Startups : Innovation + Job News

Recently, we took a look at the Enterprise Center’s ScaleUp America Initiative, a federally funded curriculum targeting mid-range Philadelphia businesses that have had success in their markets but need additional support to get to the next level.

West Philadelphia native Jameson Harris, 35, is a member of ScaleUp’s Elevate! Cohort 2016; he got started with the year-long program earlier this month. In 2002, Harris founded Brothers of Nature, a West Philly-based landscaping, home improvement, and property maintenance company.

The business started with three part-time employees, grew to about eight by 2014, and 16 this year. In 2005, Harris won a minority business plan competition with the Enterprise Center -- grants totaling $35,000 went towards supplies to expand the venture.

When he got started, Harris was one of the only landscaping companies based in his West Philly neighborhood. One of his largest early clients was the nonprofit ACHIEVEability, an affordable housing program with over 150 homes. As Harris expanded, the landscaping work expanded to include property maintenance for ACHIEVEability tenants and others.

Brothers of Nature now offers mowing, pruning, and leaf and snow removal, in addition to home improvement services such as painting, flooring, kitchen and bathroom installations, plumbing and electrical services. The company’s clients include the City of Philadelphia: They maintain vacant lots (keeping them mowed and clear of debris) in a span between 33rd and 15th Streets, Washington and Snyder Avenues.

Harris realized early in his career that entrepreneurship was the way to go.

"I knew a regular job couldn’t support what I need to get done," he says of finding something he could rely on in tough times. He’d been working for a landscaping company and decided to launch his own venture in the same field.

2016’s ScaleUp cohort will attend a total of seven seven-hour class sessions throughout the year, as well as one-on-one mentoring for targeted challenge areas and plenty of networking opportunities. One major goal for Harris this year is transforming his business from a sole proprietorship to an LLC.

"ScaleUp has taught me to involve my guys more in the business of what’s going on and how to grow, how to take on more customers," he says. That shift is not just about lightening his load, but about letting him focus on crucial administrative aspects of the business including his longterm business plan. Upcoming goals include growing his employee roster and transitioning part-time workers to full-time.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Jameson Harris, Brothers of Nature
 

For young students, the Internet can be a big, messy, cluttered, unreliable or even dangerous place. Choosito!, a University City Science Center startup, has devised a technological solution to help K-12 teachers find age appropriate resources for their students. The company's tagline sums up its mission: "Because the web is not a library and search engines are not librarians."
 
We asked co-founder and CEO Eleni Miltsakaki five central questions about his growing enterprise.
 
What is your big idea?

Although progress has been made in returning quality search results, the focus is on improving the relevance of results to the query, not the user, and on improving the online shopping experience. 
 
Choosito! is a web search filtering application designed to personalize search specifically for learners. To achieve this, we shift our focus from the keyword to the user.

Let's take the example of the query "polar bears." The user making the query could be a second or fifth grader searching for cool facts about polar bears to bring to class the next day; a group of middle school students working on a science project; a language teacher looking for a short story or news about polar bears at different reading levels; a foreign language learner; or even a polar bear expert.
 
The key to personalizing results for learning is understanding who the user is, what she wants to learn and what she knows already. Choosito is building technology that combines text analysis algorithms with statistical representations of each user’s current and evolving experience with the topic of the query to make adaptive recommendations of relevant resources.
 
What is your origin story?

I am a linguist and natural language processing scientist. In 2006, I started teaching educational technology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and was quickly confronted by frustrated teachers who were reluctant to let their students use the web because it was a distraction, took a long time to find something useful and was not reliable.
 
Co-founder Christos Georgiadis and I started operations in 2012. We are now surrounded by a talented team of educators, technologists and entrepreneurs dedicated to personalized learning.
 
What is your timeline for growth?

We launched our beta Choosito! Search and Learn in October 2014. Users can establish search criteria to filter websites by reading level and theme. Since our launch, we’ve gotten over 30,000 users.
 
On our first anniversary, we released our premium product Choosito! Class to help K-12 teachers integrate the teaching of information literacy into their curriculum. Choosito! Class also helps teachers assess the progress of their students’ critical thinking and information literacy skills by accessing quantitative data about their students’ methods of inquiry and evaluation of information.
 
In March, Choosito received a $1 million Innovation Award from the National Science Foundation. We’re currently at work to extend our machine learning text analysis technology by offering website recommendations based on what each student already knows and understands about the topic of inquiry.
 
Why does the marketplace need your company?

