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.”

Campus Sponsorship

Who:

Dan Levin – State College, Pa.
Rob Falcone – Broomall, Pa.
Nick Yang – Canada
Sunny Patel – Mayfair, Northeast Philadelphia
Tony Colantonio – Conshohocken
Matt Morabito – Philadelphia
Colleen Foley – Philadelphia

What:

Founders Rob Falcone and Dan Levin think most companies do a bad job of marketing to college students, often resorting to setting up a table on campus and giving away T-shirts or fliers.

“You always see students take the flier and then immediately throw it in the trash,” says Levin.

They also noticed friends in student organizations struggling to raise money. At Penn State, for example, some student groups clean 107,000-seat Beaver Stadium to raise cash.

“I’m a Penn Stater,” says Levin, “and there’s no amount of money you could have paid me to do that.”

To solve both problems, the company has created Campus Sponsorship, a website that rewards college students for engaging with brands by watching a video, answering a quiz or completing some other interaction with an advertisement. When a student logs in, she can create a page for her student group or click to help support an existing one.

(click to enlarge)

After a user chooses a group, they complete an engagement for a brand (i.e. taking a quiz, becoming a fan of a company’s Facebook profile etc.)

A sample engagement (click to enlarge)

When a student competes an engagement, the brand donates money to the student’s organization. If a student pushes the promotion to Facebook, they can earn additional cash for their student group.

Campus Sponsorship says students remember and appreciate the brand that donates money to their organization and brands don’t have to waste any more money on fliers.

The company hopes to open the site to the “City Six” universities (Temple, Penn, Drexel, St. Joes, Villanova, La Salle) in the fall and, on Aug. 2nd, the company is hosting a “cash dash” where 20 student groups will raise money from noon until midnight.

Oh, and the company promised a “big surprise” at Demo Day.

Business Model: Campus Sponsorship charges on a cost per engagement model and then splits the revenues with the student organization.

8tysix

Who:

Mo Yehia – Business Development, Chicago
Avand Amiri – Technologist, Chicago.

What:

In the company’s short history, 8tysix has already undergone a re-branding. The company started as Dish86, a “Priceline for dining” that had three features: friends were able to post where they wanted to go to dinner and then other friends joined in while restaurants made bids for their business.

Yehia and Amiri decided to simplify the business and drop the restaurant component to create 8tysix, a website that allows users to list all of the things they’ve been “dying to do.” Users can have friends view the to do list and offer to join in. The idea is to provide motivation for all the things people have been putting off — such as going skydiving, currently 8tysix’s most popular to do list item.

“We help friends get together to do things they wouldn’t do alone,” says Yehia. “A friend’s invite is the biggest indication of whether you’ll do something.”

After logging in with Facebook Connect, users are notified of friends already on the site and can then begin assembling their to do list.

(click to enlarge)

After posting an item it’s pushed to Facebook, and friends can join the to do list item and comment.

(click to enlarge)

The site just launched its beta last week, but 8tysix has a laundry list of features it hopes to add in time for Demo Day and a wider launch. The site will soon be able to connect users with friends of friends and make friend and activity suggestions based on the compatibility of to do lists. The site will also connect two people who have similar list items such as “see Inception” and “see a movie.”

And 8tysix has already considered the possibility of people finding dates on its site.

“The site has double rainbow possibility. Maybe even triple,” says Yehia.

Business Model: A mix of affiliate discounts and advertising. The company also envisions an iPhone app and possible partnerships with geolocation services.

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

LTL Prints has been racking up partners weekly, according to the deluge of press releases we get, but that’s why not why we’re playing this one. The Old City-based wall graphics company has an interview with Twitter’s Fail Whale creator — and LTL featured artist — Yiying Lu. It’s not about failure at all:”I wanted to create a visual greeting – a visual ‘comfort’ for my friends back home for all the events that I was missing,” Lu says. Check it out if not for the story, for the original sketches.

