Ted Bockius: “I bet on RJMetrics and Philadelphia and my ability to help grow the company and the Philadelphia tech scene” [Entrance Exam]

Ted Bockius is the new Chief Marketing Officer for Center City-based business analytics firm RJMetrics.

Another in the Entrance Exam series, which asks new members to the Philadelphia technology community why they came and what they’ve learned.

The head of online marketing for big boy U.S. Bank has left San Francisco and last week started a chief marketing role for hungry Center City business analytics startup RJMetrics. Meet Ted Bockius.

A marketing hire is a marketing hire in an industry focused on gobbling up engineering talent, but RJMetrics co-founder and CEO Bob Moore, who is fixated on growing a technology business in Philadelphia, says we shouldn’t underestimate snatching up an established corporate web executive from the West Coast — even if he has some roots here, having grown up in Newark, Del. and considering his sister is Carolyn Jackson, the CEO of St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospital. (Just to be clear, though Bockius says he’s unrelated to the namesake in law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius)

Bockius, who did his undergraduate work at the University Delaware and has an MBA from New York University, has moved a few blocks away from the Philadelphia Building, where RJMetrics holds court at 13th and Walnut. RJMetrics, who is now at 18 staff, with four more starting next month, said Moore, adding that this time last year they were at five.

Bockius, 45, also ran online marketing for DivX, before and after its 2006 IPO, and, for six years, was a marketing principal for NYC-based Insight Venture Partners, where he first met Moore and RJMetrics cofounder Jake Stein.

“I wanted to work with the RJMetrics founders Bob and Jake and had several other opportunities with later stage software and Internet companies in larger tech markets of San Francisco and New York that I was also considering,” said Bockius. “I bet on RJMetrics and Philadelphia and my ability to help grow the company and the Philadelphia tech scene and have been very happy with my decision.”

Below, Bockius talks to Technically Philly about his decision to come to Philadelphia and his goals at RJMetrics.

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Philadelphia ranks 9th most powerful U.S. city by global index

Table produced by Atlantic Cities

Philadelphia ranks 9th on an Atlantic Cities list of most powerful U.S. cities, behind Dallas and a step ahead of Miami.

Given that Philadelphia tends to qualitatively compare itself to east coast brethren like Washington D.C. and Boston, ranked 3rd and 4th respectively, coming in 9th suggests quite a bit of room for quantitative improvement.

The list was generated by applying Atlantic Cities Senior Editor Richard Florida’s Combined Global City Index just to U.S. cities. On a global scale, New York, LA and Chicago were the only U.S. cities to make the cut, according to The Atlantic.

“There aren’t a lot of early stage investors in Philadelphia:” serial entrepreneur Rick Rasansky talks investment, startups and wives at Venturef0rth [VIDEO]

Rick Rasansky

Imagine sitting in front of an audience, entertaining a litany of personal and professional questions. Then imagine you don’t know whose asking each question because the audience members are submitting them anonymously using a software product you created.

Great. Now you have an idea of what it was like to be seven-time entrepreneur Rick Rasansky last night as he jovially participated in an hour-long Q&A session at Venturef0rth that was scandalously entitled “7 Startups, 4 wives, 1 entrepreneur.”

Using his own realtime feedback application Yorn, an audience of about 40 people, many of them also entrepreneurs, anonymously shot questions at Rasansky as he perched on a director’s chair and awaited the moderation of the coworking space’s cofounder Jesse Kramer.

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17 leading NYC tech companies led by UPenn fraternity alumni, lists Business Insider

The New York technology community may have the University of Pennsylvania Greek system to thank for some of its most successful startups.

Turns out Penn’s fraternities don’t produce the stereotypical frat brother. At least 17 tech companies, mostly startups, in New York are either founded or led by Penn alumni, many of them former brothers in Penn’s various fraternities, according to ongoing coverage by Business Insider.

We have the companies from Business Insider’s list below, but it’s worth seeing the names, positions and frats they say they call home. So see their list here.

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Shunra: with HP partnership and high budget clientele, Center City-based app performance testing company “here to stay”

Ever wonder how companies know their mobile applications — like, say, the application that lets you access your bank account online — are actually effective?

For some companies, it’s probably a little bit of trial and error, but for a surprising number of big names — the list of Fortune 100 companies they boast on their website could finance another small planet — the answer is Shunra, a service that analyzes mobile applications and offers companies performance testing to help them identify application issues.

“Companies needed a way to confirm application performance before deployment (or in troubleshooting) because even though applications behaved well in test, they did not behave well when rolled out to real users on the real network,” said Chris Hughes, the company’s CFO. “Shunra provided a way to emulate the real world so that testing would be more accurate.”

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Spling founder Billy McFarland: our investors are in New York City [Exit Interview]

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.

New York City was always the plan for content-sharing site Spling, says founder and CEO Billy McFarland.