There is currently no other tool that can leverage the power and size of digital content to offer a sustainable solution not only for K-12, but lifelong personalized learning. Choosito!’s competition offers either automatically retrieved non-leveled resources or limited collections of resources organized by reading or grade level that become obsolete in less than a year.
 
What is your elevator pitch?

Choosito is a linguistic application that personalizes learning by making adaptive recommendations of resources that are not only relevant to the topic of interest but also relevant to the user and what they already know.

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

If I were running this business, what would I do differently? It’s a question most restaurant, café or bar staffers have probably asked themselves at some point in their careers. Last year, a group of Philly entrepreneurs came together to answer it for themselves.

In summer 2014, six Philadelphians began to take a serious look at developing a cooperatively owned and operated bar and restaurant. One has since left the venture, but five service industry veterans remain to run Spring Garden Street's W/N W/N Coffee Bar: Will Darwall, Michael Dunican, Max Kochinke, Alden Towler and Tony Montagnaro.

The crew soft-launched the location at 931 Spring Garden in December of last year, and held a grand opening in late January 2015. Since then, the five coworker/owners have been experimenting with their model in a democratic government-by-consensus process (they have three additional employees who are not partners in the business).

Chatting with Flying Kite about their first year in business, Darwall says the ownership model is based more on "sweat equity" than the capital brought to the venture (that capital was treated as third-party loans, and does not entitle the owner-investor to a greater share of the profits). Each of the five owners works multiple shifts each week cooking, serving, bartending, busing tables or performing maintenance.

"What worker/ownership gives us is equal legal ownership over the company, which means a right to participate in decision-making and a right to accrue profits from the business," he explains. "The way that we pay out those profits is proportional to how much work we all do, counting the hours up.

"We thought that coming together and working as a cooperative, we’d be able to create a structure where we could support each other…and use our collective creative energy and potential to come up with good solutions to the problems we faced, rather than feeling frustrated about things that we thought could go better."

W/N W/N's menu features local, sustainably sourced foods, with a focus on canning, preserving and pickling. (Ed: Flying Kite recently held a meeting there and the food was phenomenal.)

The innovative business model extends to the customers: patrons can buy membership shares. They run $25, and each time the member buys something, 25 percent of their bill is deducted from that pre-paid fee – meaning that W/N W/N members infuse the business with $25 up front, and then receive that money back as they pay only 75 percent of the purchase price on any given item.

Darwall estimates that about 10 percent of the café’s customers have bought into the membership model, and that’s fine for now -- as the founders tinker with their business plan and assess what worked and what didn’t in their first year, they’ll continue to explore what kind of cooperative model might thrive going forward.

W/N W/N will be scaling back its food menu beginning in January, though food service will still be on offer. It currently opens at 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, closing at midnight every day except Friday and Saturday, when it’s open until 2 a.m. The doors open at 10 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday for brunch.

Follow all our work #OnTheGroundPhilly via twitter (@flyingkitemedia) and Instagram (@flyingkite_ontheground).

On the Ground is made possible by the Knight Foundation, an organization that supports transformational ideas, promotes quality journalism, advances media innovation, engages communities and fosters the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Will Darwall, W/N W/N Coffee Bar

In December, the Enterprise Center (TEC) in West Philly announced a special program to augment their 25-year mission: giving local women- and minority-owned businesses the tools they need to grow. TEC is one of only seven organizations nationwide -- and the only one in Philly -- chosen to receive over $1 million in federal funds through the U.S. Small Business Administration's ScaleUp America Initiative.

According to TEC, ScaleUp provides "growth-oriented" small businesses with a targeted twelve-week curriculum and six months of one-on-one mentoring from experts aimed at developing a three-year strategy. TEC narrowed the field of applicants down to 25 businesses featuring minority owners or executive managers.

Iola Harper, TEC's executive vice president of business programs, says that the companies served by TEC and ScaleUp America are often "sandwiched" between early startups "in the idea phase" and large firms that can attract venture capital. To qualify for participation in the ScaleUp program, businesses had to have local impact and have proven themselves in the market via $150,000 to $700,000 in annual revenue.

"We call them scalers," says Harper, and they are often neglected in the venture capital world.

One marker of companies like this is a relative lack of managerial experience, in addition to inadequate access to capital and technical assistance.

"I find that these businesses tend to work in their business and not on their business," explains Harper. "So this program forces the participants to step out of their businesses," encouraging management to look at the big picture: business goals, scalability and understanding the numbers.