Conshocken-based biotech firm NuPathe — read our Q&A with the company, which is developing a migraine treatment patch, here — has set the terms for the debut of its initial public offering, at between $14 and $16 per share, hoping to raise $75 million with the offering.

We’re way psyched to see this one come through the pipeline: ZVRS, a company which is taking advantage of iPhone 4′s Facetime to provide translation services for the hearing impaired launched launched at Hard Rock in Center City. Remember that, ahem, social entrepreneurship thing here in Philly we’ve been writing and talking with folks about? Yeah, cough. It’s happening.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

DreamIt Ventures graduate SeatGeek, now based in New York, raised $1 million in funding this week while on the other side of the Technically Philly world — in our Venture Capital Roundup — DreamIt organizers are defending DreamIt’s success, though a a Forbes story last week questioned it.

myYearbook‘s got a few new partners for its real-time Chatter web app, a Twitter clone, that maybe does Twitter a little smarter than Twitter. It’s offering businesses a 100,000 fans guarentee. Anywho, Got Milk, Six Flags and MTV drank the kool aid, according to a press release. And geez, those numbers. Got Milk—that’s right, the one you know and love and thought was gone—generated 30,000 comments and 500,000 new fans in less than two months on the teen social network. That’s where the money is, peoples.

RedLasso has partnered with Daylife, an NYC-based company that creates content tools for media companies and brands. Daylife’s got all the buzz lately one would expect of a $15 million-funded company, and RedLasso is excited to be a part of it, providing its partners with greater reach.

ProtonMedia shows off the goods for the forthcoming version 1.5 of ProtoSphere, its virtual reality meeting software. There’s now proxy features for bypassing company firewalls (yo, don’t tell the myYearbook kids about proxies; they already know about ‘em). The software company will also provide the option to bundle the ProtoSphere app on USB drives for mobility. Nice.

Lancaster-based nonprofit fundraising software firm GiftWorks gets featured this morning for its interesting, if not valuable to some, blog platform which offers tips to development leaders on how to raise dollars in the not-for-profit world.

GIVE A GLANCE

Here’s some advice for startups this week, as well. Keep that budget belt tight my friend and take the leap for big growth.

PackLate has announced a partnership with Barefoot Technologies, a browser-based reservation and asset management system, giving the latter real-time booking tech, a direction for PackLate that seems an obvious, if not smart revenue model. We really want to book a trip with PackLate, but damned us if that isn’t a conflict of interest.

As if Venmo needed anymore credibility, now London is all over their mobile payment jawn.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

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

Edit: Kerry Rupp clears up a few facts in the comments below.

DreamIt Ventures gets a feature in this month’s Forbes focusing on managing partners Steven Welch, Kerry Rupp, Michael Levinson and David Book. The story provides a digestible overview for those not familiar with the University City Science Center-based business incubator and provides lots of numbers and personal backstory for those more knowledgeable about the program. The most surprising fact uncovered by Forbes: none of the companies incubated by DreamIt have turned a profit. Look out for our Demo Day preview on Wednesday to get a sneak peak at some of the companies in this year’s class.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Movitas Mobile has raised $3 million from a yet-to-named source. In March we reported on SEC filings that indicated the company was gunning for $2.7 million. Movitas, if you remember, was also behind the acquisition of PhindMe Mobile a mobile development company based out of Drexel University.

Our good friend Christopher McDemus – aka the VC Deal Lawyer – has a comprehensive write up on the impact of the recently passed Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The act has been widely covered for its reform of our nation’s financial system and McDemus helps liberal arts majors like us understand the impact the reforms will have on private equity.

GIVE A GLANCE

Pop City reports that Pittsburgh has seen a comeback in VC numbers. Fueled by Innovation Works, the Steel City startups closed deals at a four-year high.

DreamIt vet Seatgeek has received $1 million in funding for its ticket price predicting service.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners continues handing out checks, this time to clean technology companies. Though the $361,000 in investments is not nearly as large as the $1.8 million it invested earlier this month.

