Innovation + Job News

From incubators to venture capital funds, the term “scalability” is used tirelessly to describe startup potential. Yet for Thaddeus Squire, founder and managing director of CultureWorks (formerly Peregrine Arts), value isn't determined by size. "There needs to be space to talk about small and non-scale enterprise and its contribution to the economy," he argues.
 
Foundation money is tight, Squire admits, but Philly’s "huge startup energy," plethora of arts resources and the timeless "human urge to create" continue to push experimental arts forward. Just two months after officially adding coworking to their programing list, CultureWorks has filled 73 seats—over a third of capacity—with freelancers and individuals representing a slate of new and mid-development organizations, including Recycled Artists In Residency, Next American City and Alchemy Dance Company.
 
CultureWorks—which outsources management services and helped buoy the development of Hidden City—has been increasingly approached by emerging creators who seek support but can’t purchase the full program. Squire sees coworking as a solution: Build a home base for makers, artists, architects and designers—alongside the curators, publicists, lawyers and marketing experts who support them—and Philadelphia’s collective creativity continues down the path to prosperity.
 
"It’s the same idea that the VC and startup community has," explains Squire. "You want to see a lot of churn of ideas because every tenth idea might be a real game changer."
 
Squire believes his space is outside the coworking bubble (new Philly spaces include Venturef0rth, the South Philly Co-op Workshop, Paper Box Studios and Benjamin’s Desk) because it’s geared towards the nonprofit realm. While championing the value of small, he is certainly not shy about CultureWorks' capacity for growth. "We want to prove that this model will work," he says. "The intention beyond that might be to franchise into other cities."

Source: Thaddeus Squire, CultureWorks
Writer: Dana Henry

Twenty years of research and clinical trials led to the recent announcement that 7-year-old Emma Whitehead's luekemia was in remission. It was the moment that T-cell immunotherapy technology burst from the laboratories of Penn Medicine into the national headlines. Now a commitment from Novartis to build a $20 million Center for Advanced Cellular Therapy (slated for 2013) will speed up FDA approval and enable treatment in greater numbers.

For something as large and complex as cancer research, philanthropic and federal funding only goes so far. "We’re so fortunate to have the opportunity, with this alliance with Novartis, to hand off what we’ve developed in an academic medical center," says Bruce Levine, director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.

Just how big is the breakthrough?

The Penn team is already building t-cell programs to treat pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer. Eventually, this treatment could affect tens of thousands of lives.

Understandably, Penn medicine has been deluged with calls from patients worldwide. In an effort to coordinate a response, the Ambrason Cancer Center has launched a separate section on their website for access to detailed trial information, physicians and additional clinical trials.
 
It’s hard to measure the full impact T-cell immunotherapy will have on economic growth for our region, but Levine anticipates a "ripple effect." In addition to the construction, staffing and management jobs necessary for a $20 million facility, a greater number of clinical trials leads to more opportunities for care providers and researchers. For now, Penn Medicine’s technical groups are offering highly skilled positions while Novartis builds up their expertise.

"It’s huge," says Levine. "We’ve seen from [Penn] University and Penn Medicine a great commitment to facilitating this research." 

Source: Bruce Levine, Penn Medicine
Writer: Dana Henry

The preponderance of local gift guides, handmade marketplaces and gift-making workshops indicates that the buying public is ready for alternative ways to celebrate. It's in that spirit that the Camden-based Charity Gift Market was born. The online marketplace allows humanitarian nonprofits to sell handmade wares directly; the organizations keep 92 percent of the profits. (Most charitable marketplaces, by comparison, donate a percentage of the proceeds, usually less than 15 percent.) Halfway into their second holiday season, sales are up 300 percent and the new company continues attracting partners.
 
Purchasers select by "product," "charity" or "cause." Say your sister works in public health and just had a baby? Charity Gift Market might lead you to a quilt made from saris and stuffed with recycled clothes, created by a mother in India working from home to provide nutritious food and medical care for her family.
 