The ScaleUp initiative is a mentoring curriculum, but another component of working with TEC is the access to capital. The organization can make in-house loans of up to $200,000 to qualified participants, and if a business’s capital needs exceed that, there are banking partners on hand.

Harper is excited about "the fact that these are all local or minority-owned firms, and they’re typically the pool that has the hardest time accessing these services that we’re offering."

That difficulty is two-fold: Not only does TEC focus on women and minority entrepreneurs who get a smaller percentage of America’s venture capital in general, but it also targets companies outside of the tech and pharmaceutical realms. Current ScaleUp participants include food, manufacturing, personal service and construction businesses.

TEC is focused on ventures that "bring a lot of social capital to our community," enthuses Harper. "They bring a lot of intellectual capital to our community, and most of all they bring jobs to our community."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Iola Harper, The Enterprise Center
 

The dictionary defines polymath as "a person of great learning in several fields of study." The term has been widely applied to Benjamin Franklin. Looking at his resume, it’s not too much of a stretch to apply it to Dr. Keith Leaphart.  

At only 40, Leaphart is a physician, one-time congressional candidate, philanthropist and serial entrepreneur (commercial cleaning, events planning and, like Franklin, printing.) Speaking in December at the University City Science Center’s Quorum, Leaphart described himself as a "physician by training, an entrepreneur by birth."

The Philadelphia native started selling candy -- in a self-described "dodgy scheme" -- in middle school. By the time he got to medical school (he simultaneously earned an MBA), he was running a commercial cleaning service whose major client was Gerry Lenfest's Suburban Cable, a little company that sold to Comcast in 2000 for $6.7 billion. 

It was the start of a long affiliation with Lenfest.

"If I hadn’t dumped [his] trash every day, I definitely would not be here," says Leaphart.

Today, he is chairman of The Lenfest Foundation and serves on the board of Philadelphia Media Network, the parent company of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, which is owned by Lenfest.

He also continues to work weekends on-staff at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

But his life as an entrepreneur was the focus at Quorum. Leaphart -- who says a key to his success is an ability to catnap anytime, anywhere -- acquired a long-established printing company in 2009 in the depths of the recession.

"It wasn’t about buying a print shop," he recalls. "It was about getting into the digital economy."

Leaphart rebranded the company as Replica Creative, moved it to larger quarters and, in 2013, opened a second location in the Science Center’s 3711 Market Street building. It boasts modern interior design, event space and a coffee bar.

"It’s like a high-end Kinkos and Starbucks on steroids," he says. 

Providing coffee and comfort food helps maintain a steady flow of traffic and provides a place for clients to meet and commission design and production work. 

This month, Leaphart is launching his latest venture wallsome.net, an e-commerce platform for customizable and repositionable wallpaper. He will follow up in April with a new flagship space at 8th and Callowhill streets in a former nightclub. The 7,700-square-foot hub will feature a café, production facility and co-working space for residential interior designers. 

All told, Replica has more than 18 employees and Leaphart expects to add another six in the first half of this year. 

His best advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: Travel for inspiration, hire people with expertise beyond your own and don’t micro-manage. And his assessment of the entrepreneurial climate in Philadelphia?

"There’s thinking big and there’s thinking bigger. We all need to think bigger."

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

Despite being just shy of their 23rd birthdays, Rafael Ilishayev and Yakir Gola -- who both graduated from Drexel in 2014 -- are seasoned entrepreneurs. 

The duo started their first business together -- an online jewelry store -- when they were 18. And their GoPuff, an app and website that connects late-night revelers to a world of goods delivered straight from local warehouses, already operates in Boston, New York City, Austin, Washington, D.C., and Philly (from a location at 12th and Buttonwood Streets). After successfully raising millions, they’re operating GoPuff as well as a chain of liquor stores in New York. And earlier this month they opened GoBeer at 446 N. 12th Street in Callowhill.

Ilishayev and Gola attended a Callowhill Neighborhood Association meeting on December 14 at Azavea’s Wolf Building headquarters, informing locals about their latest business. Attendees were enthusiastic about the opening.

According to Ilishayev, the location was a good choice because of all the millennials moving into the neighborhood. They’re not going to be selling 40s or kegs, Gola added: "We’re looking for a higher-end client." No single bottles or food will be for sale, though the business partners are considering offering ice cream and soft drinks. Ilishayev likened the look of the business -- which boasts large clean wooden tables, plantings and an awning out front -- to an Apple store.