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

Radnor’s QlikTech launched its initial public offering last week, selling 11.2 million shares at $10 each, an initial market capitalization of $940 million, Seeking Alpha reports [h/t/ PhillyTechNews]

We love this. Local Laan Labs has created an augmented reality soccer game that lets you use an iOS4 camera to kick a ball around. Great for soccer wanna-be’s.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Motivas Mobile announced this morning that it has raised $3 million from private investors for beefing up its mobile technology. We reported in March that it was nearly a third of the way through a 2.7 million round of fundraising.

Venmo founders Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon Ismail were featured on Inc.com’s 30-under-30 feature. See our coverage of the Rittenhouse-based mobile payment startup.

Local design firm Happy Cog, which wrote the book on web standards, has published a case study on a redesign/refresh of Zappos.com.

Yunno, a DreamIt Ventures company focused on creating social media campaigns built around contests has launched, a blog post says.

GIVE A GLANCE

RedLasso has announced that it is utilizing Adap.tv‘s video ad serving platform for its clipping service.

Monetate announced yesterday that is has appointed Kevin Ertell — Borders.com and Tower Records e-commerce veteran — to its advisory board.

myYearbook‘s Trends blog shows that the majority of teens aren’t aware of Facebook’s privacy issues and don’t care anyway. Insight: We already knew teens were apathetic.

MyDunkTank is featured in the Philadelphis Business Journal earlier in July. Be sure to see our coverage from mid-June.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

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. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Baltimore coworking space BeeHive visited IndyHall last week, according to the Philly coworking site’s newsletter. And at IndyHall’s weekly Show & Tell lunch meetup, several startups showed off their goods, like MyClin which claims to “revolutionize clinical trials,” and Johnny Bilotta‘s UI prototyping software for Photoshop and Illustrator.

We’ve received word from Ignite Philly 5 organizers about some of the speakers set for the March 2 event at Johnny Brenda’s. We’ve got limited details, and organizers anticipate changes in the schedule, but so far, Asheesh Laroia of OpenHatch will talk about food trucks and open source, Philly Startup Leaders‘ Blake Jennelle will discuss startups and nonprofit survival, Mike Levinson of DreamIt will offer ideas “that make it (and don’t),” and Happier.com Founder Andrew J. Rosenthal will tell you, mysteriously enough, “how to get people to like you.” Thank god for that.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Mobile train scheduling app RailBandit has announced v2.4, including track assignments for NJ Transit. With the new feature, users can see which track a train is set to depart. If you want to depart on them. Jersey joke? Natch—two of our co-founders are native.

Tom’s River-based TrapCall, which lets users unblock anonymous phone calls, has launched a new dashboard with better organization and simplified design. The company also announced support for Sprint mobile phone service.

GIVE A GLANCE

University City-based mobile payment service Venmo gets some national coverage from GigaOm. “[A] big issue with Venmo is the privacy and security of tying payments directly to your phone number. [Co-founder Andrew] Kortina said Venmo will allow a high level of user control over every transaction, therefore protecting users,” GigaOm’s Liz Gannes writes. We’ve been hard at work testing the service.

DreamIt Ventures incubated ticket marketplace startup SeatGeek gets some love on Lifehacker.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

Update: Minor copy edits. Changed logo.

As reported in this week’s Venture Capital Roundup, Steve Barsh has had a busy week.

The DreamIt Ventures managing partner got his tons of national press for his latest startup, Packlate.com, from TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. The company, based in University City (though with plans to move to West Conshohocken) aims to be a last-minute vacation booking service and has received funding from ETF Ventures and First Round Capital.

“It’s not a rocket ship yet, but it is kind of jiggling on the launchpad,” says Barsh.

Barsh says the idea has been brewing for years as he mentored young entrepreneurs at DreamIt while maintaining vacation properties in Utah.