"It brings charity into the larger marketplace of commerce," says co-founder Lindsey Markelz. "People are generally quite selective in giving donations to charity, but they may find a product they like on Charity Gift Market and, thereby, provide additional support to that charity's work."
 
For the organizations-in-need, Charity Gift Market is generally their first and only means of online vending. A personal thank you letter from the charity—often including artisan and product information along with the backstory—accompanies purchases. In one year, over 15 percent of buyers have become repeat customers.
 
The site was launched in June 2011. Markelz—who is also founding director of UrbanPromise—met husband and co-founder, Andy Markelz, who teaches special education in South Philly, while working for the Peace Corps. The couple dreamed up Charity Gift Market during Christmas of 2010, when their hunt for perfect conscientious gifts proved cumbersome.
 
"We started toying with the idea of creating a marketplace for products created and sold by charities so that socially-oriented consumers could find them," explains Markelz.
 
Since then, fifty small-to-mid-sized organizations, including Ardmore-based Profugo, Prosperity Candle, Freedom Stones, and Women's Bean Project, have opened online shops. Many work internationally to support opportunities for women and families. 
 
Charity Gift Market is currently looking for a Chief Technology Office (CTO). As they grow, Markelz says they are proud to forge connections between customers and causes.
 
"Visitors love the story on each product page," says Markelz. "They know where their money goes and that their purchase directly helps others."

Source: Lindsey Markelz, Charity Gift Market
Writer: Dana Henry

Mobile technology presents a marketing conundrum: Personal devices gather valuable specifics about the viewer, including location and activity, but render web advertisements distorted and invasive. Malvern-based TapCLIQ is changing all that.

After 14 years directing software development and strategic partnership at SAP AG,  founder and CEO Chirantan Bhatt created a "customer engagement platform" that responds to user-generated feedback in real time. The company recently graduated from Project Liberty Digital Incubator and is hiring data scientists, software engineers, and marketing and sales directors.

Bhatt says he’s always the first to try a new gadget, but finds "an abundance of annoying and unrelated advertisement constantly appearing on mobile applications." When his four-year-old daughter came to him with a file downloading over the game app she was playing Bhatt realized the problem was urgent. 

"Advertising completely interrupts the user," says Bhatt. "[Mobile devices] can’t have ads like a web page."

According to a 2012 study by Azullo, 80 percent of smartphone users have already forgotten all the mobile ads they’ve seen in the past 6 months. Yet internationally, spending on mobile advertisement is predicted to reach $28 billion by 2016 (based on reports from International Data Corp.).

Big ad companies—including Google, Real Media 24/7 and Flurry—are still stuck on display ads, explains Bhatt. TapCLIQ, conversely, doesn't asks users to leave their app and offers related purchases and commenting options for their current activity. Now in private beta, the company has created 1 million interactions with over 20,000 mobile users.

"We have an intense focus on user experience," says Bhatt. "That means better ads, coming at the right time, with more relevance to the customer."

Source: Chirantan Bhatt, TapCLIQ
Writer: Dana Henry

If you're a commercial or multi-family building owner dreaming of an energy efficiency overhaul, now’s your chance. The Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EEB) Hub is offering $150,000 grants to building owners, facility managers, tenants, service providers and engineering firms for integrated energy retrofits—projects addressing whole energy systems, not just individual parts. The Advanced Energy Retrofit Opportunity (AERO) Fund will finance 20 projects early next year, and has extended the deadline for first-round applications to January 30, 2013.

Laurie Actman, deputy director of EEB Hub, calls Philly a "testing bed" for energy innovation: "We want to take examples from the work done here and promote them nationally," she says.

Retrofitting identifiable candidates—nearly half our building stock—could spur the creation of 23,500 jobs and $618 million in spending for the Philadelphia region, according to the Econsult Corporation. These jobs include service providers, equipment providers, architects, engineers and systems vendors.

