Stylitics wins the Wharton Business Plan competition

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

Mike Armstrong of the Philadelphia Inquirer has a review of the Wharton Business Plan competition where 15 student companies competed for $116,000 in cash and services. The winner Stylitics, is a consumer insights company that targets clothing companies.

TechCocktail has named DreamIt Ventures the 9th best startup incubator in the nation.

Read more

Wharton’s Kembrel.com launches first private retail sales store on Facebook

Last week, as students at Temple University began their first week of classes, across town, Cherif Habib and Stephan Jacobs were putting finishing touches on the official launch of a six-month project before they, too, hit the books.

Sure, the two second-year Wharton MBA students might have planned the launch before they became brain-deep in business studies, but it’s more likely perfect timing for Kembrel.com, their online retail store aimed at the college student apparel market.

Kembrel sells clothing, shoes and accessories for men and women. It’s recently moved into the gadget market, too, offering add-ons for iPhones. Since a soft-launch in April, Kembrel has racked up 20,000 registered users through word of mouth marketing efforts. It’s also began promoting a “pop-up” shops at local universities where the team sets up a small merchandise shop and explains the site to students.

Founded in April, the company had early success during Wharton’s Business Plan Competition, and Kembrel received the $3,000 People’s Choice Award, as we reported in May.

Their success hasn’t been by chance— the pair both had a background as software engineers and with entrepreneurial backgrounds.

Read more

Startup Roundup: Lots of love for local entrepreneurship

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

USA Today highlights Temple entrepreneurship after university officials noticed that self-employment in the 2009 class is at an all-time high. Northeast Philadelphia news website NEast Philly was highlighted prominently, along with Shawn Geller, who founded CollegeClipper.com, which helps retailers connect with college students using coupon offers. [Full Disclosure: The TP staff graduated from Temple and we're buds with NEastPhilly.com's McDonald]

Update, 10:19 a.m.: The winner of Temple’s $65,000 Be Your Own Boss entrepreneurship contest was also announced this morning. Next Engineering, which designs an automated suspension system for motorcycles that uses sensors and fluid-based absorbers to provide more control and safety, took home the prize.

Read more