“You know the saying ‘Those who do, do. And those who don’t, teach? I like to do both,” he says.

Currently he says he is still dedicating ten percent of his time to DreamIt but says he wants to focus most of his efforts on his new startup. We spoke with Barsh about Packlate’s future, how DreamIt can survive with preoccupied management and when we’ll be able to book a Jersey Shore vacation with Packlate.

As always, edited for length and clarity.

How long have you been working on Packlate? This seemed to come out of nowhere.

I’ve had rental property in Park City, Utah for about ten years and I’ve had this idea for Packlate for the last five. I’ve been kind of doing it on my own for my two condos and when I was doing DreamIt this summer, talking to all these entrepreneurs about de-risking, I was working on Packlate as kind of my “20 percent time.”

A bunch of investors in the Philly area told me I cant de-risk it anymore without cash so they told me “Build it into a company and we’ll fund it.”

We started the company on September 1st. Within three months it was funded and within five months it was in the market. We went really fast… We just wanted to get it out there and see how people reacted.

Steve Barsh, CEO of Packlate

How are people reacting?

Traffic is surging because we keep getting PR. We keep bringing more servers online, so it’s a good problem to have. I said at our first board meeting this week: “If anyone was wondering, we are at revenue.”

So we are getting bookings and generating money. Not a lot, but its a great signal. We’re really pleased.

It’s only for the Rockies now?

[Advisor and StubHub.com founder] Colin Evans hounded on me this summer and said “If you launch nationwide, you’re going to be 3,000 miles wide and a quarter of an inch deep.” You won’t be a marketplace. It would be like walking into the Barnes and Noble and seeing two books in the fiction section. Which means you don’t have a fiction section.

We’ll expand in the spring and summer for other markets.

So I can book the Jersey shore pretty soon?

I hope so. There are a lot of markets we want to open up in.

To switch gears, are you involved in this year’s DreamIt class?

I’m not focused exclusively on Packlate but I am focused extensively on Packlate. I usually teach part-time at Wharton, I’m not doing that this semester.

With DreamIt it will be a very light participation, I’ll do some mentoring, I’ll do a talk, but I won’t be full-time. I can’t do both. If I do both, I’ll do both poorly.

If Packlate takes off, do you see yourself pulling out of DreamIt?

I’ll always have ten percent of my time for DreamIt. To really do both of these things, you have to throw yourself at them.

What’s the next step for Packlate?

We’re refining in our current market and trying to get all of our metrics up and to the right. More booking, more people watching and driving more traffic. We have an idea coming out in the next week that I hope will be completely crushing to the vacation rental industry, which is fun.

Are you worried about the future of DreamIT? You have Packlate, Steve Welsh is running for congress and David Bookspan runs Monetate?

DreamIt is in great hands. They are moving at 100 miles per hour whether I’m involved or not. DreamIt is doing well and is well-backed and it will stay that way.

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

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. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Philly Startup Leader Founder Blake Jennelle writes long-form about Washington D.C.’s “startup soul,” after taking in the scene there earlier this month. There’s a lot for Philly to learn from it’s neighbor to the south, Jennelle says, and we’ve got much in common. Like Philly, growth comes from the grassroots, but D.C. lacks a central community of entrepreneurs. And our brethren know Philadelphia. “The reputation of [Philly's] creative communities is strong,” he writes.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Mobile payment platform XIPWIRE is helping support the open source community by seeking donations for several nonprofit organizations, according to a blog post. Users can donate to the Apache Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, GNOME foundation and others. The company is also working with Cupcakes4Haiti, a charitable bake drive led by Temple University student Seth Heirzenrater.

Pittsburgh entrepreneur and self-described city cheerleader Michael Langley writes about his business reasons for wanting to stay in the Iron City. “Out next renaissance is rooted in research and development in advanced materials, life sciences, information technologies and energy … and business-services sector.”

