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.

Edited for length and clarity.

Why was RJMetrics the right choice for you?

RJMetrics was the right choice for me because I knew the company’s founders Bob Moore and Jake Stein and had a lot of confidence in both their business ability and the culture and team they would put in place and I’ve been right, the company is an exceptional place to work.

How does Philadelphia factor into the decision?

I made a long term commitment to RJMetrics, so I was less concerned with the tech scene than the specific company.  However, Philadelphia is building the startup scene that Boston and New York have, and there are plenty of opportunities here and great universities to recruit talent from.

What (if anything) did you know/think about the Philadelphia technology community before the gig or coming here?

I followed RJMetrics founder Bob Moore on Twitter and he is a big proponent of the Philadelphia tech scene. I knew of GSI Commerce and First Round Capital and was introduced to one of the founders of Invite Media by a mutual professional acquaintance. I knew that Philadelphia has had some big technology successes over the years

What is your first new (unexpected) reaction to Philly and its tech scene?

Bob Moore, Jake Stein and I all worked together at the New York internet and software venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners. I ran into another former colleague from Insight, Thomas Charlton, who is a serial software CEO, crossing Broad Street. Thomas has led several Philadelphia software companies.  There is a lot of tech talent in Philadelphia at the same time, like in other cities it is a small network.

If your former colleagues ask you about Philly, how will you describe it?

Great cost of living, quality of life and beaches and other great cities are an easy drive away.

What were you last doing? Where were you doing it?

Recently I ran online marketing for one of the country’s largest banks and separately I ran social media and communications for a global technology and consulting company.

What will be your mark of success while at RJMetrics in your first year?

I work with a team to make sure our internet retail, flash sale, daily deal, Web and subscription business customers have a great experience and get great value from our software as a service. I will also help dramatically grow our business.

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.

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.

Rasansky answered questions ranging from how to choose engineers and advisers to how to balance a startup and a family. He also — sort of — answered questions about his handful of ex-wives.

Rasansky, who is currently married, likens his marital history to launching a startup.

“You might say that if you were to compare it to a startup. A startup goes through a lot of different stages and pivots a lot and ends up finding the right direction,” Rasansky said. “And I definitely did.”

Check out video of Rasansky explaining how pitching to potential investors is different in Philadelphia than it is in places like New York City or Silicon Valley.

Over the course of his career, Rasansky has started a variety of high-powered businesses that range in focus from food services to technology, including China Grill Management, Millennium Media Group, eCal, Intronics Corporation, Sapphire Mobile Systems, the Network Acquisition Company and, as of 2010, Yorn.

He is also known for his role in the acquisition of Wireless Philadelphia from Earthlink, though he expressed regret that since he sold the 4200-node WiFi network back to the City of Philadelphia, nothing had been done to deploy it.

Venturef0rth is the relatively new coworking space in Callowhill. Kramer and cofounder Elliot Menschik regularly hold events in the space that all tend to start off with free Philly brews and networking. This Q&A event was no exception.

To learn more about Venturef0rth’s event programming click here.

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.

1. Vente Privee USA
2. IA Ventures
3. Tracks
4. TechStars NYC
5. Local Response
6. Coursekit, their departure from Penn was covered here
7. Lerer Ventures
8. PureWow.com
9. Spark Capital
10.  CEO of BrandShare (who also founded the Webby Awards and Internet Week)
11. NutShellMail founder (who is also GM of Social Media, Constant Contact)
12. Mindspark Interactive (IAC)
13. Founder of Goodsie.com and Flavors.me
14. New York Groupon
15. Trendabl
16. Invite Media, though Google-owned developer offices are still in Center City
17. Aol leadership

Unfortunately, no Penn women, sorority sisters or not, were included on this list. That will be something to keep an eye out for in the future.

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.”

Last week, though, Shunra, took its service capacity to the next level by partnering with Hewlett Packard to enhance it’s mobile network monitoring. The two companies will be taking their integrated service to demonstrate it in front of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, as eWeek.com reported.

“Our mobile story is growing because it’s a no-brainer solution for every single industry,” said Hughes.