GoBeer delivers beer in packs of twelve and up; the selection includes global brands, craft beer and ciders. There’s a $2 delivery fee on all orders, plus the cost of the drinks. Delivery on any order over $49 is free.

The distributor is open from 10 a.m. - 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon - 5 p.m. Sunday.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Sources: Rafael Ilishayev and Yakir Gola, GoBeer

It goes without saying that the University City Science Center is home to many innovative and promising healthcare startups. But as Brenda Gavin, a founding partner of Quaker Partners Management, a Philadelphia-based healthcare investment firm, reminds entrepreneurs, it takes more than a good idea to win funding in a competitive investment climate.

Gavin answered questions last month at Quorum’s "Coffee & Capital" event and offered this concrete advice. 

"Both established companies and startup companies should do their homework and know their customer," she said. "That is, they should know as much as possible about the fund they are pitching: When was the fund established? What types of companies are in their current portfolio? What is the previous experience of the partners? How much capital do they have under management? What is their preferred company stage for investment? Don’t waste time pitching a fund when your research indicates they are unlikely to invest.

"All entrepreneurs should remember that most venture funds are limited partnerships with a 10-year life," she added. "This means that a fund must assemble its portfolio, grow value in the companies and get to a profitable exit in 10 years. Most funds invest in companies during the first five years of their life, and harvest in the second five years. So, if a company is a very early-stage discovery company, it is unlikely a fund that is over five years old will invest -- it is unlikely the fund will get to the profitable exit in five years. Entrepreneurs should definitely explore investment from corporate venture funds. They are typically not limited partnerships, so do not have the 10-year limitation."

Since its own founding in 2002, Quaker has invested in dozens of innovative, high-impact healthcare companies at all stages of development and in subsectors including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, healthcare services, and medical technologies such as devices, tools and human diagnostics. Quaker manages over $700 million in committed capital, and is currently investing its second fund.

Quaker typically invests between $5 million and $25 million in each company, with a focus on the East Coast. Its portfolio includes Science Center alum BioRexis, which was acquired by Pfizer in 2007 only five years after its establishment.

From her vantage point at Quaker’s Cira Centre headquarters, Gavin believes that Philadelphia’s venture capital climate still has room to grow. 

"There is an abundance of scientific expertise and pharmaceutical development talent in this region," she enthuses. "Unfortunately, there is a shortage of entrepreneurial leadership talent and local venture capital for later stage investment. On the plus side, there is substantial early stage investment from Ben Franklin, BioAdvance and the Science Center. These groups are unique to this area -- in addition to their capital, they bring contacts and mentoring. So while our climate is not as robust as that in Boston, the raw materials are here, and I am optimistic that we will see more companies growing here."

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

Philly entrepreneurs Jess Edelstein and Sarah Ribner have been brainstorming together ever since their elementary school lemonade stand in Allens Lane Playground. Now they’re 26 years old, and on December 11, they pitched their latest product -- the world’s first all-natural activated charcoal creme deodorant -- on an episode of ABC's Shark Tank.

The duo founded PiperWai with the mission of offering customers a safe, effective, fragrant, gender-neutral, aluminum and chemical-free deodorant. It took a while for them to realize that the activated charcoal in the product -- which users apply with a fingertip -- was the key. A lot of research into body odor and deodorant competitors led to experiments in a Philly home kitchen. 

"I was looking up activated charcoal for my stomach, actually," recalls Edelstein, "chief maker" and CEO. She got interested in the substance’s absorbent properties. "I kind of had that lightbulb moment to put it in the deodorant."

This was a few years ago, before activated charcoal became a trendy ingredient in cosmetics.

CFO Ribner tested the new concoction during a volunteering trip in Guyana. The stuff worked.

In its current incarnation, PiperWai is a creme blend of organic oils such as coconut, vitamin E, shea butter and cocoa butter, the signature charcoal (which won’t discolor clothes), and a proprietary blend of 11 "therapeutic-grade" essential oils that keep men and women equally fresh.

After finalizing their recipe, the founders began producing deodorant in batches of 300 at Greensgrow Community Kitchen, using pastry piping bags to get it into the jars.

The company's name has two parts -- the first is for Edelstein’s beloved family dog Piper; the "Wai" is borrowed from the name of the Waiwai tribe, who Ribner spent time with during her travels in Guyana.

The pair never saw being woman entrepreneurs as a roadblock to success, but actually launching their business taught them that while there are many programs and funds geared specifically to female entrepreneurs, there are still major gender imbalances when it comes to venture capital.

