CityRyde leaves for Cambridge: we “just did not fit the investment style of the investors in the region,” says CEO

This is Exit Interview, an occasional interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

CityRyde leadership is making some big changes.

The bike sharing consulting practice is due to relaunch under a new brand and, as of next week, the startup’s co-founders will be leaving University City to make their headquarters elsewhere.

CEO Timothy Ericson and COO Jason Meinzer, the startup’s two co-founders, have decided that if their six-person startup is going to continue to grow traction, the Quaker City isn’t the place to do it.

“Philadelphia claims that they want to be the greenest city in America, however they are the only major city in the Northeast that does not have direct plans to launch a bike sharing initiative,” said CEO Ericson, 25, a native of Fair Lawn, N.J. who says he fell in love with his new city while studying at Drexel. Despite both having Drexel ties, he met his co-founder Meinzer, 28, while they were in London. The pair visited Paris to see the launch of that city’s bike-sharing program, which prompted their venture.

The departure of an entrepreneur named Meinzer may sound familiar, considering that just in September Jason’s brother Ryan, who was behind language learning tool PlaySay, told Technically Philly that he was leaving and taking his startup with him to D.C.

Next week, Dec, 1, CityRyde leadership, too, will officially move, setting up shop in Cambridge, Mass. — which is to Boston about what Conshohocken is to Philly, if Conshohocken was home to two of the most respected universities in the world.

Below, Ericson discusses why this is the right move and if there’s anything Philadelphia could do about it.

Read more

Colin Weir: “there’s no startup culture around video” in Philly

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

In a few weeks, Colin Weir will be gone.

The Toms River, N.J. native video producer is leaving April 19 to work for TWiT.tv in Petaluma, Calif. A Rowan University alumnus, Weir, 25, is leaving a job as a video production specialist for a Center City hospital to chase dreams westward.

Though he wants to stay in Philly, he says there just isn’t a culture around video like Philly is developing in other creative fields. Below, Weir talks about how he sees Philly on his way to the airport.

Read more

MindSnacks moved to Bay Area for the best environment to build a startup: Andy Mroczkowski

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

Andy Mroczkowski tells an important story without meaning to do so.

“Honestly I’m not that critical of Philly,” says Mroczkowski, 31, who moved mobile educational game development startup MindSnacks. “I just had an opportunity for adventure, and we thought the Bay Area was the best place for our company.”

A theme in the Exit Interview series has been a lack of competitive advantage for business in Philadelphia. Today is the last in the weekly series, though we’ll always seek perspective from those who leave — and those who come. In a fitting close, Mroczkowski notes that he’s actually rather fond of Philadelphia, he and his team felt that to give themselves the best shot at success, they planned to migrate westward.

Mroczkowski, a South Jersey native and Drexel alumnus left in January. The founder of local Mac programming group CocoaHeads, he had worked for the Neat Company and freelanced out of Indy Hall.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that MindSnacks, a DreamIT ventures startup that now has five full-time staff, raised $1.2 million in funding on the West Coast. So far, the plan is working.

Read more

David Lifson: “I would definitely consider Philadelphia over San Francisco”

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

When deciding on the headquarters for Postling, co-founder David Lifson said he had only crossed one city off of his list of possible locations: San Fransisco.

“The West Coast is so much of a tech bubble, it’s really easy to forget who your customers are,” says Lifson.

When Postling, a web application that allows small business owners to streamline social media campaigns, graduated from DreamIt Ventures, the company took some time to decide where to move next. After some thought, the company chose to leave Philadelphia for North Jersey and New York City.

We ask Lifson, why he decided to leave Philadelphia and why the state government impresses him.

Read more

Jesse Middleton: “The best thing about Philadelphia is the closeness of the whole community”

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

Jesse Middleton tells his story like small town boy makes good.

He went a small high school — graduating class of about 70 people — an hour north of Philly and got his first taste of city life when he attended Drexel University and then stayed a half dozen years.

“I found an amazing co-op job, traveled a lot and went on to do network security consulting, technology writing, SaaS implementations for enterprise companies,” Middleton says, “and finally moved to New York City.”

It was strictly about a job, he says, traveling where the money was good at the time but still harboring all the intentions to come back to the place he first made his home.

Below we talk to him more about what pushed him to leave and why he is so sure he’ll come back.

Read more

Ben Gilbert: NYC has “More events, more interview[s], more networking”

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

In the great big rise of geek culture from subculture to full blown community, video gaming has been a primary player.

In spring 2009, Joystiq was continuing its reign as preeminent gaming blog and content jewel of Aol. It also managed to have quite a Philly pull, from its Wharton-educated founder to a Fishtown-based editor and a pair of major contributors living in the region.

This past summer, one of those contributors, Ben Gilbert, who was also part of the Geekadelphia crew, made the jump and moved to Brooklyn.

Originally from Connecticut, Gilbert, 26, came to Philly for Temple University. Now the writer, who says he ‘developed a bit of hopelessness for Philly,’ talks about leaving, coming back and the Dock Street Brewery.

Read more

Michael McLarnon ‘hit the limit’ with his development in Philly

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

Michael McLarnon says he just needed to try some place out to grow.

The Media native graduated from Drexel in 2005 and worked with GIS firm Azavea from then until this past July. That month, after living in Philly permanently since 2006 (and living carless since 2007) he took the familiar trip north to the 67th ward.

McLarnon says he’ll be back, and we wanted to know why.

Read more

Jonny Goldstein: Philly “oozes with character”

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

People leave and come to cities all the time. That’s just part of their natural ebb and flow.

And, Exit Interview was never meant to be exclusively about community members leaving in a huff, it was meant to get a pulse on the various reasons why different people have left. Sometimes those reasons are purely circumstance.

Jonny Goldstein didn’t leave in a huff when he moved in mid-August 2010. His wife got a job in Pittsburgh, and the pair still loves this city. But the graphic artist’s new perspective is helpful in garnering insight on the perception of our city’s tax structure, its place in this part of the country and, heck, even how the Steel Town sees us.

Read more

Ben Kessler: Philly has “a lack of leaders looking to take the risk to start a company”

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

In September 2009, Ben Kessler was having trouble getting work.

After a Drexel co-op in San Francisco the summer before, the new graduate and Unbreaded co-founder was living with his parents in Yardley, waiting for what was next. The Great Recession was hot then, but even still, Kessler, now 25, was getting bites in the 67th ward. By that October, he had moved up the Jersey Turnpike to New York City.

Philly has an ugly reputation for retaining its college graduate, but that trend is moving dramatically the other way. Still, we asked Kessler for perspective from  a college graduate who loves this city but hightails it for one with a job for him.

Read more

Kevin Fitzpatrick on Philly’s startup scene: ‘There isn’t much of one’

This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

Kevin Fitzpatrick had one of those cool white collar tech jobs that actually thrive in Center City.

Born in the Northeast neighborhood of Rhawnhurst, raised in Horsham and a loving resident of Center City, his job with Comcast Interactive Media seemed to suggest he would stick around.

But in June 2010, Fitzpatrick packed up with his girlfriend and moved to San Francisco. It was just time, he says, though his roots may likely bring him back.

“I needed to get out, find mentors and work on new stuff,” he said. Where’s the line between a city that limits and a natural need to try new places. Hear more from Fitzpatrick in his Exit Interview below.

Read more