Thank You: AppRenaissance and others help fund sign language interpreters at PTW

And now for a bit of a public service announcement.

As Philly Tech Week matures, Technically Philly is often faced with issues that we never even fathomed when creating the event. This year’s Philly Tech Week doubled the total amount of attendees from last year, and with a bigger tent comes a more diverse community. For the first time, Philly Tech Week fielded requests for sign language interpretation across several events, over 34 hours total across the week.

These requests were unexpected and with the help of the community we ended up being able to provide assistance at every event requested, a feat only made possible by some generous community members that we’d like to thank.

• Philadelphia Game Lab - With only a few days notice, the folks at PGL pitched in to cover partial costs of an interpreter at its day-long “Gamification for Non-Profits” conference.
• PlanPhilly and PennPraxis – The design and development news site covered the cost of interpretation at their Lunchtime Series event.
• AppRenaissance – The Old City development firm graciously supported 14 hours of total interpretation across the week.
• Thanks to interpreter Brandi Chittum for helping us coordinate.

In tech, we commonly use the word “accessibility” when discussing issues of the digital divide. However, true accessibility means everyone has access to the resources and people in this wonderful technology community. Thanks to all the event organizers that worked with PTW organizers to fulfill often last-munite interpretation requests.

A special thanks to Bob Moul for graciously volunteering AppRenaissance’s resources to ensure that everyone could enjoy the second annual Philly Tech Week. If you’d like to sponsor ASL-certified interpreters for the 2013 Philly Tech Week, please let us know.

NextDocs: “We want to establish how a larger company can thrive in the Philadelphia area”

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with NextDocs, the growing King of Prussia-based company that provides compliance solutions to life science companies.

In the past few months the company has ballooned to 126 current employees and is moving to a new office in Conshohoken that may or may not have a slide.

“We intend to make it the best place to work in software in Philadelphia,” says Satwik Seshasai VP of Product development. Seshasai recently joined the company after spending nine years in Boston working for IBM.

We ask Seshasai how Philly compares to Boston, NextDoc’s ambitions to double in size and how Philly uniquely allows engineers like him to have a greater impact.

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We’ve uploaded over 1,000 Philly Tech Week photos on Facebook

One of the many photos from the Signature Event photobooth

We have a request for you, Philadelphia: tag yourself.

On the Philly Tech Week Facebook page, we’ve uploaded every picture we’ve taken throughout the week and we want to know the names behind the smiling faces.

Events include:

• Kickoff Breakfast photo booth – Thanks to the Urban Technology Project for manning and setting up the booth.
• What it Takes to be a Black Entrepreneur - Photos by Nell Hoving.
• Signature event photos - Photos by Nell Hoving.
• Women in Tech Summit - Photos by Nell Hoving.
• Tech Friendly Philly - Photos by Nell Hoving.
• IGDA Showcase - Photos by Nell Hoving.
• Switch Philly 3 - Photos by Nell Hoving.
• BarCamp NewsInnovation
• Signature event photo booth - If you’d like hi-res prints of any of the photobooth photos, be sure to purchase them here.
• Other PTW photos

Thanks to photographer Nell Hoving for shooting a handful of Philly Tech Week events. And thanks to Philadelphia photographer Colin Lenton for the Signature Event photo booth. If you snapped a bunch of photos, please let us know and we’ll upload them with full credit to you and your organization.

And, as always, thanks for coming to Philly Tech Week.

SnipSnap wins Switch Philly [VC Roundup]

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 READS

SnipSnap, the coupon clipping mobile application, emerged the victor at Switch Philly, a Philly Tech Week event where five startups demoed to Mayor Michael Nutter, First Round Capital Managing Partner Josh Kopelman and Robin Hood Ventured Ellen Weber. SnipSnap founder Ted Mann announced during his demo that the app had launched earlier that day.

DreamIt Ventures had moved into its NYC location, the former location of design deal site Fab.com. The full list of companies is here, none are from Philadelphia and five are from the program’s pilot Israel program. Also, by valuation, DreamIt Ventures is the third-best incubator according to Forbes.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Representatives of First Round Capital, DuckDuckGo and this very publication were quoted in a Fast Company story about Philadelphia rise as a tech city. More thoughts about the region’s growth through the lens of Philly Tech Week also came from philly.com.

Amy Banse, managing director of Comcast Ventures, spoke with Bloomberg Television about women executives and leaders in business. In the interview, Banse says “women work harder.”

First Round Capital participated in CustomMade’s $4 million round yesterday. Also, according to SEC filings, First Round Capital partners have raised $2.7 million.

GIVE A GLANCE

In case you missed it, we recapped Startup 101 a Tech Week event that focused on starting a new venture.

According to an internal report, the Northeast branch of Ben Franklin Technology Partners created or retained 658 Pennsylvania jobs in 2011.

