Profit and conscious with new South Philadelphia incubator

They’re going to incubate profitable good works.

That’s much the angle of GoodCompany Ventures, which opened its Philadelphia Naval Yard Business Center offices with a ribbon-cutting ceremony highlighted by appearances from Mayor Michael Nutter and Chuck Lacy, a former president of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, yesterday.

All the startups they take in will be for-profit and looking to make a difference or two.

Yesterday, the incubator was also welcoming its inaugural 2009 class of “social entrepreneurs,” including the following: Cyrus-XP, which focuses on advancing the management and delivery of healthcare; CalendarFly, a single source scheduling solution for families (for a test drive, use “student for username and password), and VolunteerBIG.com, a philanthropic social network that was gunning for grant money earlier this year.

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Boost Mobile opens first Philadelphia retail store

In photo, from left to right: Jack Huston, CEO of VIP Wireless; Aaron Horne, Philadelphia Inspector of Northwest Detectives; Mike Patterson, Philadelphia Eagles; Michael McCloskey, Philadelphia Chief of Police and Edward Williams, COO of VIP Wireless

Boost Mobile opened its first exclusive retail store in Philadelphia on Friday, with all the pageantry of city police middle management and Eagles defensive tackle Mike “PhatPat” Patterson.

The opening came a day after a deadline Boost imposed on itself to correct lingering problems with a delay in its text messaging delivery.

The delays were blamed on the company’s more than three quarters of a million new prepaid customers in the quarter, which beat analyst expectations, according to Sprint’s first quarter financial results.

Boost has led an advertising blitz on the city.

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RJMetrics mining business database information

At least two Ivy League kids graduated in 2006, took fat-salaried jobs at the same New York City equity firm and returned to Philadelphia to reach fame and fortune by mining data for the nation’s small businesses.

The story continues still.

Today is the public opening of RJMetrics, a business intelligence dashboard and brainchild of a pair of 25-year-olds with regional ties: Robert J. Moore and Jake Stein. They want to help small and medium-sized businesses that collect data about their customers better use that information to chart user behavior.

And like any good idea, it came to them while they should have been doing something else.

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Cricket Communications enters busy mobile phone market

Updated: 3/11/09 at 10:18 p.m.

Your choices for cell phone carrier are about to get busier.

According to a company press release, Cricket Communications has entered the scrum to provide cheap mobile phone plans to Philadelphians, joining a growing battle between Boost Mobile, Metro PCS and others. [Full Disclosure: I have a Boost Mobile plan]

Update: Philadelphia is currently the largest market in the country with the three largest prepaid mobile companies, a Boost spokesman said.

“In our current economic landscape, it’s more important than ever for wireless carriers to show that they respect people’s wallets while ultimately providing value,” said Andy Cook, area general manager for Cricket in Philadelphia. “With the launch of Cricket wireless phone and Internet services in Philadelphia, consumers now have a wireless carrier that understands their financial needs and concerns without sacrificing great service and features.”

Cricket is hosting a week’s full of events to promote its market entry — see more here.

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