"I never knew that female entrepreneurs have a hard time in business until we launched a company," says Edelstein. "At some pitch competitions, there were very few women."

Ribner points to the fact that venture capital funds in the U.S. overwhelmingly favor male-founded companies.

A year ago, Flying Kite spoke with DreamIt Ventures’ Archna Sahay, who explained that businesses with female CEOs receive less than 10 percent of venture capital funding nationwide, despite women founding businesses at one and a half times the national average -- and delivering 12 percent more revenue with one third less capital than comparable male founders.

"That’s what led us to do crowdfunding instead," explains Ribner; over $27,000 from an Indiegogo campaign boosted their capacity. "We didn’t have to give away equity and it got us to the next level…So it was one of those situations where one door closes and another door opens."

Now, the two are setting their sights on expanding their deodorant line, developing a stick version of the creme, an extra-strength version and travel sizes. Currently selling their product with 40 independent retailers, they’re working on a deal with Whole Foods in the mid-Atlantic area, starting with Philly.

"You can show people that your gender doesn’t matter," says Edelstein. With the right product and great customer service, "you can still kill it in business."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Sources: Jess Edelstein and Sarah Ribner, PiperWai
 

First isolated in a lab in 2004, graphene is an atom-thick layer of carbon with remarkable properties. It is stronger than steel, an efficient conductor of heat and electricity, and nearly transparent. But only a year ago, the New Yorker asked, "Graphene may be the most remarkable substance ever discovered. But what’s it for?"
 
Graphene Frontiers, a University City Science Center company, has been hard at work answering that question. They have developed proprietary and patented techniques for manufacturing, handling and making devices with graphene, notably biosensors that can diagnose a wide array of diseases, with other potential applications in homeland security, defense, health and fitness, food safety, environmental monitoring and more.
 
The company was founded in 2010 at the UPStart program at the University of Pennsylvania and moved to the Science Center in 2012, where it employs 11 and occupies three laboratories.
 
The company's core innovation, according to CEO Mike Patterson, is the ability to "grow" graphene and efficiently transfer the material onto a silicon wafer to create devices called graphene field effect transistors (GFETs) that are effective sensors for chemicals and biomolecules.
 
"The GFET is a relatively simple electrical device with a strip of graphene (‘channel’) as the key element," he explains. "This channel is about 10 microns in length, which is 1/10 the width of a human hair. Using biochemistry, we can attach things like antibodies to the graphene to make the GFET specifically sensitive to only one thing."
 
To make a GFET a sensor for, say, cancer, Graphene Frontiers can attach antibodies for cancer biomarkers.

“When we expose the sensor to a sample like blood or saliva, the target molecule will bind to the antibodies on the graphene," he continues, "and we can see a change in the properties of the GFET sensor." 

So far, GFETs have effectively measured the bacterium that causes Lyme's Disease, Salmonella and others. GFETS can also be assembled in a sensor array to simultaneously perform multiple tests.
 
Patterson says the company is currently in pilot production for the devices, and expects to have sensors on the market for research use as early as next year. Graphene Frontiers is also developing a vapor-phase (gas) sensor that uses single-strand DNA instead of antibodies.
 
"Our mission," he adds, "is to make the world safer and healthier with graphene technology."

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

Port Richmond ceramics company Felt + Fat was founded in 2013 by Nate Mell and Wynn Bauer. In May, over 200 Kickstarter donors raised $26,256 for the young Philly business, which provides custom-made tableware to restaurants such as Fork, High Street on Market, South Philly’s Laurel and other fine dining spots in Brooklyn and beyond. They also offer direct sales to individual consumers through their website and wholesale distribution through shops across the country.

According to Mell, Felt + Fat would have continued without the Kickstarter infusion, but it helped them grow much faster than they could have on their own, adding a new kiln to their studio, acquiring other smaller pieces of equipment and bringing on board a paid employee.

"It’s been full-time since day one," says Mell of the hours he and his partner have put into the business; that said, they also worked part-time elsewhere while the company grew. Mell spent about seven years in local restaurants, which helped him connect with chefs who were looking to showcase their locally sourced ingredients on custom Philly-made tableware.

This past summer the founders were able to quit their part-time jobs and focus exclusively on Felt + Fat.

The name is a homage to mid-20th century German sculptor Joseph Beuys -- they liked his artistry and use of materials, most notably soap and animal fat.

"We were just trying to make a name that could exist in a few different realms of craft and art and design," explains Mell.

