VC Roundup: State’s VC market is “too small”

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.

Edit: Corrected source of Yodle funding.

DEFINITE READS

BFTP has announced its New Energy Plan, a contest awarding $35,000 to entrepreneurs looking to start a clean energy-oriented company. The contest deadline is April 15th, like your taxes.

First Round Capital has created an exchange fund for entrepreneurs. The fund allows portfolio companies to give up a piece of ownership in their own company for a tiny share of ownership in all First Round companies. Got that?

The Brookings Institution has released a report saying the state’s VC market is too small. “There are more things [the state] could do that wouldn’t impact the budget,” it says, citing BFTP as a step in the right direction.

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VC Roundup: Philly is home to 2 of the most active VC firms in U.S., DreamIt open for applications

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

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has released its Q4 MoneyTree report, complete with regional data showing Philly bouncing back from a disappointing Q3 with $142 million being invested in 28 deals, mostly in medical and biotechnology. See all the deals listed here. Silicon Valley continues its rebound with $2.2 billion of investment, nearly four times the next closet metro area. In total dollars invested, Philly ranks 12th out of 17 markets.

If you ever wonder why there is so much First Round and BFTP news on Technically Philly, its probably because First Round Capital and Ben Franklin Technology Partners were ranked the forth and 19th most active VC firms in the nation by Dow Jones VentureSource, respectively. The Wall Street Journal points out that the average age of firms on the list is 24, while First Round Capital is only six years old. Meanwhile, BFTP/SEP announced it has invested nearly $1 million in five local companies.

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Event Highlights for December 14 – December 20, 2009

Wednesday’s the one.

There’s four events happening Wednesday evening, and we’ll hope you’ll at least drop by Nodding Head Brewery to say hello to the Technically Philly crew at our first monthly meetup. We won’t hold you up too long, we promise.

Then it’s off to philly.NET, Web Analytics Wednesday or Entrepreneurs Unplugged to cap the evening off with Philly tech events.

Tuesday, don’t miss Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ Capital Briefing and on Thursday, Agile Philly returns the party to Nodding Head for its own holiday meetup.

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Event Highlights for December 7 – December 13, 2009

Edited: Corrected time of BFTP.

Hope you weren’t trying to get any work done in these weeks before the holidays.

Our event calendar is as packed it has ever been, chock full of events for every kind of techie. Whether you want to brush up on your Python or throw down with your fellow new media heads, you have no excuse for driving straight home after work.

Start off the week at the home of our new Comcast overlords, taking in Chris Bartlett of Gay History Wiki, whom we’ve covered in the past, at this month’s Refresh Philly. Then, hold off until Thursday and take the day off to better familiarize yourself with Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ application process. When you are done plotting the next great Philadelphia business, head on over to PANMA’s holiday party to spend your future riches.

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Startup Leaders hosts second annual Founder Factory to mixed reaction

Founder Factory audience members were given a chance to offer advice, along with panelists, to startups like language-learning tool PlaySay.

More than 250 gathered throughout the day for the second annual Founder Factory, a sold-out gathering of entrepreneurs, investors and students organized by Philly Startup Leaders at World Cafe Live in University City Thursday.

The event was a chance for business-minded folks to gather, discuss, dissect and learn about the work they are doing throughout the spheres of startups, education and investing.

Presenters from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Wharton Business School, Internet Capital Group, myYearbook and Monetate were rotated with fishbowl sessions— where young startups pitch their idea to experienced business people for advice—each ushered onto the stage to red and blue stage lighting and dramatic rock and jazz music.

During the afternoon, 150 attendees listened to entrepreneurial conversations while seated at long dining tables in front of the stage, standing at the bar, or gazing down from the mezzanine level, while a handful mingled in a nondescript lobby.
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Links: Alex Hillman and Kelly Lee spar, the Baltimore tech scene and More

DEFINITE READS

• The Inquirer jumps into the fray of criticism lobbed at Innovation Philadelphia and their Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit by Independents Hall co-working co-founder Alex Hillman, most notably through a lengthy post on his personal blog. Community response was less than enthused. Read our Q&A with Innovation Philadelphia head Kelly Lee.
• The Baltimore Sun’s tech blog has a guest post calling for advancements in their tech scene. Now, Philadelphia is bigger, more historic, cooler and totally owns Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy, but we’re way down with Charm City and totally dig that both of our towns get the short stick even though we’re the realest two in this urbanized eastern corridor we have here, so cheers to them. We hope to see their community grow just like ours has and continues to do. It ain’t Baltimore, my friends, it’s Balti-most.
• The Inquirer reports that Gov. Rendell announced an electric car manufacturer is looking at property along the Delaware River — get this — within city limits. But business columnist Joey DiStefano reports that state legislation that would make street legal the low-speed electric vehicles in question has stalled.

