We have your busy summer schedule in mind, dear reader, and we’ve chosen this week’s top three events to ensure you’re always in the loop. Kick your week off right with a summer bash hosted by Philly Startup Leaders. Then, chat about social networking and get all your health insurance questions answered.

Wednesday, July 21: If you’re not shore-bound this week, don’t despair. There are plenty of good times to be had right here in the city at the Philly Startup Leaders BBQ Bash. This long-awaited event, formerly scheduled as the PSL Happy Hour earlier this month, features all the tech-talk you’d expect at a PSL event plus appetizers and drinks by the river. Oh, and did we mention the first round is on – ahem – First Round Capital? 6:30 p.m. Manayunk RSVP [view more events]

Thursday, July 22: The folks at Independents Hall are at it again. After last week’s town hall, members and the interested public are invited to bring all their health insurance questions down to the coworking space this Thursday. Local expert Betsy Spivak will be answering health insurance inquiries and holding open discussion all day. 9:00 a.m. Old City INFO [view more events]

Thursday, July 22: This month’s Philadelphia Graphic Designers Meetup features a web marketing presentation hosted by Nate Nichols. This chat about the social media revolution is one not to be missed by the professional or the beginner.  6:30 p.m. Center City INFO [view more events]

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 Thomson Reuters, 38 venture capital firms raised nearly $2 billion in the second quarter of this year, a 49 percent decline from 2009′s numbers. The amount raised is the lowest since 2003. The uncertain economy has made it hard for firms to fundraise, said the report.

Comcast says it will be setting aside $20 million to invest in minority-owned businesses that are developing new media products. The company included the new fund, to be part of Comcast Interactive Capital, in its NBCU merger paperwork. A post on the Comcast’s blog says more news will come this fall.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

After having its budget cut last year, BFTP is moving to have its budget restored when the next governor is elected.

Our buddy Tom Paine reports that First Round Capital has invested in AdCopy, another local advertising company in the same league as Invite Media, though we couldn’t find many more details than that.

GIVE A GLANCE

Meidlinger Partners has joined in a $3.5 million investment of Environmental Operating Solutions, Massachusetts-based company specializes in wastewater treatment. University City-based Meidlinger specializes in investments that converse or treat water.

LLR partners has invested an undisclosed amount in Lightspeed Financial, a company that makes software for retail traders and other investors. The Inquirer’s Joe D reports that the number is $28 Million to finance Lightspeed’s acquisition of Terra Nova Financial, another software maker.

When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.

“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”

After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.

Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.

First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.

“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”

Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.

We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.

As always edited for length and clarity. To read the complete interview transcript which includes three times as many questions, follow this link.

What would it take to have First Round located in Philadelphia as opposed to West Conshohocken?

My sense is that I don’t think we’ve lost any deals in the city because we weren’t willing to travel there or the entrepreneur wasn’t willing to travel here. So for me its just about quality of life in terms of ability to get home for dinner, get back to the office and go back and forth. You know we work on two time zones: the east coast and the west coast. If [the office] was further away I might not be as productive.

Is that the struggle for First Round? Because now there’s a Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York office and there’s four of you?

I might actually argue that while I have a strong network in Philly, my network is Silicon Valley is just as strong if not stronger. So when I’m trying to help an entrepreneur on the West Coast I feel like I can be extremely helpful in terms of recruiting and strategy.

And I’m out west enough that the proximity challenge isn’t insurmountable. So we’ve had to invest to do that. We’ve had to build an office in New York, we’ve had to build an office in the valley and we’ve had to build a team in all of those areas and build a footprint. We view ourselves as four partners that just happen to be working out of whatever office they are at right now.

You are almost the ideal Wharton grad for Philadelphia. You come from out of the area, you go to Wharton, you contribute jobs to the local economy. So I wonder many Wharton grads don’t decide to stick around.

My path was more of the exception.

Why do you think that is?

Had I not started a company right out of school and not had any employees, I don’t know if I would have stayed here.

Let’s try to take a different metaphor. I’ve come to see Philadelphia as a place that has a lot great theaters. And there are 70 schools in this area one of the highest densities of schools out there. There are a lot of people at these schools that want to be actors or actresses. And what I’ve seen though is that if you are a graduating student and are an actor or actress not one of them says “I want to be king of the Forrest Theater.”

They move to Broadway. And that’s where the ecosystem that they play in is [established]. I’d say that Philadelphia, as a tech hub, there are definitely bright spots and it is getting brighter. The fact that Technically Philly exists and it didn’t 18 months ago is telling. You have Philly Startup Leaders and Indy Hall. There’s a lot of groups. I think that’s wonderful and I think that’s improving the Philadelphia start-up scene… but I think it’s still hard to compete with Hollywood.

