Friday Q&A: Brendan McCorkle of CloudMine on growing fast and setting up shop at a newspaper company

Philadelphia Media Network has had a bad week.

The company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com is wrapped in a controversy stemming from its possible sale to a buying group that includes former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell.

However, among the all-to-familiar “newspaper for sale” news, nestled several floors up at PMN Headquarters are the three Project Liberty companies that are a major part of PMN CEO Greg Osberg’s marquee initiative to help modernize his media company. The plan: incubate technology startups and incorporate them into his company. And at least one of them, Cloudmine, is on an opposite trajectory of its landlord.

The mobile development framework and recent DreamIt grad has been steadily growing since its inception. The company has seen rapid growth in its platform, bringing total traffic to just under a million monthly API calls, up from tens of thousands in December. Additionally it has just hired two new employees and is weeks away from closing a round of funding.

We chatted with Brendan McCorkle this morning about his company’s future and what it’s like to be housed at a newspaper company.

Is Adapt.ly the next great DreamIt Ventures company? [VC Roundup]

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.

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We’ve been told that the Philadelphia Media Network incubator is down to the final six companies (from ten earlier in the month) that are due for interviews late this week. An announcement could come as early as next week. If the timetable holds, it’s an impressive turn-around on the project, nearly two months after its launch. However, CEO Greg Osberg first mentioned it nearly a year ago.

First Round Capital’s Charlie O’Donnell has been getting heat from this BetaBeat story. At the risk of oversimplifying a serious allegation, the story accuses O’Donnell, using a series of mostly anonymous sources, of blurring the line between personal and business in his interaction with women involved in New York’s tech community. “A power networker, Mr. O’Donnell has made himself a fixture at tech parties in search of the next Mark Zuckerberg, or as it were, the next Margaret. Trouble is, he’s also looking for the next Mrs. O’Donnell.” Reaches to the piece ranged from amusement to allegations of slander.

Could Adaptly be the next great DreamIt Ventures company? Business Insider sure thinks so. After revealing that the Philly DreamIt grad is set to pull in $10 million in 2011, the company is expanding into England after hiring Paul Turner former head of Europe, Middle East and Africa for Invite Media. You probably remember Invite Media as the company founded by Penn students that exited to Google with a semi-secret office here in Philly. So, Adaptly’s success has Philly connections throughout.

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Startup Roundup: Philadelphia Media Network, Knight, BFTP, DreamIT with more details on media incubator

Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup parses 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. Follow along with a weekly email newsletter by clicking here and selecting the Startup Roundup button or follow Startup Roundup’s RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

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Sure, they’re running our headlines this week. Philadelphia Media Network‘s quiet announcement Monday that it would be pursuing a media incubator this fall came full swing with a press release late yesterday. PMN will launch Project Liberty with a handful of key partners: Knight is backing it with a $250,000 grant, Ben Franklin Technology Partners will provide mentorship and strategy, DreamIt is onboard for secondary seed funding exploration. Drexel is there, too, to give students a chance to get in on the action.

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