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

Workshop School: experimental project-based learning charter at Navy Yard follows HybridX program success [VIDEO]

Simon Hauger, one of the lead organizers of the Workshop School, an alternative high school experience launched this academic year at the Navy Yard.

Four years ago, Stefon Gonzalez was a freshman at West Philly High School.

Like others interested in working with his hands at the school since the late 1990s, Gonzalez joined the Hybrid X Team, an after school program that grew national fame for building electric and bio-diesel cars that outperformed college-level teams. Now Gonzalez is finishing his high school career at an experimental, project-based program at the Navy Yard.

This fall, the Hybrid X group, started by West Philly High teacher Simon Hauger, has launched the Workshop School, which embodies the science-driven, hands-on learning of the after school program but expands it to a full school day. Featuring 29 seniors from three different public high schools, Hauger’s effort is housed in a Victorian building overlooking hulking ships at the Navy Yard.

Read more

Mark Group HeatSeeker vehicle surveys 1,000 Philadelphia homes for heat loss in an hour [VIDEO]

Mayor Michael Nutter and Mark Group U.S. CEO Jeff Bartos launch 'the Heat Seeker' outside the Andrew Jackson Public School in South Philadelphia

A home heat-loss, thermal imaging tool fashioned to a specially equipped van started patrolling Philadelphia last week.

Dubbed the HeatSeeker and the first of its kind in the country, the patented technology, which can evaluate and geo-code 1,000 thermal images in an hour, is something of a signature of the Mark Group, the British energy efficiency company that launched its U.S. headquarters at the Navy Yard in October 2010. The vehicle is a clever lead generation device for the company.

“As the region braces for the colder fall and winter temperatures, residents face increased energy costs to heat their homes,” said in a press release Mark Group President and CEO Jeff Bartos, who kicked off the vehicle’s work in Philadelphia at a ceremony with Mayor Nutter. We look forward to sharing this technology throughout the Delaware Valley so residents can be empowered to take control of their homes’ energy efficiency and reduce their monthly energy spend.”

Read more

Montgomery County schools outfitted for solar power by Tangent Energy Solutions

Tangent Energy Solutions, the Kennett Square-based solar technology provider, launched last week solar energy generation installations at three Colonial School District schools in suburban Montgomery County, according to a press release.

The three schools are the sites for two separate solar energy projects; one at the Plymouth Whitemarsh High School/Elementary School Campus, and a second at the Colonial Middle School. Combined, the projects will provide CSD with more than 825,000 kWh per year of clean electricity, which annually saves more than 1.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. CSD is projected to save more than $1.5 million over the course of the 20 years agreement.

MORE

Solar States signs with Renogy Solar, will retrofit Finanta with solar panels

Renogy employees in Wuxi, China working on solar panels in September 2011. Renogy and Kensington-based Solar States are partnering on a Philadelphia project.

Updated: corrected the location of Renogy Solar.

Solar States, the Kensington-based commercial solar power provider, has signed a supply contract with Renogy Solar, a major solar panel manufacturer based in Baton Rouge, LA with major facilities in China, according to a press release.

Solar States will install 30kW of solar panels on the rooftop of Finanta, a financial educating and community lending group also in Kensington at 2nd and Thompson streets. The installation, which will begin in November, will support 100 percent of the building’s energy needs, said Solar States spokesman John Steele.

The agreement also makes Solar States the East Coast distributor for Renogy.

In shoring up the deal, Solar States founder Micah Gold-Markel visited the Renogy facilities in Wuxi, China, touring the facility and writing about the experience and sharing photos of the facility.

The announcement comes on the heels of the controversy surrounding the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a Caifornia solar manufacturer that had received U.S. government support. Gold-Markel wrote about what he calls the misrepresentation of the situation here.

Viridity Energy and SEPTA partner on batteries to capture and reuse lost electricity: Links

• Saving Electricity on a Philadelphia Subway Line [Green: New York Times] — “in Philadelphia, on the Market-Frankford line of the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority, a new company called Viridity Energy will install batteries to capture a lot of that electricity and hold it while the train is in the station. Then it can deliver the power when the train starts up again or store it for a time of day when it is needed more.”
• NuPathe gets more funding to launch Zelrix migraine patch [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• FTC seeks more information on Teva, Cephalon deal [Reuters]
• New chair for Science Center [Philadelphia Business Journal] — “University of Pennsylvania Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli has been elected chairman of the University City Science Center’s board of directors, succeeding Richard P. Jaffe, a partner with the Philadelphia law firm of Duane Morris”
• GPTMC drops advertising with Travel + Leisure after it calls Philly dirty [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• BioNanomatrix Opens West Coast Headquarters, Expands Senior Team to Accelerate Commercialization of its Whole Genome Analysis Platform [press release]
• Lockheed Martin’s space business to cut 1,200 jobs [AP] — “The cuts will most heavily affect areas where Lockheed Martin is winding down its contract work, such as Sunnyvale, Calif., the Delaware Valley region of Pennsylvania, and Denver.”
• Philadelphia2035 Master Plan Approved [Flying Kite] — It includes mention of broadband access, something Technically Philly pushed on with this coverage. Watch video below.

Three ways your web development shop can be more eco-friendly: Yikes Inc.

A mock up of what the new Yikes offices on Girard Avenue in Fishtown could look like.

Tracy and Mia Levesque say they first started a so-called triple bottom-line company because they were selfish.

And, for them, Yikes Inc., their web design firm in Northern Liberties that is waiting on the completion of new LEED-certified offices in Fishtown, is keeping them happy.

“We wanted to create a company that we wanted to work for,” says Mia. “A lot of the things that make a socially resposible business starts with how you treat your employees, it’s about treating people first then profit.”

