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.

How did you get started with investing?

I became a mentor at the Baiada Center where once a week I work with the entrepreneurs there. I see lots of types of ideas and the stage that the entrepreneur is at. A lot of what we do is at the concept level. Sometimes it runs from a t-shirt company up to a level of what I call “investable” where you have some serious ideas that warrant being able to take it to an angel investor or venture capitalist to get some serious money.

I’m tapping into a vein not a lot of people are viewing

How do these companies come across your desk?
So far its been out of the Baiada Center. There’s a gap in our support of the students in respect to funding so I’ve been trying to fill that gap. It just so happens that as a mentor I’m in the ground floor at these ideas. Most of these students come to the Baiada Center before they go anywhere else. So if you are looking at this from a deal flow perspective, I’m tapping into a vein not a lot of people are viewing.

What’s your criteria for investment? You’ve said you’ve only had two investments thus far, but what are you looking for when you look at a company?

I think I’m open in respect to industry and concept, but I’ll only invest in what I understand. I wont do pharmaceutical or biotech or anything like that. My investments tend to be tech-oriented. My other deal is in material science.

We’ve heard local entrepreneurs say there are not enough investors in Philadelphia. Investors say there are not enough entrepreneurs. Where do you fall on that spectrum, being both?

I actually there’s enough of both. What is lacking is a mechanism to get the two side to know each other. I thought about joining angel investment clubs and I have a tangential relationship with a couple of clubs. My problem was finding a fit for myself. I decided not to align myself with anybody.

But you’re only looking at two dimensions: investors and entrepreneurs. I’d add “unaffiliated angel investor” to that. I’ve found that there’s a dearth of resources to the unaffiliated angel investor to be part of the greater community. From my perspective it’s not a lack of anything, it’s a lack of coordination.

You said there’s a problem connecting, Is there a good way for someone reading this to connect to you?

The Baiada Center is really made for Drexel students, so you wont be able to get any connection that way. I’m not actively promoting myself so you have to stumble across me. I’m not actively looking for deals so maybe I’m part of the problem I’m articulating as I’m getting enough of play out of Drexel. I’m not sitting here saying, “I want to invest in 20 companies.”

Angel Interviews will occasionally profile an angel investor that primarily operates in the Philadelphia region. If you’re an angel investor and would like to be profiled, reach out.

Welcome to the VC Round-up, 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

The Inky reports on the 12th-annual Angel Venture Fair, held at the Union League last week. The event is described as “speed dating for entrepreneurs” where 125 companies pitched 150 angel investors.

Drexel University will be creating an incubator in Bristol, according to the PBJ. The incubator will inhabit a building formally owned by Rohm and Haas Co. If you remember, Drexel also has an incubator in Camden in addition to the Baiada Center on campus.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) is proposing legislation that would force VC firms managing less than $30 million to register with the SEC. The industry counters that the bill is unnecessary and would harm small firms. The legislation is a reaction to the financial meltdown, which was partially blamed on the government not being able to monitor activity that may have been harmful to the larger financial system.

Radnor-based Qlik Technologies, makers of business intelligence software, filed paperwork indicating that they are seeking to go public. Why is this a big deal? The IPO market is generally thought to be all but dead, and the company, which had $157.4 million in revenue in 2009, moved to the area from Sweden.Take that, Sweden.

GIVE A GLANCE

DreamIt grad Scvngr (which has received investment from Google) gets a write up in the Boston Globe about its scavenger hunt-enabling technology. The company, originally from Princeton, now calls Boston home.

First Round Capital has invested in TweetUp, a startup founded by Bill Gross that helps users find relevant tweets while serving advertising, much like Google’s AdSense. First Round was also joined by Mahalo.com CEO Jason Calacanis and journalism pundit Jeff Jarvis.

The VC Roundup will deliver Philadelphia private equity news hot and fresh every Tuesday morning.

Two high-profile, Web-based Philadelphia startups each announced more services to their products recently.

Center City-based, event-planning social network i-Meet.com announced today its partnership with PlannerNet, a service aimed at helping its nearly 10,000 member organizations to find, rate and contract for project-based labor.

That move follows a host of new add-ons to PhindMe Mobile, a mobile Web direct-to-consumer advertising company based at Drexel University’s Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship, which came earlier this month, according to a company press release.

The new service offered by i-Meet, the brainchild of 17th and Oregon’s own John Pino, is said to identify professional meeting and event skills that are available worldwide, helping to match planner experience and projects for event organizers. It’s a move Pino hinted at during an interview with Technically Philly in May.

“In this challenging, economic environment, companies are becoming more inclined to staff their events on a project by project basis,” Pino says in a company press release. “By connecting our worldwide social network to PlannerNet, we’re… delivering qualified talent”

PhindMe’s new features are more varied, ranging from native smartphone applications to Twitter functionality.

The service will be able to publish a client’s mobile Web site as a native app for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android operating systems, a release from CEO Chuck Sacco read. Now a company’s existing blog or any other RSS feed can be easily integrated for mobile users. PhindMe additionally boasted the addition of Twitter-powered mobile pages, featuring custom Twitter feeds and remote mobile page editing. The site also announced it would now accept international payments.

If an interview we had with Sacco from April is any indication, these new features aren’t what are on his mind.

“Our future is less about cool new features and more about ensuring we have the most efficient ways to distribute our products,” Sacco told us. “Hopefully you’ll see some new distribution deals for us where we get our products into the hands of some big players and become known as the new standard for the mobile web.”