GIVE A GLANCE

DreamIt-backed location-based mobile game platform SCVNGR, which graduated the incubator in 2008, has grown to over 350 corporate customers and $1 million in revenues in 2009. We wanna know why this group moved to Boston (aside from that Harvard partnership).

TicketLeap has redesigned its Web site, implementing a cleaner interface, multiple event categories, and advanced search functionality.

ProtoSphere is showing off features in its upcoming 1.4 release, which will allow live presentations for 250 virtual attendees, and which will bring Windows 7, IE8 and Firefox 3 support.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

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

DreamIt Ventures has partnered with 67th Ward-based startup accelerator program Startl to accept five companies into this summer’s DreamIt program.

University City Science Center-based vacation rental service Packlate.com has raised $650,000 from local firms First Round Capital and ETF Ventures. The company’s CEO is DreamIt co-founder Steve Barsh, who also got his car dug out by a backhoe this week.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

VC rag peHub is still taking votes on where it should hold its next event. Philly is currently in a distant third. We’re just throwing this out there: we are not above automatic voting scripts, people.

Comcast Interactive Capital leads a $16 million Series B round for the Baltimore-based TV advertising company TidalTV.

GIVE A GLANCE

First Round Capital has created a job board for its portfolio companies drawing widespread praise for its entrepreneurial thinking. Not to brag, but we’ve had a Jobs Board for months.

If a roundup links to a roundup will the Interwebs explode? The Inky writes that Franklin Square Capital Partners has a new president, Jeff Rosenblum.

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

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

According to the VCs assembled in New Jersey for the New Jersey Technology Council conference, VC activity is primed to heat up in the coming months. Bala Cynwyd-based Osage Partners was among the local firms in attendance. “If you can survive the last three years, then you have something,” said one attendee.

Ben Franklin Technology Partner has anounced nearly $600,000 in investment, including $50,000 going to Viddler. If you remember, Viddler told us in October: “We’re done funding.”

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

South Plainfield-based Petra Energy has raised $40 million to hire 30 employees. None of the funding sources were local. The company makes solar panels for utility poles.

Thanks to their love of blogging and their penchant for making a new deal every 15 minutes, First Round Capital is the most trafficked VC website in the country. No other local firms made the list.

GIVE A GLANCE

NestStage Capital has gone intercontinental and invested 2 million ($2.75 million) in the French company Resto in. The startup allows users to order restaurant-quality food online. Though, being Europe and all, it is still unclear whether you tip the delivery boy.

And now for the most low-tech VC deal you’ll ever see: Pret-Mose has raised $20 million, led by locally-based Murex Investments, to purchase Hitcharama Recreational Vehicles of Turnersville, NJ. We can only hope it is to use the RVs to film a road trip reality show.

Osage Ventures travels north to Boston and adds to its current investment of Landslide Technologies. The company, which develops business software, also hired a new CEO.

DreamIt and Wizhive co-founder Mike Levinson is going public in his search for talent. Levinson has posted to Monster.com his need of “bright, creative, rising stars.”

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

For the past five weeks, Pennsylvania has been operating without a budget as state legislators wrestle between a 16 percent income tax increase and cuts in state spending, among other points of contention between the Democratically-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.

As a result, state employees are no longer being paid, and expired unemployment benefits are not receiving an extension (though a tiny no-frills emergency budget may pass soon).

Caught up in the hurricane of the state budget debate is BFTP, a state-funded early stage investment group that could see its budget slashed by up to 60 percent. The organization is now asking its constituents to help push their state legislator to keep the group’s funding levels intact.

Otherwise, a cut to the funding to BFTP could have a dramatic impact on the city and the region.

And if you’re a reader of Technically Philly, that probably means you.

If you count yourself among the Philly residents that believe, like we do, that the city is on the edge of becoming one of America’s premier entrepreneurial cities, a cut to BFTP will make that climb much steeper.

