Startup Roundup: Venmo public and proud at Mobile Monday, LTL gets Garbage Pail Kids, RedLasso will beat us up

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. Several of the tips in this week’s roundups resulted from a quick email to TP. Without further ado….

DEFINITE READS

Venmo, a young mobile payment startup based in University City received top honors at Mobile Monday Demo Night, after attendees used the service during a five-minute presentation to donate to a Haiti relief organization. Six-hundred dollars were donated in three minutes, adding to the $15,000 that Venmo says it has already raised for the disaster. It will be interesting to watch how Venmo continues to grow, considering XIPWIRE’s competitive platform and business model, also based in the region.

PlaySay, a mobile language-learning flash-card platform was awarded third place at Demo Night. In an email to Technically Philly, founder Ryan Meinzer says the organization has grown to more than 4,000 users. We’re not sure at the moment how that compares to our report that the company had sold 3,000 products by July of last year.

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Links: Penn graduate wins Nobel Prize, LTL Prints goes for Top 40 and More

• The Inquirer reports that a University of Pennsylvania graduate and pioneer in the technology that made digital cameras first possible will share a Nobel Prize for Physics.
• The Inqy also has a story on how the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is trying to save beaucoup bucks by implementing more energy-efficient lighting.
• Philly Tech News reports that any mention of Google using a barcode image on its search engine to celebrate an anniversary for the technology can’t go without talking about its roots with Drexel University.

After the jump, someone from Camden posts on Tech Crunch, a catchy jingle from Old City and other tech stories of the week, included our best read piece of the week.

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