The founders have perfected a slip casting method for their unique wares, which feature different textures, finishes and colors, including a distinctive swirl. They also make their own porcelain.

"To a degree, it’s kind of like cooking or baking something. It’s a recipe," says Mell of the specially "tweaked" clay and mineral combo they use. Initially, they were mixing the ingredients themselves, but now a distributor does this for them; they then add water and the necessary materials to cast their plates and cups.

In slip casting, the liquid clay -- or "slip" -- is poured into a plaster mold. Wherever the slip meets the moisture-wicking plaster, a hard edge forms. When that layer is thick enough, the excess slip is poured out of the mold. What’s left forms the body of the cup or plate. When dry, it's removed from the mold and fired in the kiln.

All that takes time and space, which Philadelphia has in spades.

"Philadelphia is a particularly good place right now to be an artist and a creative person, because of the rapid growth of the moment," argues Mell. He appreciates the large client base a Philly location offers, without the living and studio costs of New York City.

Next up, the duo are hoping to expand into lighting fixtures and furniture accessories; they eventually aim to open a local showroom for their wares. They’ll certainly have more space to experiment: In January, Felt + Fat (currently at 3237 Amber Street) will expand to a second location in a Kensington studio building at the corner of I and Venango Streets.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Nate Mell, Felt + Fat 

When Flying Kite last looked in on Kiva City Philadelphia, the crowdfunding platform had disbursed $200,000 to 50 local independent businesses. Now as the initiative celebrates its first anniversary, that has jumped to 71 loans totaling $318,000 – and manager Alyssa Thomas (who works out of the City’s Department of Commerce) estimates the program will approve up to seven more campaigns by the end of the year.

Kiva is a micro-loan service that caters specifically to aspiring entrepreneurs who lack access to traditional banking and fundraising avenues. Many of them have low incomes or are new arrivals to the United States. The Kiva system utilizes trustees -- such as local community development corporations (CDC) or neighborhood stakeholders -- to discover and sponsor recipients. Crowdfunding campaigns are then run through the Kiva site for $500 to $5,000.

This fall, Thomas has been taking a lot of “corridor walks,” touring commercial stretches throughout the city alongside CDC corridor managers.

"We talk to the businesses that we already know are in need of financing and would be good fits for Kiva," she explains.

A current campaign that stands out for Thomas is Cambodia native Chany's new venture Angela’s Boutique at 454 Wyoming Avenue (between Olney and North Philadelphia).

Chany and her nine siblings pulled together to support the family very early in life. Her father died when she was 12 and her mother, who was disabled, couldn’t support them on her own. The kids worked before and after school at a corner store they launched themselves.

After Chany married a U.S. resident and arrived here at 21, she and her husband had almost nothing. He worked in a factory; she used her sewing skills and took ESL classes. She also operated a Chinese food stand for a few years, but in 2008 decided to purchase the dry cleaner’s on Wyoming, which she and her husband now operate in addition to working four other jobs between them. Six months ago, with the help of the nonprofit Esperanza (one of Kiva’s new collaborators), Chany decided to pursue a longtime dream: opening her own custom formalwear boutique named after her daughter Angela. A campaign now live on Kiva’s site aims to raise a loan of $5,000 toward new signage, lighting and security for her storefront. 

On December 4, an anniversary party at the Center for Architecture honored the New Kensington CDC as Kiva City Philadelphia’s most valuable trustee of 2015 -- they sponsored the highest number of loan recipients, with a repayment rate of 100 percent.

According to Thomas, one continuing struggle is connecting an online micro-finance platform to entrepreneurs who may not have digital fluency or access to the Internet, an issue many low-income Philadelphians face.

"We’ve definitely seen the toll of businesses not being connected to the Internet," she says. Those that aren’t on Yelp or Google Maps suffer. "You don’t know they exist and it really stunts their growth."

Philly’s Kiva pays special attention to the trustees’ role of shepherding loan recipients through the online application and repayment process.

"It’s difficult, but we’ve learned now to work through it so it’s no longer a hurdle," adds Thomas. And ultimately, helping these business owners take their first steps online will benefit them in the long run. "[This] will inspire them to want to figure out how they can utilize those resources to grow their businesses.”

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Alyssa Thomas, Kiva City Philadelphia

On November 18, University City District (UCD) hosted its sixth annual State of University City event at World Café Live. The headline of the night was the 75,000 jobs created within this 2.4-square-mile neighborhood, home to some of Philly’s premier education, healthcare and science institutions. According to UCD, the area is on track to add an additional 1,000 jobs in 2016.

