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 Sweeden.Take that, Sweeden.

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.

First, the company focused on text-based marketing before unrolling Everywhereigo, the company’s mobile CMS. Now, PhindMe is looking to become the premier vendor for social media-focused mobile Web sites. A buzzword packed space that CMO Jon Cooper says is currently unoccupied.

“[Social] follows the evolution of mobile from being a simple utility,” Cooper says.

To stake its claim as the go-to social media experts in the mobile sphere, the company has just released Social Media Hub, a series of features for its mobile CMS that allow users to easily incorporate social media content in their mobile Web site. And, if all goes well, the company will be one of the next great mobile platforms for businesses.

“Social media is the fundamental thing we want to be good at,” Cooper says.

Currently, individuals can get an account for free to create mobile pages or, for five dollars a month, they can opt for the premium package that enables more than one page and CSS customization. For businesses, the company charges $49 a month, $99 for the premium version. The company also makes additional revenue by building sites for users who need the development help.

With Social Media Hub, the company is beginning to find its identity as the premier social media platform for commercial sites. PhindMe can easily tie businesses to their social media presences on Twitter and Youtube by using API calls to import content to display it directly on the mobile Web site.

The marriage of social media and mobile has been long and strong as Twitter, Flickr and Facebook all allow for mobile uploads and status updates on the go. The problem, however, is that social media conversations often happen on their respective Web sites. Especially on the iPhone where the OS often forces users to open a separate YouTube application when viewing video content.

By optimizing sites for social media, businesses can keep users on their site and only one click away from converting.

“I know a lot of companies have to work hard to get people to return to their sites,” Cooper says, “so social media is often counter-intuitive.”

Though many companies see value opening up their Web sites to user generated content. One of PhindMe’s clients, a brewery, has its site stocked with images and videos submitted by users tasting the company’s brews. A mobile site optimized for social media, Cooper says, can become a hub for that product’s community.

With the slight shift in strategy, the company is undergoing a homepage redesign and is trying to reach out to specific niches to help word-of-mouth fuel the company’s growth. For example, Cooper says the company has made inroads among recruiting marketers who use social media to attract and maintain a pool of candidates.

“We need those super-influencers,” he says.

Below, watch a video tutorial about Everywhereigo’s new social feature set.

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

October is events season, and this week is no exception. So grab a cup a coffee and join Technically Philly as we pluck the diamonds from the Philadelphia tech events rough.

Monday is a day of rest for our action packed Tuesday. On the 13th, you have your choice of rapid-fire Ignite Philly 4 presentations in Fishtown or chatting with the city’s Linux-heads in Plymouth Meeting. Or, if you have a gullible friend with a car, you can attend both.

The event calendar is sparse until Philly Startup Leaders weekend. Then, the group plans on holding an open hack at Drexel. Rumor has it, the group may break out into some improv comedy.

Check out the details after the jump.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more.

Tuesday, October 13th: By now you know the deal: One presentation, 20 slides, 15 seconds a slide. However, for the first time, Ignite is charging $5 a ticket for the first 150 tickets with all proceeds going to charity. Scheduled speakers include Drew of #blamedrewscancer and Shmitten Kitten‘s Anna Goldfarb. Oh, and check out the Ignite homepage. I hear there is a dashing gentleman pictured at the top of the page. Just sayin’. Oh, and if you want to rep the First State, Wilmington is having its Ignite on the same night. 7:00 p.m. Fishtown. RSVP. [view more events]

Tuesday, October 13th: If you’re one of those people who thinks 2010 will finally be the year Linux goes mainstream, then head on up to Plymouth Meeting for the Philadelphia Linux Users Group. The event will include Q and A sessions along with an hour-long presentation. If you can’t make it out, be sure to at least signup for the PLUG newsletter. 9:00 p.m. Plymouth Meeting. INFO. [view more events]

Saturday, October 17th: One of the region’s most influential groups are gathering for a weekend of refreshing Philly Startup Leaders’ web presence and creating new tools to foster collaboration. The group is inviting all types of people to gather in Drexel’s Baiada Center and help PSL take the organization to the next level. 10:00 a.m. University City. INFO. [view more events]

If you have an event that you think we should be listing, email us or fill out our submission form for best results. We promise that no submission falls in to the contact form netherworld.

“Part of our mission is to not only drive entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurial thinking,” he says.

Since 2001, The Baida Center has been a business incubator in Drexel’s Lebow School of Business that houses eight to ten companies on average, mostly winners of the school’s incubator competition. The center is also a big reason the school was named one of the top three entrepreneurship programs for graduate students in the country (three spots ahead of, ahem, Temple University).

Technically Philly sat down with the man behind the scenes: Executive Director and Senior Executive in Residence Mark P. Loschiavo and asked him how the incubator works and why, like the rest of us, Loschiavo has trouble pronouncing “Baiada.”

As always, edited for length and clarity.

First thing is first, how do you pronounce the name of the center?

It’s BAY – ADA.

If it’s any consolation to you, I was running the center for several months and I knew Mel Baiada quite well and always heard him pronounce it “Bi – ada.” But I was at CN8′s Money Matters one night (see video here) with his brother Mark and I introduced someone to him as Mark “Bi – ada” and he corrected me. I thought ‘Dang, I have been running the center and pronouncing it wrong for six months.”

How does Baiada work? Are participants all students?

It is predominately not students. Within the last couple of years, we piloted a student incubator program. That is, students could incubate a product while still in school.

We don’t limit it to Drexel student or alums, but that’s mostly what we have here. There are two ways to get into the center: One is through winning our incubator competition. The other way is through what we refer to as “exceptional merit.”

Which means we review the team, the business plan, and the market to determine weather or not the company has a better-than-average chance to be successful. And based on that, we will let people in. We’re pretty selective.

What kind of financial support does the incubator offer the companies?

The winners of the competition are given seed capital [up to $10,000], the amount of that depends on whether they win first, second or third place. All three also receive space for the first year for free. We also provide in-kind services.

We do not take an equity position in the companies. After the second year, the fees kick in. We charge half the market rate in year two and full market rate in year three.

So what’s in it for the university to house these companies if you are not taking a stake?

The primary reason we are doing this is to enhance the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region and also to further people’s interest, passion and best practices in entrepreneurship. We really view it as part of the educational mission.

We hope, down the road, that these companies will ultimately give back. We hope that the ones that are successful will someday write a big check to us as a benefactor.

What is one of the most successful companies that have come from the incubator?

One that folks recognize in this area, especially when they park, is Ompay. Ompay is the company that develops SmartCards, the solution for the Philadelphia parking authority so you can pay for your meters.

Temple has its own entrepreneurial program, Penn has MentorTech Ventures. How do you view the landscape when it comes to the university-led incubator?

I think both Temple and Penn have some really good stuff that they’re doing. It’s exciting that this region has as much activity as it does around entrepreneurship.

Temple has been strong in women entrepreneurship. They’ve also done some interesting stuff in global entrepreneurship.

If you look at a majority of Temple business plans they tend to lifestyle businesses, ours tend to have more tech-type businesses that are more scalable.

The Wharton Small Business Development Center is for people in the community who are trying to learn the business of business. They do a nice job with that. Our training is quite different.

We have a program called GAP [Growth Acceleration Program] that is not meant for the individual on the street. It’s geared more toward companies, small and mid-size.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia’s technology community. See others here.

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.”