SnipSnap wins Mobile Monday’s 5th annual demo night

SnipSnap founder Ted Mann (left) is named the winner of Mobile Monday's demo event. Here he poses with Early Stage East founder David Freschman.

SnipSnap emerged victorious from Mobile Monday’s 5th Annual Demo Night at the Cira Center last night.

Part of Philly Tech Week for the first time, Mobile Monday is one of the largest networking groups in the city, and drew over 100 people to University City to see demos by SnipSnap, Cloudmine, Interact, OneTwoSee and Communilator.

SnipSnap secured the final Switch Philly presentation slot as well as a free entry to Early Stage East with its demo by founder Ted Mann that demonstrated the product’s coupon clipping and saving technology. To see SnipSnap demo this week alongside four other local startups, purchase your tickets to Switch Philly here.

Below see the video of appRenaissance co-founder Scott Wasserman announcing Ted Mann and SnipSnap as the winner.

Yagglo bests 17 other startups to win Philly Startup Weekend

The members of the winning Startup Weekend teams celebrate after hearing the results.

It was a long weekend, so the Startup Weekend participants were willing to wait a little longer.

After accepting the challenge of creating a startup in 50 hours over last weekend, 18 startups emerged to demo to a packed house at the University of the Arts Hamilton Hall. Yagglo, a new browser optimized for the iPad took first place and the fourth Switch Philly demo slot. Second place went to Credit Cario, a service that helps recommend credit cards and financial services to young people. Seed Invest, looking to be a Kickstarter for small businesses, took third place.

After the jump see a short recap of all the companies.

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Philly Startup Weekend kicks off Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T

Cloudmine's Mark Weil demonstrates an ideal pitch in front of the PHLSW attendees.

Last night over 150 people met at Hamilton Hall at the University of the Arts with a simple but ambitious goal: create a startup in a single weekend.

Kicking off the first day of Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T, Startup Weekend challenges designers, developers and “non-technical” attendees to put their heads together to create as many functioning companies by Sunday night. Then the companies will pitch to a panel of judges to determine the winner.

Now in its third iteration locally, the attendees spent Friday night meeting one another and pitching their ideas to one another in rapid fire 45-second speeches in front of the entire group. The attendees will then determine which startups they’d like to help with and team up to make them a reality by Sunday.

The winner, of course, gets a invitation to demo at Switch Philly 3.

We’ll have more Startup Weekend coverage later this weekend.

After pitching, attendees wrote their company names on a sheet of paper to attract signups.

Fergie’s Pub: the site of The Switch Philly Happy Hour (presented by the City of Philadelphia Dept. of Commerce)

All those demos are sure to make you thirsty.

After judges Michael Nutter, Josh Kopelman and Ellen Weber pick a winning startup at Switch Philly, we will all head a few blocks away to Fergie’s Pub thanks to the City of Philadelphia Department of Commerce (be sure to check out their business portal).

Join attendees, judges and more as we celebrate Philadelphia’s entrepreneurial community and maybe we can even convince the mayor to come and grab the mic. Switch attendees will receive $1 off wine and all draft beer.

It’s not too late to get your Switch Philly 3 tickets today to watch demos by PalmLing, Inhabi, Airtime and the winners of Startup Weekend and Mobile Monday.

As always, thanks to Morgan Lewis, The Corzo Center and Novotorium for their support of Switch Philly.

GoodCompany Group is seeking companies [VC Roundup]

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 READS

Phillip Moyer of Safeguard has written a guest post on Venturebeat about the dynamics of investing on the East vs West Coast. “The Northeast corridor is to commercialization what Silicon Valley is to engineers,” writes Moyer. “If you’re going to sell something to a business, you’re likely going to travel to the Northeast.”

GoodCompany Group, the result of a merger between GoodCompany Ventures and Green VIllage, is now seeking 2012 applicants. According to the release, the Center City-based incubator is seeking eight to 12 companies.

First Round Capital is raising its forth fund. According to SEC filings and several articles the VC firm is raising $135 million. The firm last raised money in 2010. Vator News points out that the raise is modest compared to the $2.5 billion Andreessen Horowitz raised.

E-commerce companies staffing up across Philadelphia

Monetate's office is pictured in September 2011 before the company launched into a recent employee expansion

While the national job market is showing tentative signs of recovery, Philadelphia’s e-commerce sector is growing so fast, many local employers can’t hire talent quickly enough.

According to Forrester research, e-commerce is expected to see double-digit growth through 2013 to a total of $240 billion in transactions, making online retail a wonderful option for a city looking to continue its reputation as a place with a growing technology job market (third in the nation according to a January CyberCoders study). After surveying some of the region’s entrepreneurs we’ve found that a steady stream of Philadelphia e-commerce shops are busy building out their own strong ecosystem.

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