MUST READ

DuckDuckGo co-founder Gabriel Weinberg announced that Open Angel Forum III will be held on March 22 at Morgan Lewis. The event, which pairs startups with local angel investors for free, is taking applications until February 26th.

The Philadelphia Business Journal has the lowdown on ICG’s new buying mood. Peter Key also highlights how local Philly VC numbers are not recovering on pace with the national market. Nationally, the amount invested in 2011 was the third-highest amount invested in the past decade.

The Jerusalem Post has a lengthy profile about DreamIt Ventures’ new expansion into Israel. The new offshoot of the Philadelphia-born accelerator will be headed by Mitchell Golner. Also this week: DreamIt NYC grad AppAddictive raised $1.2 million.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Comcast Ventures has invested in the $5 million Series A round of Kiwi Crate, a company that makes products for childhood education. According to a release the company has veterans of eBay, PayPal and YouTube on staff. Business Insider has a detailed look at the company.

GIVE A GLANCE

According to SEC filings, Osage Venture Partners has raised $26.5 million in its third fund. The firm also co-invested in the $4 million Series A round of Identropy a provider of “Identity and Access Management” in the cloud.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners has a new Chairman and Vice Chairman according to a press release.

The investing website Motley Fool thinks that Safeguard Scientifics’ stock is a good investment.

Bristol-based Nitric BioTheraputics has raised $1 million according to SEC filings. The company makes products for Podiatry and Dermatology therapies.

Just in time for you to dust off your car and shovel your sidewalk, here are our reccomendations from our always-packed event calendar: Listen to local startups, save TV news and make a video game.

Philly Tech Meetup – The Philly Tech Meetup format is simple: three companies each get 20 minutes to show off what they’ve been working on to the community. Companies up this week: Kurbi, SizeSeeker, Near-Miss Mgmt. Wednesday. 7:00 p.m. University City. INFO.

ONA: NBC 10 Showcase talking web strategy and the future of TV news – Head on up to City Line avenue at NBC 10′s headquarters to talk about the future of TV news with your fellow media geeks. Station empoyees will be on hand to describe the strong turnaround of its online business after a radical shift in web strategies. Wednesday. 6:00 p.m. City Line Avenue. RSVP.

Global Game Jam – Just like its distant cousin Startup Weekend, the Global Game Jam challenges game-makers worldwide to produce a working game prototype in 48 hours. The local edition is hosted by Philly IDGA Philly Game Development Meetup and will take place at Indy Hall. Friday. 5:00 p.m. Old City. INFO.