"We’re trying to stimulate a lot of activity in the [energy retrofit] market," says Actman. "It’s hard to get [industry professionals] to work together at the same time on a design. We’re trying to create demand for that approach so the industry will take a more integrated approach themselves."

Established by the Department of Energy as the nation's largest research and innovations center for the energy economy (and based in the Navy Yard), the Hub plans to repeat the grant program throughout the next five years, investing tens of millions in our local retrofit economy. They aim for a 20 percent regional reduction in energy use by 2020.

"We see [The AREO Fund] as a permanent part of the city and the region," says Actman.

Source: Laurie Actman, EEB Hub
Writer: Dana Henry

The Old City-based software company DMG CTRL (Damage Control) has outgrown its 2,200 square foot office above Indy Hall. With twenty employees, many hired through apprenticeships, DMG CTRL has doubled its staff in the last year. On Monday, December 3, the company moved to a 5,000-square-foot space on N. 5th Street. At their current growth-rate, Jason Allum, the company’s cofounder, expects them to fill the space over the next few years.
 
The new address will include a classroom, a conference room, a kitchen and more windows as well as ping pong, a pool table and a beer keg. That may sound more clubhouse than growing company, but Allum—who was hired as a software engineer at age 16—says employees don’t hate coming to work. 

"A lot of this space is built to facilitate communication," he says. "It’s a very sedentary job, so you have to have dedicated space for play."  
 
A 2012 study by AIG Consulting found that 68 percent of software companies surveyed had more failed projects than successful ones. DMG CTRL often rewrites broken software from larger companies. Allum says his company has built over a hundred products and only two had less-than-optimal results. He attributes the company’s phenomenal success rate to the “collective intelligence” of his team. Each project item is tracked using revision control software and every piece of code is peer reviewed. Employees sit at shared tables and are encouraged to move around.
 
"It takes a fairly anti-social group of people—nerds—and makes them talk to each other," says Allum. "Everything is done by somebody and checked by somebody else. If you’re reviewing my code and I have more experience, you have a chance to learn my tricks. People are allowed the freedom to fail which is huge."
 
Allum was a founding member and initial financer of Indy Hall. Shortly after launch, Allum and cofounder, Mac Morgan, posted a Craigslist ad calling for a "minion." He hired a cellphone salesman with no background in computers. The new employee was given menial tasks—stuff Allum didn’t want to pay experienced professionals to do—and progressively moved to more challenging ones. Today that former minion writes software for the products he used to sell.

Since then, DMG CTRL has hired a waitress, a warehouse employee, several Art Institute graduates, retail personnel and a "Russian math wiz." They also get regular visits from a 78-year-old chemist who is learning to write code.
 
"We let people float through the orbit," explains Allum. "If it works out we’ll hire them. I’m a firm believer that there’s way more people who can do this stuff than know they can do this stuff—or that the world would allow to do this stuff."

Source:Jason Allums, DMG CTRL
Writer: Dana Henry

It’s not every day a plainclothes professional opera singer performs to the hum of industrial knitting machines. Nonetheless, it was the perfect display of synergy for the opening ceremony of Drexel’s Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center at the University City Science Center. Held on Wednesday, November 28, the celebration showcased surprising STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) combinations and permutations.

"In academia, it’s hard to collaborate outside your department," says Dr. Youngmoo Kim, director of the ExCITe center and professor of computer engineering at Drexel. "The whole purpose [of ExCITe] is to create multidisciplinary projects at this nexus between technology and the arts. There’s so much synergy there."

The 11,000-square-foot facility features conference rooms, countless desktops, sound equipment and a knit lab, all available to Drexel faculty, staff and students, regional partner institutions and other universities. The space will host hackathons and other tech and arts related events.

Opening demos included an app for understanding live classical music and a digitally-enhanced grand piano. ExCITe also houses and provides seed funds to three startup projects: a Microsoft Kinect therapy game for people with cerebral palsy; a virtual reality opera project made in partnership with the Philadelphia Opera Company; and Sonic City, a Breadboard project incorporating city sounds into musical pieces.