Spending last fall at DreamIt Ventures was an important step that helped McFarland fundraise, launch a private beta and hire a handful of team members, he said, but the incubation still amounted as more a detour than a destination.

On April 1, the Spling team plans to be officially based in Manhattan, McFarland, 20, specified to Technically Philly after announcing generally this month. He was among those DreamIt Philly alumni who took a road trip to NYC last week.

Before then, later this month, Spling will launch “a beautiful new version of our product in March,” says the Short Hills, N.J. native, an effort that requires talent that he says is more available northbound.

McFarland started working on Spling last year during his freshman year at Bucknell, where he was studying computer engineering. He left school last May to work on the project full-time with plans of moving to the 67th ward then.

“However, I quickly realized it was pretty unrealistic to leave school one day and expect to have the resources and network to succeed in a city like New York the next,” he said. Instead, he worked from home, raised some early funding and earned at spot in DreamIt. This is the next step in the plan, he adds.

Below, McFarland talks about why he is moving Spling and why he could build a business here in the future.

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DreamIt Ventures Philly 2012 Showcase brings seven startups to NYC

Seven Philadelphia-based startups traveled to the Big Apple yesterday to pitch a cast of New York investors at the Philly 2012 Showcase in New York hosted by DreamIt Ventures.

The companies — CloudMine, ElectNext, SnipSnap, Grassroots Unwired, Metalayer, Kwelia, and Spling — all participated in DreamIt Ventures’ Fall 2011 Philadelphia program and presented at Demo Day in December 2011. DreamIt hosted the showcase because a number of investors expressed interested in the December Demo Day, but were unable to attend, Kerry Rupp told Technically Philly.

All seven companies made company pitches, though, for some, the event was an opportunity to continue to pursue open rounds, while for others it was a networking opportunity to meet with potential investors and create relationships, Rupp said.

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NewYork.com ownership transferred from West Philadelphia businessman to Florida business

Once billed as among the most valuable domains on the internet, the ownership of NewYork.com has quietly changed in recent weeks, from a pair of prominent Philadelphia businessmen to a nondescript Florida-based company, perhaps involving the same cast of characters.

A multilingual Wharton grad — a former boxer turned sports agent turned self-styled domain broker — named Leland Hardy first registered NewYork.com in 1994. A West Philadelphia native and long-time resident who has also listed Harlem as home, he partnered with Overbrook Farms businessman Tom Stafford to build out a straight forward booking and affiliate tourism sales sites at NewYork.com in the last decade.

Sometime in January, the WhoIs registration changed from Stafford’s Bala Cynwyd-based holdings company to the NewYork.com Entertainment Group, LLC registered in suburban Miami.

Whether the domain even fully changed control isn’t entirely clear, as the make-up of the new Florida ownership isn’t immediately clear. The staff members listed on the site have not changed since the switch over. Efforts to reach out to Stafford, Hardy or others have not been returned.

A cache Google search that shows former ownership of NewYork.com.

Curbed.com: new Philly outpost of real estate blog network from NYC to be led by Liz Spikol

The competitive real estate and built environment news community of Philadelphia has a new player.

Curbed.com, the New York City based blog network, which also has regional versions in nine other markets, today launches Philly.Curbed.com. The local site will be edited by Liz Spikol, the former Philadelphia Weekly columnist and editor of the now defunct Hispanic tech magazine Tek Lado.

“Curbed marries an obsession with real estate and neighborhoods with wit and entertainment,” said Spikol. “It’s fun.”

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Frank Taney: open office hours for entrepreneurs from @ScaryLawyer of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney commercial litigation attorney Frank Taney hosts open office hours for young tech businesses in the region.

Since starting to host free, monthly open office hours in June, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney attorney Francis X. Taney has met with nearly two dozen entrepreneurs he never knew before.

“Some become paying clients, some I never see again, but almost everyone walks away with some knowledge they needed, which is really the point,” said the Center City commercial litigation lawyer better known on Twitter as @ScaryLawyer. “The bigger, the stronger the pie in Philadelphia, the better it is for all of us.”

(Which is a good perspective, as Technically Philly is hosting another startup advice open hours on Jan. 19, albeit more focused on investment than potential litigation.)

Taney’s effort started at the Corzo Center at the University of the Arts by answering questions from students who were mostly starting industrial crafts and other creative arts businesses. Now it’s grown into part lead generation and part giving back, he says, helping startups the fourth Wednesday of each month. The next opportunity will be Jan. 25 from 6-8pm.

“I’m typically very useful to people who are trying to figure out the legal bases they have to cover in launching a business, whether that relates to entity selection and formation, contractual and IP issues or other related issues,” said Taney, noting he has walked through actual disputes with young businesses.

One advantage of sitting with so many startups, says the South Jersey native and Cherry Hill resident, is that he’s been able to get a good sense of where the broad entrepreneurial community is headed in Philadelphia.

“You’ve always tended to see less of a bubble here, and that’s still the case” he said. “Nobody’s chasing the sizzle. They’re building businesses.”

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