Over the past two years, Shunra has had to evolve in order to address the network challenges that occur when companies try to implement applications across mobile, cloud and web-based infrastructures.

“Companies are having the same issues with ensuring performance across these networks. The challenge remains the same, but the networks have changed,” Hughes said. “Shunra has evolved to address the changing nature of networks and audiences, again enabling a better and more accurate way of emulating and thus predicting application behavior in the real world.”

Shunra has created a comprehensive solution that does more than emulate real world conditions, says Hughes. He says Shunra can discover real-world network conditions and virtualize those conditions in a test lab, analyze potential issues by location or user group, automate remediation or optimization suggestions customized to the site or application being tested, analyze performance, make necessary changes to application and test the impact of these changes.

The end result, Hughes says, is that organizations can be confident their applications will meet user expectations.

Despite its elite clientele, you may not have heard of Shunra, which is headquartered in Center City. Still, Hughes says 11-year-old Shunra considers itself to be a member of the Philly tech old guard.

“We are an older Philly tech company that was ahead of its time,” Hughes said.

But Shunra, which also has offices in London and Israel and boasts nearly 100 employees, hasn’t always been based in Philly. Founded in 1999, Shunra started out with offices in New York  and Israel. The company relocated its New York office to Philadelphia in 2006 after receiving its first and only round of venture capital in 2004 —  a total of $11.5 million from Insight Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures, Hughes told Technically Philly.

Going forward Hughes says the company has big plans to build off of its partnership with HP.

“We will continue to make investments in sales, marketing and performance engineers. Increasing headcount over 10 percent this year,” Hughes said. “Our partner community has grown and will continue to grow. We also expect tremendous growth in the mobile market for our solutions.”

But when it comes to Philadelphia, Hughes says Shunra is here to stay.

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 tweeted:

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.

What are the primary reasons you and your business left Philadelphia?

The goal from the beginning was to be based out of NYC. That said, without our time in Philly, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in today. At the end of the day, I really think it speaks volumes regarding DreamIt’s positive impact on the Philly tech community

Watch a video on Spling.

Was there a specific event or moment that you realized you wanted to leave?

The majority of our investors are either located in New York City or have a good portion of their portfolio companies there. We are also aggressively hiring, so it’s hard to ignore the amazing talent in NYC – not saying that there isn’t talent in Philadelphia, but we’ve just been lucky enough to form a larger network amongst startup founders and engineers in NYC through our advisers, mentors, and investors.

Was there anything that could have been done differently to keep you?

It was hard to leave DreamIt’s Philly network, but once we realized how active the NYC alumni networks are, we didn’t have anything holding us back. Once again, this shows how successful DreamIt has been in creating an amazing community of startup founders across the east coast.

Do you think you would return to Philadelphia under appropriate circumstances?

Absolutely. With the combination of Penn’s startup initiatives and DreamIt, Philly will always be an option. Speaking of Penn, I think they have the ability to keep expanding Philly’s startup community. We actually had a booth at the career fair there last week, and the knowledge and curiosity the students had towards the startups in attendance was amazing. We are actively
recruiting at numerous college campuses, and Penn definitely has one of the best startup vibes we’ve seen.

What is the perception you most often find of Philadelphia?

Arguing that the best talent follows money, the biggest knock I hear on Philly is that there’s a lack of talent due to the lack of money being invested into startups. Numerically speaking, there isn’t nearly as much money being invested in Philly as San Fran or NYC, but I do think people underestimate Philly’s technical talent and community

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.

Some of the companies looking to fill open round include SnipSnap, which has $350,000 committed and was looking to raise $500,000, Grassroots Unwired, which is attempting to raise a $700,000 seed round, Cloudmine, which is raising $500,000 with $325,000 committed, Kwelia, which is raising $300,000, and ElectNext, which is raising $750,000 and is closing the rest of the round at the end of the month, Rupp confirmed.

The event came on the same day of news that the minority entrepreneurship program that DreamIt piloted in Philadelphia will be expanded to a year-long program called DreamIt Access.

