First Round to Philly? ChoozOn raised $1.5 million [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.

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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.

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Zonoff wants to make your iPad the remote control for your entire home

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.”

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Co-Founders Wanted, Girl Develop It and cheap tickets to Wharton’s Entrepreneurship Conference [Event Highlights]

Good morning Philadelphia. Happy Monday to you and the Giants fans in your your life.

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.

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First Round Capital is considering a move to Philadelphia says job post

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)

Penn students launch AirTime, in-email advertising for businesses

Despite the advancements in online content delivery, e-mail has remained relatively static. E-mail newsletter designers are still constricted by ’90s era design standards and the medium has never been a prime market for advertisers. However, if two Penn students get their way, e-mail will become next great untapped ad market.

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.

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NewSpring is raising $200 million [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 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.

This week: finally learn to code [Event Highlights]

This is a special development edition of Event Highlights. If you made it your New Year’s Resolution to learn how to code, this week brings three opportunities to learn three different languages.

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

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Kurbi, Sizeseeker and Near-Miss Management demo at Philly Tech Meetup

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.

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Open Angel Forum III is open for business [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 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.

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Game Jam, ONA and Philly Tech Meetup [Event Highlights]

Happy Monday, Philadelphia. We hope you enjoyed the pretty-but-not-inconvenient snowfall we saw this weekend.

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.

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