After the jump, a Ben Franklin expansion, Thrillist cats called coolest and eight more tech stories, including our best read piece of the week.

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ClickEquations: Paid search, online advertising and why Google is not your friend

A screenshot of a ClickEquations client's paid-search portfolio, breaking down a variety of ad campaigns.

The ClickEquations crew say they do what they do best because they were once the customer.

Launched in 2006, the Conshohocken-based company was once strictly a search agency managing mostly large-sized pay-per-click accounts, but founder and president Craig Danuloff and team increasingly found limitations in the tools available for the accounts they handled.

“The best products are the ones created to help the consumer, right?” says Alex Cohen, the company’s marketing manager.

So, that’s what Danuloff, who got involved in e-commerce software as early as 1994, and CEO Lucinda Holt did. The duo moved the company’s focus to developing tools that company’s themselves could use to manage their own paid-search accounts  — placing and tracking links listed on search engines by chosen keywords.

Since that private beta launch last August, things have turned out alright, so far, for the company trying to own paid search, which is the targeted, contextual advertising that appears on Web sites, particularly search engines, according to keyword relevance.

Eight investors, including Philadelphia investors Emerald Stage2 Ventures, MentorTech Ventures and Ben Franklin Technology Partners, last month invested $3 million in the firm’s expansion, including growing their development staff to accelerate the number of features they offer. Nautica, Comcast, Liz Claiborne and Forbes Traveler are among their high-profile clients, with other announcements on the way, Cohen says.

For continued growth, ClickEquations will win over lots of companies that aren’t using ad management tool and, Cohen says, explain just why “Google is not your friend.”

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Technically Not Tech: Larger Than Life Prints, a partnership with Start SOMA and coverage by TechCrunch

Pulling a fabric graphic printed by Larger Than Life Prints from a wall is easy and clean. The graphic has been removed without a tear. The wall remains unmarred, without a mark.

It’s a landlord’s dream.

The Old City-based company, founded by Kendall Schoenrock and business partner Carsten Petzold, provides the technology that allows users to submit their own high-resolution graphics and print them on one- to seven-foot fabric sheets that can easily be placed on a wall. Artists, too, are able to cash in on the action. By partnering with the site, they are able to price their works appropriately, and keep a portion of the sales after material and labor has been deducted by LTL.

Thought it may seem little like a technology startup, LTL is funded by Ben Franklin Technology Partners and has been active in Philadelphia’s and Silicon Valley’s technology communities.

Recently, the company announced a partnership with San Francisco-based Start SOMA to feature well-known artists organized by Start on one of LTL’s partner pages. The two companies have managed to nab art by Susan Kare, the graphic designer who created the original graphics and fonts for Macintosh computers, urban artist Justin Bua, Sugarluxe and a handful of other known artists.

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Friday Tech Links: Unbreaded’s Ben Kessler could be leaving, Peter Key almost dies and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

DEFINITE READS

• Geekadelphia launches its new Geek of the Week department with the co-founder of food blog Unbreaded, Ben Kessler, a freshly graduated Drexel University marketing major with brains, drive, personality and a total social media obsession. But here’s where it gets juicy. As Kessler implies in the interview, his hunt for work in Philly has proven unsuccessful. The word we’ve heard? That the first Geek of the Week interview from Philly’s premier geek blog is considering a move to the 67th ward. Guys, if we can’t retain someone like Kessler, we have a real problem here. Can someone do something about this?

• Philly Tech News reports that rumors have put Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent interest in acquisitions directly in Center City, namely in online advertising startup Invite Media, yeah the company whose offices were caught up in a fire scare in February.

• The Business Journal’s Peter Key, who, we’re telling you, in any other city would have a cult following, regales us with an admittedly strange story about how he was almost killed by Leap Wireless 20 years ago. The next time someone criticizes social media, just mention to them that blogging brought you the chance to read a Peter Key story in which he mentions Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

After the jump , video of a South Jersey Apple store robbery and more than 10 other Philly tech reads that you just might need to know about, including our best read story of the week.

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BFTP elects two new board members

Ben Franklin Technology Partners has elected two new members to its board of directors.

According to a press release (PDF) issued by BFTP, Walter Buckley and Dr. Kenneth Lawrence have taken the seats on the board, which now numbers 27 members.

Both men bring a highly specialized expertise to the board. Buckley has extensive experience in technology investment, while Dr. Lawrence is considered an energy expert with decades of experience in the industry.

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