ElectNext recently announced plans to provide a new “Act” section of the The Economist Group’s election app, Electionism, according to a press release, which will match Electionism users with closely aligned political candidate based on the issues most important to the user. Spling, who is not actively raising funding, is moving to New York City, as Technically Philly reported.

The showcase, held on the Mezzanine Level of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, was invite-only. Among the investment firms represented, Rupp told Technically Philly, were MAG Fund, DFJ Gotham, Nokia Growth Partners, Bain Capital, Lerer Ventures, Firstmark Capital and various angel investors.

Cloudmine, SnipSnap and ElectNext are the three companies currently at the Inquirer incubator.

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.

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.”

The site was launched in Manhattan in May 2004 by writer and sometimes entrepreneur Lockhart Steele, who has since built a small empire of focused niche sites beyond the Curbed network, which also has local versions in Boston, Washington D.C., Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and the Hamptons.

The display advertising model will be tested, following the path of the short-lived Philadelphia expansion of Brooklyn-based real estate blog Brownstoner. Since then, the niche has been attacked locally by Naked Philly and Plan Philly’s Eyes on the Street, in addition to historically-focused Hidden City and others.

[Full Disclosure: PlanPhilly has retained Technically Media, this news site's parent company, for web strategy work in the past.]

It’s a place that Spikol says Curbed can distinguish itself with her local leadership, noting her “thorough knowledge of the city and its quirks.”

“People should come to the site if they have a sense of humor and if the following things make their hearts pound faster: castles in Mt. Airy; Frank Furness; confusing neighborhood renamings; community forum threads; mysterious new construction; urban ruins; street art; the fate of the Reading Viaduct; historical architecture; catchment issues; remarkable houses and apartments; hideous interior design; economic development; urban planning; sexy floorplans; Ed Bacon’s interest in skateboarding—and so much more,” Spikol wrote Technically Philly in an email. “I look forward to Philly readers helping us define the site.”

Below, watch Curbed.com founder Lockhart Steel talk real estate blogging.

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.”

Working on a decade with Buchanan Ingersoll and 17 years in and around Center City, Taney, who earned a Penn law degree after doing his undergrad at Drew University, says he sees a lot of incremental ideas –”not a lot of projects that are trying to cure cancer.”

Still, two decades of technology business growth — with a bubble burst in the middle — has created a community that Taney says most entrepreneurs he talks to have some interest in helping to build.

For entrepreneurial-minded Twitter users in Philadelphia, he is a familiar sight as @ScaryLawyer. How’d he choose that name when he joined in 2008 on the recommendation of fellow PANMA board members?

“I chose the name because I’ve often felt that some people are uneasy around me because I’m a lawyer; so it was an ironic response to that,” he said. “Little did I know at the time the various interesting people I’d connect with through that platform.”

Considering Taney has clients like Passyunk Square web design firm P’unk Ave and Headhouse Square e-commerce development shop Sumo Heavy Industries, while working around big corporate clients of the medium sized Pittsburgh-based law firm, his perspective has some value.

If Taney was in charge, he says that to continue to grow the perception and impact of the Philadelphia tech scene, he would focus on ‘the multiplier effect’ — the power of proximity to attract and retain talent.

“Startups in New York are taxed like crazy but they’re growing that community in a big way,” he said, noting that national press attention there can help. “The Nutter administration is a big improvement, I think, but we need to keep focusing on how density and perception of success brings more of it.”

It’s not that Philadelphia is without strong ideas that could fuel big business growth, he says.

“The ideas behind [startup accelerator] DreamIt NYC companies are no different or better than those at DreamIt Philly. There is just the feeling of more money there,” Taney said. “Or more specifically, the investment community here has different interests on the whole.”

Is it an education problem?

“No one is entitled to tell investors that they should be investing in a different area, but it can help to continue to introduce people with money in the western suburbs to the real businesses being built in Philadelphia today,” he said.

“With a train ride, you have access to the federal government in D.C. and the consumer-focused money in New York, but I see people building something different here,” he said. “Can they keep it special as it grows?”