So, while the couple has built a web design shop that recently dropped a Penn Medicine Livestrong campaign site and has an e-commerce platform launching for another client soon, when you chat with the pair, they seem to be just as excited to talk about construction.

Specifically the construction of their new LEED-certified offices on Girard Avenue in Fishtown, which, when completed this July, just might be the first LEED rehab in the state. And the four apartments above will be among the first such designated rental spots in all of Philadelphia.

That puts them in a fine place to suggest how your small business can take smaller steps to being a bit more green-friendly, before you’re ready to buy a couple rowhomes for $348,000 and renovate them for $800,000, including architecture, certification and other soft costs.

Read more

Drexel’s green home technology experiment

From left to right: Cody Ray, Dr. Joan Weiner and Aleksandra Wolchasty standing in front of the Drexel Smart House

In partnership with Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, the university’s capstone journalism class, students Chelsea Leposa and Jared Pass will cover neighborhood technology issues for Technically Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods through May.

The is the second of a two-part series about residential technologies being developed or explored in the region. See the first here.

Frat houses are usually synonymous with keg-stands and jungle juice. There, eco-friendly house technology would seem as important as finishing homework.

But a group of Drexel students are trying to alter that perception, using an abandoned frat house as a great green opportunity.

The Drexel Smart House, located at 34th and Race Streets, is a 19th century Victorian home that is being transformed into a living, working laboratory for green tech. The Smart House team, a student-run organization, hopes that after it is built, it can serve as a platform for green design, technology and research.

Read more

TNT: Philly Electric Wheels to host opening reception, change transport in city

It was a yellow bicycle. That much Afshin Kaighobady remembers clearly.

On cool mornings in 1969, the 10-year-old would ride to the bakery near his home in Tehran to buy his mother fresh bread. Riding on the flat roads of Iran’s sprawling capital city at the foot of the Tochal mountains, Kaighobady can still remember his pride for riding his bike with just one hand, the other clutching a warm piece of naan fresh out of the bakery’s diesel-powered flames.

“The steam would pour off it, and so one bite and then another and soon I’d half finish the bread that was nearly as tall as I was, all the while steering this long, yellow treasure,” he says.

It is there, in Tehran in 1969, that Kaighobady first fell in love with bicycles. It is here, in the far hillier expanses of Mt. Airy in 2009, that Kaighobady, now 50, is hoping to create love for that transport’s next generation.

This Thursday, from 2 to 7 p.m., he’s hosting an opening reception for Philly Electric Wheels, his shop in this northwest Philadelphia neighborhood that he boasts is the first store in Pennsylvania, perhaps even the tri-state area, to exclusively sell and service electric-assist bicycles.

And he’s trying to convince the region that these bikes could be a large part of a greener, more comfortable, more practical way to commute.

THE BICYCLES

Philly Electric Wheels or, yes, PHEW, if pressed, came to mind after Kaighobady watched his wife Meenal Raval use an electric bike to commute to work and found a buzz around her method of transport. Since opening his store Oct. 1, he’s spending his days offering free test rides — also available at this Thursday’s reception — to show people just how practical his bikes are.

“They have everything that is good about regular bicycles,” he says. “But with the option to have someone gently push you in the back when you’re going up a hill or speeding in bad weather.”

He currently stocks 16 models from four bicycle lines — Currie Technologies, EcoBike, eZee, Ultra Motor — all of which cost roughly a penny a mile to operate, range up to 40 miles per charge, can cruise as fast as 20 miles per hour and require no license.

The cheapest model he currently stocks is $500 — the starting cost of a new traditional bicycle at many bike shops — and the most expensive is $2,700. A removable battery powers the bikes and are plugged into the wall, to be charged as easily as a cell phone battery, though it’ll take five to six hours for most bikes.

All bicycles come with warranties, many including a one-year maintenance guarantee from Kaighobady himself.

And Kaighobady, with an engineering degree from the University of Bridgeport and a background in tinkering, is probably someone from whom you want a warranty.

HIS BACKGROUND

After leaving Iran in 1979 — unrelated to that country’s Islamist Revolution, he says, though that year “something big happened there” — Kaighobady followed family to Oklahoma City. He built a computer consultancy firm on the East Coast, and then moved to Mount Airy in 2000 with wife Meenal, a native of India.

“This neighborhood has been very good to us,” he says.

He’s been involved in a half-dozen eco-ventures, though PHEW is his first swing at retail. Since 2006, the couple has tried to create a low-carbon household, which fits well into living down the block from his store. Also, the store is located in Green on Greene, a mixed-use building with a mission of sustainability. An environmentally friendly household-products manufacturer is also based there.

Kaighobady has used his mechanical mind for greener transport before.

In July 2007, he finished making a homemade electric-powered Volkswagen Vanagon, and says two men who claimed to be Chevron employees in March 2006 paid $3,900 for a 1979 Jetta he rigged to run on a biodiesel from used fryer oil.

“But these bikes,” Kaighobady says, in his stark corner storefront, a half dozen store models carefully arrayed on the hardwood floor, “are really going to be part of the future.”

-30-

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

Friday Tech Links: Fourth most innovative, BigBelly trash video 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

• Innovation Philadelphia reports that our fair city was ranked the fourth most innovative U.S. city in a recent large survey by 2think2know. Philly lagged behind Boston, which was ranked No. 1 globally, San Francisco, New York and Washington D.C. We were 32nd globally.
• Good magazine hits Center City to talk the innovation surrounding the recently installed BigBelly trash cans that are showing up on our busy city streets. There’s a hotly edited video that includes Oscar the Grouch.

Read more