Startup Roundup: Local angle to Twitter’s Fail Whale; NuPathe sets IPO terms

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse 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 the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

LTL Prints has been racking up partners weekly, according to the deluge of press releases we get, but that’s why not why we’re playing this one. The Old City-based wall graphics company has an interview with Twitter’s Fail Whale creator — and LTL featured artist — Yiying Lu. It’s not about failure at all:”I wanted to create a visual greeting – a visual ‘comfort’ for my friends back home for all the events that I was missing,” Lu says. Check it out if not for the story, for the original sketches.

Conshocken-based biotech firm NuPathe — read our Q&A with the company, which is developing a migraine treatment patch, here — has set the terms for the debut of its initial public offering, at between $14 and $16 per share, hoping to raise $75 million with the offering.

We’re way psyched to see this one come through the pipeline: ZVRS, a company which is taking advantage of iPhone 4′s Facetime to provide translation services for the hearing impaired launched launched at Hard Rock in Center City. Remember that, ahem, social entrepreneurship thing here in Philly we’ve been writing and talking with folks about? Yeah, cough. It’s happening.

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VC Roundup: DreamIt in Forbes Magazine

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

Edit: Kerry Rupp clears up a few facts in the comments below.

DreamIt Ventures gets a feature in this month’s Forbes focusing on managing partners Steven Welch, Kerry Rupp, Michael Levinson and David Book. The story provides a digestible overview for those not familiar with the University City Science Center-based business incubator and provides lots of numbers and personal backstory for those more knowledgeable about the program. The most surprising fact uncovered by Forbes: none of the companies incubated by DreamIt have turned a profit. Look out for our Demo Day preview on Wednesday to get a sneak peak at some of the companies in this year’s class.

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Startup Roundup: Monetate real-time marketing platform helps power ModCloth

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse 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 the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

First Round Capital-funded ModCloth—which has been all over the news this week for its $19.8 million round of fundraising—happens to be local Conshohocken-based real-time marketing platform Monetate‘s first client. In 2008, ModCloth generated $3.2 million in revenue. In 2009, it shot up to $19 million. We covered the tech behind Monetate—and by extension, ModCloth—back in February.

Old-school-style Final Form Games, which we covered in December celebrated its first birthday last week. In three blog posts, the company talks where it’s been, where it’s at and where it’s going. The game design company is still working on its 17th-century sci-fi thriller tentatively called Jamestown. Looks sharp and slated for a 2011 PC release.

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Startup Roundup: Baltimore visits Philly, RailBandit updates NJ Transit offering, TrapCall supporting Sprint

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse 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. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Baltimore coworking space BeeHive visited IndyHall last week, according to the Philly coworking site’s newsletter. And at IndyHall’s weekly Show & Tell lunch meetup, several startups showed off their goods, like MyClin which claims to “revolutionize clinical trials,” and Johnny Bilotta‘s UI prototyping software for Photoshop and Illustrator.

We’ve received word from Ignite Philly 5 organizers about some of the speakers set for the March 2 event at Johnny Brenda’s. We’ve got limited details, and organizers anticipate changes in the schedule, but so far, Asheesh Laroia of OpenHatch will talk about food trucks and open source, Philly Startup Leaders‘ Blake Jennelle will discuss startups and nonprofit survival, Mike Levinson of DreamIt will offer ideas “that make it (and don’t),” and Happier.com Founder Andrew J. Rosenthal will tell you, mysteriously enough, “how to get people to like you.” Thank god for that.

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