Craig Carnaroli, executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania and UCD’s board chair, noted that this density of jobs is among the highest of any neighborhood in the country. Speaking at World Café Live, he cited the impact of startup hubs like the Enterprise Center and Drexel’s ic@3401, which now hosts 50 technology entrepreneurs from 30 member companies.

Carnaroli also noted the groundbreaking work of companies like Spark Therapeutics, which will soon seek FDA approval for its gene therapy; studies indicate they can achieve restored vision in people blinded by certain retinal diseases. Another University City breakthrough made national news this year when eight-year-old Zion Harvey received the world’s first pediatric double hand transplant from Penn Medicine.

Carnaroli touted "the power of community and institutions coming together in partnerships to produce results."

UCD Executive Director Matt Bergheiser spoke about why 75,000 jobs is a "magic number" for the area. Businesses and institutions are "feeling the growth of the regional economy" with a substantial spike in well-paid jobs, he insisted. According to UCD, between 2008 and 2013, the neighborhood saw a 79 percent increase in middle to high-wage jobs -- wage growth far above the city’s overall average. It’s exciting news, especially paired with a ten percent jump in University City’s population since 2013 and expansions in the restaurant, hospitality, retail and real estate sectors.

Another way to look at the job density in University City, Bergheiser pointed out, is to count 30,000 jobs per square mile. He also emphasized some essential ingredients in the neighborhood's success: entrepreneurial, civic and "opportunity" infrastructure. 

Because innovation needs places for people to come together, entrepreneurial infrastructure flourishes at cutting-edge hubs like the Science Center and Wexford Science + Technology.

Civic infrastructure -- which Bergheiser called "splendor at the ground level" -- includes elements such as new parklets, the Porch at 30th Street, a revamped Market Street Bridge and the upcoming $2.1 million transformation of the 40th Street SEPTA portal, slated to open in 2017.

"Opportunity infrastructure" is paying attention to an equity of opportunities, or "how we connect the talent in our West Philadelphia neighborhood" to meaningful jobs, he explained.

That led naturally to talk of UCD's West Philadelphia Skills Initiative -- many participants are low-income residents who struggle with longterm unemployment or a criminal record that prevents them from getting a foot in the door with job applications. Bergheiser said that 91 percent of Skills Initiative graduates succeed in landing a job, with an average starting wage of $13.60 per hour.

It all adds up to "a new first and lasting impression" for our metropolis, he concluded.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: University City District

The startup stars are aligning in University City, where a quartet of major players has announced several new partnerships aimed at boosting the burgeoning community of entrepreneurs.
 
First up, Drexel University and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania are teaming up to create the Drexel Ventures Ben Franklin Seed Fund, a $10 million early-stage seed fund that will support spin-off companies from the university. The fund will initially invest in enterprises that have licensed technologies from the university and have already taken advantage of Drexel's extensive commercialization programs. Its candidate pool will eventually be expanded to include startups founded by alumni and students. 
 
Concurrent with the launch of the new fund, Ben Franklin will join Drexel and the University City Science Center’s efforts to strengthen the offerings at Innovation Center @3401 (ic@3401). Ben Franklin will establish a physical presence at the collaborative workspace on Market Street, providing member companies a variety of services and support including industry consulting, market analysis and access to capital.
 
At the same time, Safeguard Scientifics is joining ic@3401 as its first "sustaining member." The Radnor-based private equity and venture capital firm specializes in healthcare and technology companies, and will help to recruit and mentor member companies while bringing in new industry collaborators, providing critical resources and offering perspectives on the evolving economic landscape.  
 
"Together the Science Center and Drexel have built a strong foundation for startups at ic@3401," explains Science Center President and CEO Stephen S. Tang. "Adding Ben Franklin to the partnership and Safeguard Scientifics as a sustaining member strengthens the ecosystem that is in place at ic@3401 and allows us to draw on our collective assets and expertise to attract and support a critical mass of high-growth startups and a diverse set of members."
  
Drexel President John A. Fry is also excited about the partnerships.

"Teaming with a visionary organization like Ben Franklin, a group with a proven track record of fueling Philadelphia’s innovation economy, will not only empower our entrepreneurs, but also attract others to University City and serve as a model for the type of partnerships that will form the foundation of the Innovation Neighborhood," he enthuses.
 
Source: University City Science Center
Writer: Elise Vider

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.
 

Artist, maker and entrepreneur co-working hub Indy Hall is launching its first-ever onsite retail venture, and just in time for holiday shopping.

