Friday Q&A: Dan McKinney of NextStage Capital

Forget the latest investment trends, NextStage Capital will do what it wants, thank you very much.

The firm was founded by Rob Adams and Dan McKinney -two ex-Safeguard Scientifics employees – and Terry Williams, a former recruiter during the post-dotcom boom year of 2003. Then, most investors were running away from early stage technology investment.

“There can be opportunity when people are fleeing markets,” says McKinney,  a managing partner.

It  firm has invested in 12 companies with four exits, mostly in the mid-atlantic region going as far west as to Pittsburgh. However, since its founding the firm has taken pride in being the contrarian, and has not made any new investments in 2010, choosing instead to reinvest its dollars in current portfolio companies.

After the jump, McKinney promises us that we will be hearing a lot from NextStage in the coming months and gives his take on the age-old debate about whether Philly needs more investment dollars.

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Apparently, early stage investors aren’t endangered

This post originally ran on Philly VC Deal Lawyer a blog about Philly startups by Christopher McDemus. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a partnership.

You may recall my earlier post from a few weeks ago entitled “Are True Early Stage Investors An Endangered Species?“  After laying down some background, I took the position that super-angel funds and incubators/accelerators (e.g., Y Combinator, TechStars, DreamIt), had the best chance of solving the early stage funding gap and that capital efficiencies and bootstrapping might help temporarily fill in some of the other holes.  Since I wrote that post, there’s been a lot of online traffic surrounding this issue.

Much of it was ignited by conversations emanating out of Y Combinator’s AngelConf on July 29th.  All of the new super-angel funds popping up in the past few weeks just add to the fervor.  Just today, the WSJ put out a piece noting that Aydin Senkut (former Googler) is closing a $40M super-angel fund, which follows Ron Conway’s $20M super-angel fund, Chris Sacca’s (former Googler) $8.5M super-angel fund, Dave McClure’s (former PayPal’r) $30M super-angel fund and Mike Maples’ new $73.5M super-angel fund.

Here are some of the articles that popped up since my last piece:

Read the rest here.

Startup Roundup: DreamIt grads get covered; new Startup Leaders-ship

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Inquirer’s Mike Armstrong covers the 2010 DreamIt team. DreamIt Ventures is like the Dream Team, but no give-and-go from 90s point guard-great John Stockon. See our coverage of the graduating class here. TechCrunch also covered our Philly peeps.

Philly Startup Leaders has chosen a new crop of leadership to steer the entrepreneurs group. Jameson Detweiler will lead as President, along with Gloria Bell, Cody Ray, Josiah Kiehl and Matt Owens. We’ll have more on this story soon.

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VC Roundup: NuPathe IPO, no more DreamIt Ventures

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.

DEFINITE READS

Later today, look out for the emerging details about Philly Mag’s story on Guggenheim Ventures.

Technically Philly wasn’t the only publication to write about DreamIt Demo Day, a handful of other publications also weighed in. In a guest post by DreamIt partner Mike Levinson, TechCrunch takes a very black and white approach offering short paragraphs about every company. PhillyInc looks at DreamIt in perspective of the larger economic climate and the Philadelphia Business Journal focuses more on Startl’s relationship with DreamIt. Of course, you can always look at our three-post Demo Day preview series, our awards post for Demo Day and our collection of videos and pictures from the big day. The DreamIt companies are packing up a leaving the Science Center this week.

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Startup Roundup: Vuzit goes social, WizeHive giving away $250,000

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

WizeHive is giving away $250,000 worth of accounts after Google announced that it is shuttering Google Wave.

Vuzit is going social. The company announced DocuPub yesterday, which provides better integration for social media framworks, it says.

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DreamIt’s 8tySix is now “Sqoot”

It looks like Sqoot’s Mo Yehia and Avand Amiri have taken the startup ethos “be flexible” very seriously.

After entering the incubator as the Dish86, the company rebranded (as reported by Technically Philly in our DreamIt Demo Day Preview series) as 8tysix. Now, however, the company is settling on Sqoot (pronounced “SKOOT”).

“It implies motion and getting things done,” says Yehia. “It’s memorable short and cute.”

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Event Highlights: August 8 – August 13

With 15 events on Wednesday and Thursday alone, this week’s events calendar is likely too full for even the most ravenous tech junkie.

If you want to save a little time for other things (you know, like sleep), you may want to pick and choose this week. To help you out, we’ve chosen three events you won’t want to miss.

We’ve built up your anticipation, and DreamIt Ventures Demo Day is finally here. Check it out on Wednesday, along with the first-ever Philly WordPress Meetup. Then join Philly Startup Leaders on Thursday for their first annual TECH Cocktail Philadelphia.

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Startup Roundup: TicketLeap redesign roundup, DreamIt grad partners with Journeys

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

TicketLeap has launched its redesign, according to an email. It looks hella sharp. We dig the Facebook and Twitter comments. The company says that its also allowing events with less than 100 tickets to sell service at no charge. It also got the ReadWriteWeb treatment.

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VC Roundup: Robin Hood moves, BrainRewards raises cash

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

In case you missed it last week, we reviewed all of the 14 companies in DreamIt Ventures. The companies will be showing off their summer’s work on August 11th at Demo Day.

Robin Hood Ventures has moved into the University City Science Center. While the angel investing group has been in the Science Center since May, the group just released the news late last week. In an email to Technically Philly, Executive Director Ellen Weber said that the group made the move to be closer to entrepreneurs. Life Science investor BioAdvance also joined the Science Center.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Wallingford-based educational gaming company BrainRewards is raising $750,000, according to SEC filings.

Edison Ventures completed its $5 million investment in Blue Cod Technologies, a Massachusetts-based insurance technology company.

Mt. Laurel-based Jumpstart has invested $500,000 in ConnectYard, a company that provides communication tools for students and teachers.

GIVE A GLANCE

Our good friend Joey D. wonders if NuPathe’s IPO will suffer the same fate as other Safeguard Scientifics IPO offerings. In the meantime, Safeguard announced that its earnings are growing.

Cross Atlantic Capital Partners has invested $4 million in Health Market Science, a provider of healthcare data technology.

Venture Capital news site thefunded.com has listed First Round Capital as the fourth-best VC firm in the country.

DreamIt Ventures Demo Day preview (part two)

Edited: Corrected Campus Sponsorship details.

In part two of our DreamIt Demo Day preview series, we preview two companies that continue a noticeable trend in this year’s DreamIt class: the reliance on social networks for user acquisition.

With the exception of Adapt.ly and Giveloop, all of the companies previewed yesterday lean heavily on Facebook to create a frictionless login service and to help promote user actions to friends and these two companies are no different.

After the jump, read our previews of 8tysix and Campus Sponsorship to get you ready for August 11th and see which company told us that its site has “double rainbow possibility.”

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