Maybe its an uphill battle, or maybe its misguided? Or maybe we should just try and play to our strengths of pharma?

I’m a big believer in Philly. I’ve started several companies here that have been successful, I’ve invested in companies that have been successful and I’ve met lots of quality of entrepreneurs here. I would not want to discourage anyone from trying to improve on Philly’s tech scene. But I also don’t know if you even need to compare.

New York has a great Chinatown, Philly has a strong Chinatown and they’re good Chinatowns. But stop trying to compete with China.

Most of our readers have lived here since 2002, 2003, not really part of that first generation of online startups like you were. So what have you’ve seen is the biggest difference from the CDNow and Half days versus now?

We’ve invested in almost every major tech market in the country, so one of the things I’ve seen when we compare Philly is that we tend to think we have a really good start-up generation right now. But for whatever reason, the past generation isn’t as engaged.

There’s not that institutional memory from the first round?

We are seeing a lot of first-time entrepreneurs in the region, which is great. But this is the seed-planting stage. You are going to see 100 of these entrepreneurs, ten of them might have some level of success and they might have management teams of five people, so they are new entrepreneurs that will go out and plant. It’s takes some time to move.

Basically, you’re sitting here with your first generation of seed planting, whereas out west you have the redwood forest.

What are the characteristics you look for in a entrepreneur when funding them?

For a start-up, I like to fund a heat-seeking missile. It used to be that, 30 years ago you, had to aim missiles. From the moment you launched it, you press go and you have no ability to change the course of that missile one you launched it.

But the heat-seeking missiles are a modern invention that you launch and it adjusts and looks for the heat signature it looks for the target. And if the target is moving it changes. It can start off heading north and then head west or south.

What new trends and things are popping up that get you excited?

At the macro-level, I think there is a massive disruption that’s occurring.

In what way?

We are really focused on the cloud and software as a service, and we are very focused on mobile. I think geography and location-based services is [also] really important.

I think that the concept of redefining the data sets that are available online and their accessibility online is a big trend. Sort of what we have been calling the “implicit web”.

Sort of the API-azation of our lives.

Yeah. When you think about it, it used to be that all your data was offline. But as more and more started happening online you left more and more digital breadcrumbs. Like myself: you wanna know what TV shows I like? TiVo knows that. Want music i like? Apple knows that. What movies I like? Netflix knows that. Where I eat? Open Table knows that. What concerts I go to? Ticketmaster knows that.

So historically all of that data has been in silos… Now once those silos open up APIs and you connect things to them and through them, I think that is really powerful and transformative.

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

Edison Venture Funds, based in New Jersey, is funding a Rowan University program to send engineering students to local K-12 schools to help promote engineering as a career option. Rowan University has made large investments in its engineering program recent years, propelling it to among the nation’s best.

DreamIt Ventures managing partner Steve Welsh has backed out of the race for Pennsylvania’s sixth district. “I simply believe I can do more by helping other candidates,” said Welsh in a statement posted to his website.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

First Round Capital is among the backers of cloud computing backup company Backupify. The West Conshohocken-based early stage investment firm led the seed round of $900,000. The new service plans to charge customers $5 a month to back up all of their online data such as Facebook, Twitter and Gmail.

Comcast Interactive Capital gets cited as a good example of corporate venture funds by the Wall Street Journal.

GIVE A GLANCE

Edison Ventures was also busy helping King of Prussia-based Market Science Inc. close a round of funding for $2 million.

Philly-based pharma company Versa has swapped two of its executives. The company is backed by Quaker BioVentures.

Want to see First Round’s new office in the 67th Ward? Of course you do.

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

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.

“Because they don’t have control of their sites, [marketers] can’t create the best experience for each customer on the site,” Brussin says. “That’s been the promise of e-commerce for 10 years.”

Brussin, who co-founded Conshohocken-based and First Round Capital-funded Monetate, thinks he and co-founder David Bookspan have solved that problem. The real-time marketing platform allows marketers to skip their IT groups and keep campaigns moving as quickly as they need to, he says.

By giving e-commerce Web sites a real-time layer that enables marketers to change custom-tailored campaigns without an IT department and quickly measure the results, the job of the marketing team becomes more streamlined, and as a result, the sales site more useful to customers.

Using Monetate, customers are given a consistent sales experience starting with an email or display advertisement campaign and ending with a sale. Design and sales copy, product offerings and coupon codes promised in a specific campaign can be displayed in real-time on the e-commerce site using a single line of JavaScript.