Indy Hall staffer Sean Martorana, who focuses on the arts community and curatorial side of things, says KINSHOP -- which officially opened on November 6 and will probably run until February 2016 -- places no restrictions on the kinds of goods for sale from the Indy Hall community.

“It was really cool to see and celebrate the things that people have made here,” he enthuses.

Dubbed "a collective boutique and small-retail experience in the Indy Hall Gallery," KINSHOP features wares from over a dozen members. The name came out of the group’s recent successful KIN collaborative exhibition, which kicked off this fall’s arts season.

Items on sale range in price from about $100 to $125 for sculptures and $10 to $12 for small arts and crafts items such as prints, wrapping paper, holiday greeting cards, music, pillows, jam, wineglasses, terrariums, tote bags, scarves and more. Thirty percent of each purchase goes directly to arts programming at Indy Hall, funding things like classes and workshops, and gallery and store upkeep. The rest goes to the makers.

The goods will rotate throughout the season -- as soon as one item sells out, something else made at Indy Hall goes on the market. That means the shop will be worth multiple visits for the assiduous locally minded holiday shopper.

“As we sell we’re just going to keep putting stuff in," explains Martorana. "We have so much stuff in our community that we’re not going to go empty."

Indy Hall’s usual weekday hours (9 a.m. - 6 p.m.) are a good time to check out KINSHOP; if you need to make it an evening outing, Martorana recommends Night Owl hours (Tuesdays, 6 - 10 p.m.).

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Sean Martorana, Indy Hall 

Movie aficionados may remember when Woody Allen kidnapped the disembodied nose of an evil leader in 1973’s Sleeper. 

Forty-two years later, BioBots, a startup that moved to the University City Science Center in June, is developing a desktop 3D printer that builds living tissue out of human cells. Yes, noses, and eventually organs for transplant. 

We asked Madeline Winter, BioBots' vice president of operations, five key questions about this ambitious company.

What is your big idea?

At BioBots, we create 3D bioprinters and bioinks. Imagine an ordinary 3D printer, but instead of printing plastic, our 3D bioprinters create living tissue. No, this is not science fiction -- currently our devices are used for research and pre-clinical screening such as drug testing. You can use our devices to build 3D living tissue models using human cells that are better able to recapitulate the function of the body. These models can be used to develop compounds for clinical settings and catch false positives before they get to clinical trials. Our long-term goal is to print custom replacement organs from a patient's own cells and eliminate the organ donor waiting list.

What is your origin tale?

Our co-founder and CTO Ricardo Solorzano created the prototype in his dorm room after being frustrated by the high cost of equipment for the University of Pennsylvania lab where he worked. Ricardo entered the prototype in an investor competition with Danny Cabrera, then a Penn senior. They ended up winning first place, pumping the prize money back into further development of the device and deciding to spend the summer seeing what they could build before starting grad school. Danny took on the role of CEO and they were accepted to the DreamIt Health Accelerator. 

What is your timeline?

We launched our beta program in January and quickly sold our first 50 printers to some of the best researchers around the world. When we started designing the next generation device, we reached out to our amazing community of customers for feedback on how to refine the design. We took all of their comments and used that data to design the BioBot 1, which is more precise and is able to print multiple materials at the same time. We start shipping the first BioBot 1 bioprinters this month to our growing list of customers. We aim to have a BioBots 3D bioprinter on every lab bench in the world. 

Why does the marketplace need your company?

While biofabrication has been around for a while, the other 3D bioprinters on the market are expensive (costing up to half a million dollars), large and difficult to operate. It was for these reasons that only a small number of institutions had the resources and abilities to use them. We set out to democratize that technology by developing the most sophisticated desktop 3D bioprinter on the market. By reducing the price of entry, we are able to get our devices into the hands of more researchers who are accomplishing amazing strides in their research using our devices and biomaterials. 
 
What is your elevator speech?

Our goal at BioBots has always been to create standards and modular systems that can engineer biology to cure disease, eliminate the organ waiting list, reverse climate change and push humans to live on other planets. Our devices will help to advance research, develop drugs and push the human race forward.
 
Source: Madeline Winter, BioBots
Writer: Elise Vider

WRITER IN RESIDENCE is a partnership between the University City Science Center and Flying Kite Media that embeds a reporter on-site at 3711 Market Street. The resulting coverage will provide an inside look at the most intriguing companies, discoveries and technological innovations coming out of this essential Philadelphia institution.