The Shima Seiki Haute Technology Knit Lab houses four top grade fabric machines, a donation from Shima Seiki Manufacturing in Japan worth $1 millon. The facility is unheard of in academia and, according to Kim, rivals Nike’s Design Lab. Each apparatus prints items designed on CAD software; during the grand opening event, the machines produced knit kitchen gloves, custom seamless dresses and three-ply blankets.  

A knit-bot machine prints three-dimensional fabrics complete with electronic sensors. At the opening, a staff member hooked a spiraled piece of fabric into a control system and rolled it across the table remotely. Observers seemed impressed by the novelty, but Kim says knit-bot technology has implications for the future: One day you might be able to change the color and cut of your shirt with the press of a button, and sensors-enhanced fabrics could help individuals monitor health and weight. In addition, skins from these textiles could make plastic robots more resilient, while external sensors could help disaster-relief androids respond immediately to challenging environments.

Kim runs Drexel's Music Entertainment Technology Labratory, home to robots that dance and play music. He conceived of the center nearly two years ago while holding cross-departmental faculty meetings as a solution to academic silos. It wasn’t long before other key local institutions, including the Science Center, the Philadelphia Opera Company and the Franklin Institute, joined the planning.

"We can do great things here with Drexel folks, but there’s great people with ideas at Penn, UArts, Philadelphia University, Temple and Swarthmore," says  Kim. “They’re people that we know. A lot of people throughout the region, not just in academia, helped shape this."

Source: Youngmoo Kim, Drexel ExCITe
Writer: Dana Henry

In November 2010, police in rural Escondido, California discovered a house with over nine pounds of explosives and several industrial chemicals. It was a challenging situation: Authorities needed to obtain evidence while guaranteeing the safety of the neighbors and their own personnel.

The presence of such materials, along with radiological and biological hazards, constitutes an “unconventional threat” for homeland security. The Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Program (RDTEP) of Gettysburg-based Tripwire Operations Group are experts in products and training methods used to navigate this complex terrain. They’ve moved to the Science Center and plan to hire entry-level positions—including field work logicians, labratory technicians and scientists—in early 2013.

"Most of our focus is on helping first responders and war fighters safely identify and handle those other materials that are dangerous but aren’t typical," explains Jesse Taylor, lead chemist for Tripwire RDTEP.

According to Taylor, homeland security doesn’t just protect us from the "underwear bomber," the man who caused a 2009 plane fire while carrying explosives inside his pants. Public safety officials at sporting events and political rallies do "sweeps" of personal belongings using the same products and services. A natural disaster can pose threats similar to an intentional attack. Those involved in preserving public safety—including firefighters, local police and medical technicians—need to handle unconventional threats safely.

Currently, Tripwire’s RDTEP is working on independent sensor verification tools and Render Safe Procedures [RSP], including remote handling of materials. Their move to University City provides better access to client agencies including the Federal Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, as well as municipal police and firefighter divisions.

"After 9/11, [homeland security] has become much more of a public issue," says Taylor. “It’s more prominent in the public eye and in popular culture. Beyond what we provide to war fighters, there are a lot of similar issues that come up for state, local and regional emergency response teams. There certainly is a bigger picture to homeland security than terrorism."

Source: Jesse Taylor, Tripwire
Writer: Dana Henry

In the age of Wiki-pages, Kickstarter and crowd-funded banking, something as routine as dinner can be crowdsourced. At least that’s what the cofounders of Zokos—Christopher Kieran, Bradley Baer, Andrew Hapke and Roger Vandervort—are betting on. Their site helps hosts plan and fund dinner parties by engaging guests in their extended social networks. The team recently moved their headquarters from New York City to Benjamin’s Desk in Center City, Philadelphia, and plans to hire web-developers (particularly Ruby developers) early next year.