“Depending on the cuts that are made, even if its restored next year, the unraveling will take four to five years to reverse,” Southeastern BFTP CEO RoseAnn Rosenthal tells Technically Philly. “You lose capability, you lose connections and you lose presence.”

Since 1982, Ben Franklin Technology partners has been investing money into startups with the hope that properly invested seed money can circulate throughout the economy, and now the group is fighting to keep its current level of investment.

Currently, the organization receives $50.7 million in state funding. In his proposed budget Governor Rendell has only $35 million directed to the line item that funds BFTP. The House is currently proposing $30 million, while the state Senate proposes $20 million.

BFTP’S IMPACT ON PHILLY

The slash in funding could have a crippling effect on early stage investment in the state, and its effects will certainly be felt here in the Philadelphia region.

“If [our] line item is cut, you will see a dramatic unraveling in the entrepreneurial structure in the region,” Rosenthal says, adding that several university programs as well as organizations, like the Mid Atlantic Capital Group, also share money from the same line in the budget.

With state money, BFTP performs three main functions: early stage seed investment, the expansion of established companies and the support of the local startup infrastructure.

BFTP is often the first investor in local startups that are then able to lure follow-on institutional investment, in fact in all cases, it’s mandatory. Center City-based TicketLeap credits a $2 million investment by BFTP as a “seal of approval” that helped legalize the company for private investors.

Vuzit, the document sharing Web site based in the University City Science Center, also received their first round of funding from BFTP.

“That was a huge endorsement,” CTO Chris Cera tells Technically Philly. “Closing out our [initial round of financing] was much easier. They really stuck their neck out for us.”

The startup incubator DreamIt also received money from BFTP. In turn, DreamIt has provided early state investment and incubation to over 20 companies, many of whom are from out of the area and end up staying in Philadelphia when their term in DreamIt’s incubator is completed.

As part of the conditions for shelling out start up money, BTFP also guarentees that companies stay in the state of Pennsylvania.

A cut to BFTP may seem sensible now with the state running in the red, but the group is not an expense, it is an investment – exactly where state dollars should be flowing, if the focus is on returning money to the regional and the state economy.

“It’s the lifeblood of early stage investing in this area, its often the first money that comes into businesses,” DreamIt Co-founder Steve Welch told Technically Philly during a question and answer session two weeks ago. “If you get rid of Ben Franklin, companies five to ten years from now will not get that next round of VC funding.”

The exact impact is up for debate, but according to a report by the Philadelphia Economic League, BFTP returns $3.50 for every dollar invested. The exact figure and methodology has been challenged, most recently in Inquirer reporter Joseph DiStefano’s PhillyDeals column.

“I would suspect the number is much higher,” Welch said of the estimated $3.50 to $1 investment return. “[BFTP companies] have vendors that are local that they are spending money on, its creates a circulation funding in the early stage businesses.”

Indeed, it is nearly impossible to exactly follow the money, but a look in Technically Philly’s archives will tell you, many of the regions technology startups have received funding from BFTP, heck New York is even jealous.

If you fancy yourself as only a casual observer of the city’s entrepreneurial community, it may be difficult to visualize BFTP’s impact. Something Rosenthal thinks can be blamed on the long cycles that startups companies go through.

“These are technologies that will not impact the region tomorrow, Rosenthal says, referencing the group’s investment in nanotechnology eight years ago. “But at some point you will have a [product] that will help you, on a shelf.”

SUPPORT FOR BFTP

For now, the group is preparing for several scenarios, including one where funding is drastically slashed. But the news is getting better.

Newly confirmed secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development George Cornelius said that “The Bens are top priority” at his first press conference and response to BFTP’s “Call to Action,”which we reported on last month, has thus far been strong.

“We’ve gotten a tremendous response,” she says, “and [our supporters] need to keep doing that. Focus on the legislative leadership, they need to keep hearing that Ben Franklin is important”

If you’d like to support BFTP, visit the call to action section of their Web site.