William Draper III keynotes 14th annual Angel Venture Fair, 300 angels and entrepreneurs attend

William Draper III, the famed venture capitalist best known for backing successful companies like Zappos and Skype, among many others, thinks Philadelphia has great energy.

The city has an excitement, he said, that he thinks is now missing in Silicon Valley.

That’s how the investor and author of “The Startup Game” — which he gave away at the event — opened his lunchtime keynote speech at the sold out 14th annual Angel Venture Fair at the Union League yesterday. In a grandiose room tightly packed with approximately 300 people — a mix of angel investors and startup founders — and an introduction from Mayor Michael Nutter, it would have been difficult not to feel the buzz.

“Your innovations are driving Philadelphia’s growing reputation as a smart choice for business,” Mayor Nutter said, addressing the audience at the Union League.

Below you’ll find video of Mayor Nutter offering his introductory remarks:

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appRenaissance: mobile app and infrastructure provider raises $1.5 million seed round

Old City-based mobile application and infrastructure provide appRenaisance announced this morning that it has raised a $1.5 million seed round.

FirstMark Capital led the round, with additional investment from appRenaissance CEO Bob Moul, as well as other Philadelphia investors, according to a press release.

The company, which was founded in 2010 by Scott Wasserman, made headlines after hiring Bob Moul as CEO. Moul brought big plans for scaling the company with him as well as experience from founding and exiting Berwyn-based Boomi to Dell, as Technically Philly reported. FirstMark Capital also invested in Boomi.

In its first full year of operation, the company reports that it is on track to pull in $1 million in revenue, according to a release.

appRenaissance says the money from this round will go toward development of the company’s patent-pending “middleware platform” Unifeed as well as additional hires, according to a press release.

“As an angel investor, revenue trumps no revenue,” says Robin Hood Ventures member at Angel Education [VIDEO]

Jonathan Melllinger has experience on both sides of the investment ecosystem, first as a successful entrepreneur and now as a member at Robin Hood Ventures.

Mellinger told an audience of entrepreneurs and angel investors at the Science Center’s Angel Education event that he uses instinct and experience to choose companies to invest in, but he also laid out his model for making early stage investments Tuesday.

The programming is part of an ongoing effort from the University City life sciences research park to broaden its mission and the awareness of regional investors to smaller, more consumer-facing ventures.

First, when Mellinger is looking at a company, he looks at the management team.

“I like to see some experience from the management team in the space they’re going after,” said Mellinger, as he explained why he decided to invest in Onetwosee, which provides TV companion content for mobile devices.

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1 in 10 angel investing groups is in Mid-Atlantic, Philly, Baltimore: Halo Report 2011

Nearly 10 percent of angel investor groups are based in Philly, Baltimore and their environs, according to the Halo Report, which includes an analysis of mid-Atlantic angel investing released last week.

The report found that 8.9 percent of active angel investment groups are located in the mid-Atlantic, an area that included Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. Behind California, the Southeast region, the Great Lakes region and New England, the mid-Atlantic was home to 6.8 percent of all angel investment in the country.

See the report here.

The report is the result of collaboration between the Angel Resource Institute (ARI), an angel investment research and education nonprofit, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and CB Insights, a National Science Foundation-backed data-as-a-service firm. The report presents data that has not been available to investors and entrepreneurs until now, according to a press release.

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Angel Interviews: Ehud Israel and the “funding gap” at Drexel University

Introducing 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.

Ehud Israel wasted no time admitting that he was new to angel investing.

The 43-year-old is one of the mentors at Drexel’s Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship, a business incubator that caters exclusively to the Drexel University community, and it was in that role that he decided to invest in one of the Center’s companies: Async Interview.

“There’s a gap in our support [at the Center] of the students in respect to funding, so I’ve been trying to fill that gap,” says Israel. “It just so happens that, as a mentor, I’m in the ground floor at these ideas.”

Now in an operational role at as Async’s CFO and CTO, Israel has also invested in one other company and is keeping his ears open for other deals, though he says he is not actively pursuing companies.

We ask Israel what he looks for in a company, how to get started as an angel investor and the reason for the misperceptions about Philadelphia’s angel community.

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Hacker Angels mentors and raises cash for technical founders

Gabe Weinberg of Duck Duck Go and Hacker Angels.

Many computer programmers can piece together a functional web application in days. Dealing with investors for their new creation? That’s another story.

Hacker Angels, an informal group of angel investors that includes local entrepreneur and Duck Duck Go founder Gabriel Weinberg, is challenging the conventional wisdom that successful startups need at least one founder with business experience to be successful.

The group has already received coverage in ReadWriteWeb, among other places and hopes to mentor technically-minded founders as they wade through the often complicated and insider-y world of tech angel investing.

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Ben Franklin Technology Partners invests $2 million in regional companies

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania announced yesterday plans to invest $2.05 million in 11 companies in and around Philadelphia.

The regional partner of the statewide economic development network bought $750,000 worth of three Philadelphia companies and spent the rest on eight groups in the ‘burbs.

In a struggling economy, that’s good news. Technology companies funded by BFTP boosted the gross state product by an estimated $9.3 billion from 2002 to 2006, according to a study released by the Pennsylvania Economy League last month.

The largest investment was $400,000 for BioNanomatrix, a University City developer of analytic and imaging platforms that aim to reduce the time and cost used to analyze DNA. BioNanomatrix has previously received $250,000 from BFTP.

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First Round raising annex fund for existing startup portfolio

VentureWire is reporting that West Conshohocken-based angel investor First Round Capital closed on $9.74 million of $15 million for an annex fund to back its existing angel funding, according to a regulatory filing.

Investors of the reserve funding include Comcast Interactive Capital and West Conshocken-based TIFF Private Equity Partners. The annex fund will be used for existing companies in First Round’s portfolio.

First Round invests in seed-level start ups, including Mint.com, a popular online money manager, and Invite Media, a Center City-based online advertising innovator, among others.

We sure hope that the fire damage that Invite Media experienced earlier this month isn’t going to cost $9.74 million.