VC Roundup: The ECI gets press, First Round “likes” last week

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

Google has purchased First Round portfolio company Like.com for “upwards of $100 million.” If memory serves us correctly, that means that the Like.com, a visual search engine, is First Round’s biggest exit since Mint.com.

The Inky has a write up on the Energy Commercialization Institute, a joint effort between Ben Franklin Technology Partners and local universities. So far, the group has handed out just over $500,000 to local alternative energy companies. Peter Key over at the Business Journal also has a feature about the group.

While its not specific to local, all entrepreneurs should check out two posts from the national technology community. First, the “F@#% You Money” spreadsheet compiled by Tony Wright, who asserts that selling a startup to a large company is no guarantee of riches. Second, Mike Arrington’s assertion that the VC market is changing echoes what many VCs and entrepreneurs have told us privately and is a must-read.

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Friday Q&A: Gil Beyda of Genacast Ventures

Genacast Ventures Managing Partner Gil Beyda

Gil Beyda, originally from Los Angeles, has Dave Morgan to thank for bringing him to Philadelphia.

When Beyda and Morgan founded Real Media in 1995, they chose to locate the online ad serving company in Fort Washington because of the cheap office space available there.

After selling the company to 24 /7 Media, the duo teamed up again in 2001 to create Tacoda, a behavorial advertising company that they then sold to AOL in 2007. With two exits under his belt, Beyda was ready to try something new.

“I was not a corporate AOL guy, so I set off to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up… again,” says Beyda.

Eventually, he settled on a second career as an investor, teaming with Comcast to create Genecast Ventures. In its short existence, the new fund already has four portfolio companies and a successful exit in Invite Media and Beyda says that he looks to be more active in the months to come.

We chatted with Beyda about what companies he likes to invest in and why Philadelphia’s investor ecosystem is just fine, thank you. Oh, and we critique his LinkedIn profile.

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10 Twitter users every Philadelphian should follow

Some people count how many friends they have, and some people count the value of their friendships. On social media — and the web generally — we have the same kind of experience.

We can count just about everything online, and so it should surprise no one that as social media has boomed, so too have the comparisons between Facebook friend counts and Twitter followers.

But there’s so often a nuance that raw numbers can’t show.

It’s easy enough to track who are the most followed Twitter users in Philadelphia, but everyone is trying to figure out how those figures measure in influence — or ‘resonance.’ Suppose we want to see who are the biggest Philadelphia voices in the Twitter conversation — not spam accounts with big follower numbers, but those people who you should be following, whose opinions matter and are being heard.

Simply, what Philadelphia Twitter users matter most?

Find the rest on the Philly Post of Philadelphia magazine.

VC Roundup: Gencast to invest in five startups this year, Lifeshield goes local

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

Yardley-based secutiry company Lifeshield has raised $11 million from a handful of local sources, including Novitas Capital, First Round Capital, NewSpring Ventures and Nutrisystem’s (based in Horsham) former CEO Michael Hagan. The funds will be used to relaunch the brand after it changed its name from InGrid Home Security.

Gil Beyda has a fantastic interview with adxchanger.com about the sale of Invite Media (our coverage here). Beyda’s company, Gencast Ventures, was one of Invite’s investors and the company’s sale to Google gave Gencast its first exit. Beyada also says that he is looking to invest in four to five new startups this year, so get that pitch ready.

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Guest Post: Josh Kopelman advises DreamIt companies to fail early and often

Editor’s Note: Technically Phily is often unable to make it to local events, so we’ve begun reaching out to readers who would like to write a guest post about an event they attended to ensure that, despite our schedules, more events can receive the coverage they deserve. This the first of such posts. If you’d like to write about an event you are attending, drop us a line.

This is a guest event post by Chris DiFonzo.   Chris is actively involved with multiple startups, as CRO of newly formed VidaView Technology Group and Co-Founder and CEO of OpenDesks.com. He is friendly with the folks at First Round.

Tuesday night’s DreamIt 2010 Speaker Series event at the University City Science Center featured an engaging, Powerpoint-free conversation with Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital.

The 90-minute discussion revolved around gathering feedback, making adjustments, and approaching startup challenges deliberately. Kopelman set the tone early: “One thing I know about all of your business plans, is they’re all wrong.”

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After record attendance, Mobile Monday breaks for the summer

Half of the panel. From left: Jeannette Kocsis (Harte-Hanks), Steve Rockman (The Star Group), Drew Salamone (NBC) and David West (Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau)

Apologies for being a bit late on this one.

Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic, the local branch of the international mobile technology meetup group, held the largest event in the group’s three-year history this Monday at the Loews Hotel in Center City.

The event was the last of Mobile Monday’s fiscal year and attracted a diverse audience to hear a panel discussion on the night’s theme “Marketing and Mobile Technology - Bridging the Gap.”

The panel which included an impressive mix of technologists and content creators from places like NBC, Flurry and Mojiva, repeatedly returned to the topic of increasing fragmentation in the mobile sphere of platforms and underscored the importance of the mobile device in marketing.

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Friday Q&A: Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital

Josh Kopelman is angry.

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.

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Friday Q&A: Garrett Melby, CEO of Good Company Ventures

Good Company Ventures' panel in NYC. From left to right: Scott Edward Anderson, aka “The Green Skeptic,” Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jacob Gray of Murex Investments, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Venture Strategies and Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund.

Edit: added audience questions attribution

Last month, at a co-working space in New York City’s Tribecca neighborhood, Philly took over.

There, Good Company Ventures CEO Garrett Melby and COO Christopher Bentley kicked off the incubator’s 2010 class in New York City with a star-studded (for the VC world, anyway) panel about social entrepreneurship that included Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson and Acumen co-founder Jacqueline Novogratz.

The event marked the start of broad campaign by Good Company Ventures to promote their incubator for social entrepreneurs and helped Philly make its case as the country-wide hub of the social entrepreneurs movement.

We sat down with Melby, who spoke at this month’s Ignite Philly,  to talk about invading the 67th Ward, the incubator’s future plans and why he only has 70 Twitter followers.

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VC Roundup: Quaker gets aroused, Safeguard swaps debt

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

As we tweeted yesterday, Fast Company interviewed Josh Kopelman about why people should start a company in Philly. In the interview Kopelman points to local universities and the low cost of living as prime reasons people should set up shop here. The article came after the local community lobbied the magazine to be included in its series.

According to a press release, Quaker BioVentures has teamed up with a student-run VC firm to invest in Semprae Laboratories. The company makes “arousal” oils. Yes, we’re serious.

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Philly goes to TED … kinda.

In case you have sworn off Twitter and the national tech media, the esteemed TED conference took place in Long Beach, California last week. The event features 18-minute speeches from former presidents, CEOs, academics and other hand-selected thought-leaders. The attendees are also cherry picked requiring an invitation and a $6,000 ticket.

Normally, the guest list of the yearly conference remains secret, however the fellas over at Valleywag have gotten their hands on the entire guest list. After some extensive searching and find a replace magic, we found everyone from Philly who was deemed worthy enough to attend the event.

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