Technically Philly is a news site covering technology, startups and venture capital in Philadelphia.
Before you begin contemplating popping the cap off of a fire hydrant, consider this week’s tech events calendar. This week is packed with events you won’t want to miss. Although we can’t promise anything, there will likely be free air conditioning, too.
This week get the low-down on what’s hot and new in Mac on Tuesday, check up on the folks at Hive76 on Wednesday and join Technically Philly at the Supernova Forum 2010 on Thursday and Friday.
Timothy Allen has to clarify.
Timothy Allen of Wharton
The programmer and analyst with Wharton Research Data Services is something of a community organizer to boot and July is busy enough that Allen has to make sure that the record is set straight.
There are three events — “very exciting events” Allen clarifies — happening at Wharton in the coming weeks. These clusters often happen on campuses when most students are elsewhere.
In addition to the East Coast debut of the famed decade-old Supernova conference that, for full disclosure, Technically Philly is co-sponsoring at the month’s end, in two weeks, Wharton is also home to two events dedicated to innovation in education.
Allen says that has something to say about Wharton and what the relationship of the city’s technology community to education can mean for the region’s future.
This is first in a series of posts profiling speakers at this month’s Supernova conference, a technology conference at Wharton that is co-sponsored by Technically Philly.
Wharton professor Eric Bradlow sees his department as a matchmaker between guys in suits and guys in lab coats.
“We want to connect companies with large data sets with academics that want to build data models,” he says.
Bradlow along with fellow professor Peter Fader started Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI) in August 2008 to help companies take the large mounds of user data and use it to predict customer behavior.
WIMI is able to predict the viewership of ESPN programming across cable, online and mobile. They’ve told Omnicom what online advertising methods are most effective and they’ve helped Hulu forecast user consumption “with ridiculous accuracy.”
Earlier this month, the tech world’s eyes were set squarely on Invite Media.
The small company, headquartered in Rittenhouse, made big news when it was purchased by Google. Industry analysts were mostly concerned with how the purchase of Invite’s real-time display advertising bidding software played into Google’s long-term strategy.
But here in Philly, we’d guess that there were likely a handful of celebrations taking place from West Conshohocken down to University City as Invite Media’s Philadelphia ties run deep.
Edit: Removed old Safeguard news.
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.
MUST READS
MentorTech Ventures has led a $1.1 million Series A round for SeniorHomes.com, a site that helps people search for nursing homes and similar housing. MentorTech primarily invests in companies with founders and senior staff that have some connection to the University of Pennsylvania. CEO Chris Rodde went to Wharton and subsequently wrote a post on TechFlash about raising the cash.
NuPathe, the pharma company focusing primarily on drugs that are absorbed through the skin, continues its quest to take over the world by announcing an IPO. See our previous coverage here including an interview with CEO Jane Hollingsworth.
Two years ago, DormNoise Founder and CEO Jay Rodrigues was fed up with Facebook before it was the cool thing to do.
As the Rhode Island-native was graduating high school and transitioning to life as a student at Wharton, he saw all of his high school teachers had begun to friend him on Facebook.
“I thought it was kind of awkward, I wasn’t sure how much of my college life I wanted to share with them,” he says.
He then sought out to build a more closed social network for college students, eventually fine-tuning the idea as a closed online calendar for students. By his first semester of Penn, Rodrigues raised $200,000 from friends and family before raising a second round of $500,000 this month.
So how does a college freshman have an extensive enough rolodoex to raise two rounds of funding before he can buy a beer and before signing more than five major customers?
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.
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 NEastPhilly.com 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.
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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
The New York Times was all over the Wharton Business Plan Competition this year. The Old Gray Lady said that life sciences were all the rage, though business services company Cortical Concepts won the $20,000 grand prize. As we know, $20,000 to a Wharton student is like $100 to the rest of us.
DreamIt Ventures is a week away from its “kickoff weekend.” But a few lawyer-types are jumping the gun tonight with the Law Firm Kickoff. The free event plans to explore how law firms will work with the incubated companies.
Josh Kopelman is angry.
When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.
“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”
After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.
Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.
First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.
“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”
Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.
We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.
The Wharton Business School MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania has been ranked the third best in the world by the Business Insider.
“Wharton is known for delivering talent who provide a strong strategic thinking perspective combined with exemplifying executive communication skills,” a General Electric recruiter told the New York City-based business and technology news blog.
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