Unlike potluck invitations, which are well served by Facebook or Evite, Zokos assumes some people enjoy planning events while others wouldn’t mind contributing a little money in order to partake. The cofounders were pursuing master’s degrees at Yale when they met at the popular Veggie Dinner Club and discovered the appeal of peer-networked meals.

“I was able to have an unbelievable dinner with 10 to 20 interesting people,” explains Baer. “Often these dinners would turn into longer events where I'd make several new friends and connections.”

The Zokos dining community is modeled on the vibrant social exchanges available on a university campus. In addition to the funding feature, Zokos allows hosts to reach out to friends-of-friends, collaborate on the menu with their guests, and join a larger network of foodies and event enthusiasts. Interest groups and book clubs use the platform to plan dinners and fundraising occations. So far, over 4,000 parties have been successfully created, and roughly five percent of guests return to the site as hosts. The company also launched Zokits, a source for complete event planning roadmaps developed by industry experts. As more and more twenty-and-thirty-somethings stray from traditional family life, Zokos could be the antidote to eating alone.

“While good food, saving time and saving money is important, it's all about finding anything that brings people together,” says Baer.

Source: Brad Baer, Zokos
Writer: Dana Henry

On the heels of the passage of Pennsylvania’s Act 152, Joanne Lang, founder and CEO of AboutOne, is leading the way for local B-corporations. The company, which developed an app that simplifies access to an individual’s health records and other vital documents, has reached over 100,000 caregivers and is now tackling a brand new challenge—the Department of Human Services.  

The Communication Station is AboutOne’s co-brand for guardians of foster children. Nationally, there are over 600,000 children in foster care. Because most of these children change families multiple times, tracking health, education and even personal memories is a challenge. The Communication Station will provide a private place for those files and motivate foster parents to store important documents with gift vouchers. The platform is particularly enticing for state governments—they are now federally mandated to furnish medical data for foster children when they turn 18.

"We can save [social services] months of time and money meeting their legal requirements by providing that information for them," says Lang. "We have to take small steps and get this version working. In the longer term, we can use it to grow the company because we will have a proven solution to sell to states and cities all over the USA."

The new brand has received an endorsement from Mayor Nutter and DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose. The Child Welfare League of America is already organizing a consortium of municipal and state clients. Lang expects to pilot The Communication Station for The City of Philadelphia and is reaching out for crowd funding through IndieGoGo.

"The Communication Station needs some special features and a special game design," she explains. "We can’t fund this co-brand by ourselves. I had a choice: sit and wait, or do what I do best as an entrepreneur—overcome barriers, think of new and lateral ways to fund this small pilot quickly, and move forward."

Since launching over a year ago, AboutOne has grown their staff by 300 percent and signed with larger caregiving businesses. Lang, who is also a mother of four sons, was recently selected for Dell’s Founders Club. Despite her national ambitions, Lang says she’s determined to stay in Philadelphia, and credits Mayor Nutter and Philadelphia Startup League for helping so many grow their dreams.

"A woman in technology—with children—can grow a startup company here in PA and be successful here in PA," she says. "You don’t need to move to Silicon Valley or anywhere else."

Source: Joanne Lang, AboutOne
Writer: Dana Henry 

Washington Avenue West—the gritty home to plumbers, mechanics and supply outlets—is the new landing spot for Philly’s next generation of fabricators. After months of construction, NextFab Studio is set to reopen in a 21,000-square-foot workspace nearly five times the size of their former University City location. Unfortunately, due to some delays, the grand opening celebration has been moved to January 17, 2012.

NextFab has helped springboard a local ecosystem of high-tech creative entrepreneurship, a community that now includes Breadboard Philly and Drexel’s ExCITe. In addition to readily available 3D printers, laser cutters and robotics paraphernalia, Philly’s “Gym for Innovators” will now feature a loading dock, a crane, an industrial textile machine and an auto lift. Stay tuned for more information on their new facilities and grand opening party.