“[Our clients] send a lot of highly segmented emails because they perform better,” he says. “Where Monetate comes into the picture is when someone views one of those emails. We can run corresponding campaigns on the actual e-commerce site to pull in the message, creative design and copy and even the offer into a single site experience.”

Additionally, data is collected anonymously to help improve customer experiences.

“We understand when a visitor comes in, where they’re coming from and what city. We know which of our client’s bricks and mortor competition might be in the neighborhood,” he says. Campaigns can be custom-tailored to offer competing offers against those stores, he says. Recently, Monetate also began offering a turn-key mobile platform which creates a native Web experience for customers overnight.

The company charges a yearly fee for the platforms and also sells in-depth customer service to help companies with advanced functionality. With customers like QVC, Urban Outfitters, Casual Male Retail Group and others, whom Brussin says are “making a ton of money” from the real-time marketing product, business is well.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that there’s little competition in the market. “We don’t really have a ton of competitors that actually solve the core problem of allowing the marketer to step out of the constraints of their [platform],” he says.

In 1996 while his friends in Silicon Valley were working on consumer-facing businesses, college-bound Brussin launched InfoSec Labs, a business-to-business venture dedicated to helping Fortune 1000 companies transition online. He sold the company to SafeNet three years later.

Brussin moved to Philadelphia for his second venture, ePrivacy Group Inc., which was focused on protecting email marketing distribution methods and wasn’t commercially successful. “There were alot of changes coming in email. We saw spam and phishing and other threats dilluting a hugely valuable channel,” he says.

But something good did come from his experience with ePrivacy Group. With lessons learned there, the company created in 2003 a way to filter spam using an Internet router, the first of its kind, and six months after founding TurnTide Inc., the company was acquired by Symantec in a $28 million deal.

Though he spent time involved with the investment and board side of business after the deal, he couldn’t resist coming back to solve problems. “I always knew the path for me was back into the operating side,” he says. No surprise.

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.

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.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

The Angel Venture Fair deadline is this week. The April event looks to gather 100 investors and 30 entrepreneurs at the Union League to help make investment connections. Fellas, we hear online media startups covering technology are hot. Just sayin’.

Blogging VC Fred Wilson reveals how he figures out ROI on his portfolio companies. “A restaurant may have a few good years but then lose its clientele and go out of business,” he writes. “A media product might do well for a decade but then lose its way and fold.” Here’s to a decade of Technically Philly, before we flame out and end up on True Hollywood Story.

GIVE A GLANCE

The state has allocated $5.7 million for nanotech investments through BFTP and the Pennsylvania Initiative for Nanotechnology.

According to a report by NVCA, 10-year returns have dipped in recent years, dropping from 14.3 percent from 8.4 percent. The report blames the fact that lucrative dot-com bubble investments are no longer included.

The MoneyTree Report has released a more detailed Q4 report.

MentorTech Ventures backed local advertising company Yodle has raised a $10 million in a Series D round. However, MentorTech was not included in the latest funding round, led by JAFCO Ventures.

Keystone Edge has a Q&A with Matt Bieber of Originate Ventures. We noted that 25-year-old Bieber got a promotion in last month’s roundup.

Not because this is the month we celebrate the birthplace of our nation (Ed.: In the birthplace of our nation) or because we get to travel to the Jersey Shore. No, because we’re amped for the second quarter regional venture capital numbers.

If you recall, last quarter was abysmal for the region and the rest of the country as VC investment slowed to a near halt. Some declared a sort of VC armageddon.

This quarter, the national numbers went the only direction they could have: up.

In the aggregate, the national venture capital outlook only received a modest bump in the second quarter with some regions growing faster than others. But no region saw growth like Philadelphia.

According to PBJ, the surge was anchored by a few very large deals. Roughly $108 million of the $161 million can be credited to three deals. One deal was responsible for $50 million.

We got a small glimpse of the general direction of the local VC scene a month ago when First Round capital was reported to be the newly crowned champ of early-stage seed investing.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (.xls link), Q2 was much more generous to Philly startups than to the rest of the country. In the first quarter, the region saw roughly $31 million invested, while the second quarter netted $161 million. The increase of over 500 percent is the largest among the 19 regions the report tracks and ranks us 13th in total dollars invested.

Silicon Valley and the 67th ward both saw decreases in dollars invested.

If you discount Sacramento’s jump from two deals in Q1 to four in Q2, Philadelphia also was the region that saw the largest increase in total deals completed. In Q1 Philly had 13 deals, compared to 22 this quarter. Philadelphia ranks 12th in total number of deals, but again, first in growth.

More detailed numbers are expected August 3rd.