VC Roundup: Philly is home to 2 of the most active VC firms in U.S., DreamIt open for applications

Welcome to the VC Round-up, 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.

DEFINITE READS

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has released its Q4 MoneyTree report, complete with regional data showing Philly bouncing back from a disappointing Q3 with $142 million being invested in 28 deals, mostly in medical and biotechnology. See all the deals listed here. Silicon Valley continues its rebound with $2.2 billion of investment, nearly four times the next closet metro area. In total dollars invested, Philly ranks 12th out of 17 markets.

If you ever wonder why there is so much First Round and BFTP news on Technically Philly, its probably because First Round Capital and Ben Franklin Technology Partners were ranked the forth and 19th most active VC firms in the nation by Dow Jones VentureSource, respectively. The Wall Street Journal points out that the average age of firms on the list is 24, while First Round Capital is only six years old. Meanwhile, BFTP/SEP announced it has invested nearly $1 million in five local companies.

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VC Roundup: BioStrategy primes the pump, SeatGeek gets funded

Welcome to our new weekly round-up, 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.

DEFINITE READS

The fine folks at the Philadelphia Business Journal profile BioStrategy Partners, a biotech incubator. Based in Elkins Park, the nonprofit focuses on first-time business owners and is funded by local universities and medical schools. And, just so you know, someone in the story uses the phrase “prime the pump.”

Another week and another DreamIt Ventures grad gets additional funding. This week it’s SeatGeek’s turn. The company’s founders, if you remember, founded Scribnia, sold it and got working on SeatGeek just before DreamIt’s demo day. The company also demoed at TechCrunch 50.

After the jump, see what firm saw two portfolio companies get additional funding.

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SeatGeek can’t be Philly’s lone connection to TechCrunch 50. Can it?

Jack Groetzinger, formally of Scribnia, presents SeatGeek at TechCrunch 50. See the video at the end of the post.

Update: A reader points out that WizHive, started by DreamIt founder Mike Levinson, has Philly connections. Read about the company’s time at TechCrunch here.

If TechCrunch 50 can be a startup’s launching pad to millions (just ask Mint.com), why aren’t more local companies making the journey to the Valley?

One of the marque events of the Web 2.0 world, TechCrunch 50 (formally the TechCrunch 40) is essentially a business plan contest on steroids. For this year’s version, more than a thousand startups applied to be one of the 50 companies that present to judges for a chance to win $50,000 in startup funding and a whole lot of attention.

This year’s winner, RedBeacon, has already been announced, but that got us thinking: did any local companies make the trip West?

Among the 50 companies selected to present to judges, Technically Philly could only find one company with any sort of connection to our fair city: SeatGeek.

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DreamIt Ventures Demo Day 2009: our awards

A crowd of more than 200 in the Independence Visitor Center ballroom for the second Dream It Ventures Demo Day.

Demo Day marked the end of the second session of DreamIT Ventures, with the box score showing growth: one company sold, several pledging to retain ties to Philadelphia and six already moving on user acquisition.

A collegial crowd of 200 — t-shirt adorned developers, business casual 20- and 30-somethings and a crush of lawyers and investors — piled into the Independence Visitor Center ballroom, away from cloudy skies and occasional rain, to hear presentations from 10 tech startups that were housed in the University City incubator this summer.

The buzz was just how few of the 10 presenting startups were actively and openly seeking funding — just three by our count — and the growth DreamIt has seen.

Some estimates put the audience size at nearly double last year’s inaugural Demo Day, during which the incubated companies present their progress after the three month program. There was national attention not present last time, with coverage from ReadWriteWeb and Tech Crunch on record.

Below we run through the ten companies and, more importantly, give awards for their presentations.

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Shop Talk: Scribnia out of private alpha, releases my Scribes

A screenshot of Scribnia's my Scribes feature, to be released tomorrow.

The Web runs on opinion.

We Digg, Stumble, rate and recommend everything from books to blogs and, if Scribnia gets its way, you will be able to add writers to the list.

Scribnia is a University City-based Web site that allows readers to rate and recommend authors, writers and bloggers on a one to ten scale. Users can leave comments and rank authors in categories based on their writing topic. For example, a political writer can be rated as more liberal or conservative, or a tech writer can be rated on a scale of whether they write more for the general public or for tech experts.

“Readers are actually starting not to just read one-off articles on sites like Digg, but [they are] finding authors that they care about and want to come back and read,” said co-founder Russell D’Souza.

The result is a growing database of content creators that can provide users with recommendations based on previous rankings. Rate, say, baseball writer Peter Gammons high and you may be recommended other baseball writers that Peter Gammons fans rated highly. Tomorrow, the site will roll out my Scribes, an RSS reader within Scribnia that will provide author recommendations based upon the feed items the users read.

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