Source: NextFab
Writer: Dana Henry

Most people wouldn’t look at local government agencies and see big cash, but that’s exactly what Greg Berry, founder and CEO of Municibid, has done. While serving on the Pottstown council, the former CEO of Jonestown-based PointSolve discovered municipalities were losing considerable money by putting their out-of-use items up for "sealed bid." His online competitive bidding platform currently serves 800 government agencies across the country; its annual merchandizing value is growing 300 percent every year. He's looking to hire experienced sales reps to approach a largely untapped market of 90,000 agencies selling $2.5 billion of merchandise annually.

"[Pottstown council] would sell an old police car worth $3,000 for about $300, then we struggled to come up with $1000 to pay for something else," says Berry. "Very few people knew the items were for sale. This same problem was, and still is, affecting tens of thousands of local government agencies."

When Municibid customers trade their classified ads for online bidding, they recover considerable money on valuable items, including police vans, tractors, walky-talkies, cafeteria tables, plate makers and traffic signal heads—even a plane recovered from a drug trafficking operation. The small town of Mansfield, Maine exceeded expectations for their annual auction by $85,000. Baton-Rouge, Louisiana made $125,000 in their first round. Municibid has been reeling in an average of 25 new clients per month and Berry believes they’ll reach 5,000 clients in five years.

"Bidding used to be limited to those in the know," says Berry. "Now, more and more, we’re seeing parents buying cars for their teenagers through Municibid. We have found a way to better engage the general public."

Source: Greg Berry, Municibid
Writer: Dana Henry

It’s great to hear a company wants to "go green" or pay a "living wage," but for the startups at Good Company Ventures social capital is at the core of their operations. The 2012 graduates—a group that features low-cost geothermal technology, a social crowd-sourcing platform and a green laundry service with an eye towards workforce development—are in the midst of first-round fundraising, and at least one company has gained nearly $1 million in investment. These innovators will join leaders of the public and private sector on Tuesday November, 20 at First Round Capital, for a public graduation reception and networking event.

Regalii, one of the graduating businesses, enables Latino immigrants to send remittances in the form of store credit via text. While their service has a clear social value—it protects the sender from predatory fees and the receiver from robbery—the stores lose value because they sell credits to Regalii in bulk. According to Zoe Selzer, executive director of the Good Company Group, this kind of value proposition triangle (where the purchaser is not the benefactor) can make the social venture business model tricky.
 
“We look for companies where the market strategy is not necessarily intuitive," Selzer says. "A lot of accelerator programs focus on the development of the product. We assume that people in our incubator have a product of pretty good value and what they really need to focus on is how to translate their good idea into something really valuable in the marketplace."
 
Good Company merged with Green Village Incubator in March 2012. The ventures are operational when accepted into the accelerator program and spend each week working through issues a potential investor would raise. They get feedback and advice from a panel of business and venture capital experts as well as their peers. The process often results in a complete reworking of the company’s value proposition. Edi Bikes, which relocated from Chicago, entered the program expecting to provide bike customers roadside assistance. They now focus on commuter-centric engineering.  
 
"[These companies] can’t just assume that their social mission is going to carry them forward," says Selzer. "You have to answer all [investor] questions if you want to be considered for a second meeting. We’re not giving any passes because you're trying to save the world."
 
Over the past three years, Good Company Ventures graduates have raise over $30 million of investment. This year, Wash Cycle Laundry will graduate and hire its sixteenth employee. Other startups, including Start Some Good, continue attracting venture capital and national press, proving companies that do good can also do well. 

Source: Zoe Selzer, Good Company Ventures
Writer: Dana Henry

Last year Eyal (Al) Azoulay, co-founder and CEO of Rumble and self-proclaimed news junky, bought his first tablet. He expected to view his favorite titles on the go, but there was not a single app for his choices. He was not alone in his disappointment—according to a study by Kontera, mobile accounts for 27 percent of all content consumed on the web (up 430 percent from last year) and news outlets, particularly traditional print media, continue losing readership as they struggle to adapt.
 
Rumble, based in Philadelphia and Tel-Aviv, and accelerated at the Project Liberty Digital Incubator at the Inquirer/Daily News offices, is a catchall content distribution system for mobile devices poised to conquer this digital divide. They’ve secured $1 million in investments and are hiring rapidly: Seven positions are currently open in sales and marketing.
 
Over the past five years, the print to web shift has resulted in billions of lost revenue for the newspaper industry. Mobile content represents an entirely different set of complex technologies and user interaction issues, and can be overwhelming to newspaper managers who are down to 70 percent of their heyday budget and workforce. "[Newspaper managers] honestly don’t even have the time to think about a strategy across mobile, let alone execute one," says Azoulay.
 
The problem is even more severe for mega publishers such as Conde Nast, Gannett, Lee, Knight Rider and Mcklechy—often each title will create individual apps. "As a mega publisher, your network of titles is completely fragmented," says Azoule. "Rumble offers the mega publisher one platform to unify all titles over all mobile devices and leverages the entire network as one."
 
Newspapers, Azoulay points out, are experts in content creation, not software. With the fourth version of the iPad rolling out after just two years, it’s hard to justify the major upfront investment required for the print-mobile switch. Rumble offers a backend system that publishes across all mobile devices and hosts a complete set of content-related features, including mobile-specific layout, performance tracking, revenue modeling and social media tools. After newspapers, Azoulay and his cofounders—Itai Cohen and Uyen Tieu, who’s served in executive sales and marketing positions for Microsoft and Viacom—expect to add trade publications and television news clients with similar needs.
 
There are over 1,600 newspapers and 2,000 university publications. Currently, news media gains only $1 from mobile platforms for every $9 they’ve lost, but Azoulay believes that’s all about to change. Mobile usage reveals not just consumers’ demographics and preferences, but where they are and what they’re doing. Of the $30 billion dollars spent annually on advertising, seventy percent come from local ads and no one is more capable of capitalizing on that revenue than newspapers.
 
"If you couple that with the highly sophisticated targeting available through mobile, you get one of the best combinations you can leverage," he says. "There’s no question that we will learn how to monetize on mobile devices very well."

Source: Eyal Azoulay, Rumble
Writer: Dana Henry

Now is a great time to start a business in Philly: Philadelphia Startup Leaders has steadily grown to 1,800 members and launched PSL University, The City gained its first seed fund and an Office of New Urban Mechanics, and First Round Capital is taking lead in bringing more VC’s back inside our urban boundaries. The upcoming PSL Founder Factory—at World Café Live on Thursday, Nov. 15—will prime entrepreneurs with true-to-life lessons from exemplary risk takers.

“There are similar challenges that companies at any stage face,” Gloria Bell, event organizer for PSL and founder of Red Stapler Consulting, says. “Each year we have focused on a different aspect of building and running a startup using the collective wisdom of local entrepreneurs.”

Previous Founders Factories helped hopefuls polish their pitches and investor sweet talk.  This year, in response to member surveys and talk-list discussions, PSL broadens the programing, hosting talks from a diverse range of experienced local entrepreneurs—Leadnomics, PTM Solutions and Chariot Solutions, are represented—followed by workshops and small group discussions. Topics cover the essentials including customer development, internal metrics, and company culture.  Josh Kopelman of First Round and Michael Golden, co-founder of GSI Commerce and president and founder of ShopRunner, are the keynote speakers and will share the changing realities of entrepreneurship.  Hint: Kopelman, an accomplished Wharton grad and founder of successful tech ventures including Half.com, recently moved First Round near two of Philly’s thriving universities. It’s a sign of things to come.

 “There has been such tremendous growth in the startup community,” Bell says. “The recognition of business and city government of the contribution of the startup community to the overall economic health of the region has been a strong motivator. The area's entrepreneurs are well-equipped to build strong, sustainable, profitable companies."

Source: Gloria Bell, Philly Starup Leaders
Writer: Dana Henry