International Talent : Innovation + Job News

Got a tough decision? Plug it into The Reckoner and see your peers' opinions. "One of the great things the internet has told us over the last four years is that you can ask it for advice and get actual good information back," says Dan Koch, founder of ReckonLabs, which created The Reckoner. "Giving practical answers to individuals has worked well for Q&A sites, but has not yet worked well for polls. Internet polling is still back in 1998."
 

The Reckoner seeks to bring the internet poll into the present, with a new kind of content curation and a heaping helping of humor. Launched at the end of November, the site took off immediately. In its first month, reports Koch, The Reckoner welcomed 11,000 unique users and 81,000 page views. One of the more popular questions currently in rotation asks:

TICKLING: ADORABLE DISPLAY OF AFFECTION OR A LEGAL FORM OF TORTURE?

 

The Reckoner, says Koch, will make money via two primary revenue streams: "The first is advertising. The second part is feedback. Knowing what customers are thinking is valuable." 

 

Koch envisions a company posting two possible ads on The Reckoner to elicit feedback, for example. He trusts that an occasional sponsored question will not ruffle feathers. "In America, so much of our culture is based on shopping and our relationship with our brands." For its part, The Reckoner offers advertisers unique access to an affluent, educated young adult demographic. "The Reckoner has to achieve a certain scale to make it worthwhile," says Koch.

 

Coming from Accenture, where he was a consultant on the road most of the time, Koch returned to his hometown of Philadelphia to create a business where he grew up. "One thing I've learned is that Philly has a great tech scene, much better than I ever thought," says Koch, who is a member of Indy Hall and participant in Philly Tech Meetup.

 

The future of The Reckoner rests on solid visitor numbers, with 10,000  and 50,000 unique visitors the two benchmarks. "The timeline is the key thing," says Koch, who has set July 2012 as the deadline to decide if the website is self sustaining, with an interim analysis scheduled for this March, at which point Koch will make a decision about pursuing outside investment.

Source: Dan Koch, The Reckoner
Writer: Sue Spolan

Center City based RJMetrics just closed on a $1.2 million round of financing from a syndicate that includes both local and national players. "Now I can go back to actively running the business," says CEO Robert J Moore, who recalls that the fast growing business intelligence company made a decision around the end of the third quarter of last year to go to market and see what potential deals might look like.

"We found a deal that made economic sense and we moved extremely quickly," says Moore. "Honestly, from the moment we decided we definitely wanted to raise money, it took less than a week to get all the commitments."

 

Moore and co-founder Jake Stein, who is COO, met while both were working for Insight Venture Partners, which gave the pair an edge during the fundraising process. "It's very common in these negotiations for entrepreneurs to be confused or intimidated by the legal aspects of raising capital," says Moore. "When one of these deals takes place, there are literally dozens and dozens of small terms, and they can go over the heads of people raising money."

 

The inspiration for RJMetrics also came while Moore was at Insight. "Part of my job was due diligence on new investments. A lot was driven by data analysis, which I was doing by hand in Excel and MS Access. I was doing that analysis dozens of times, and common themes emerged. As a programmer, I realized I could replace myself with a program."

 

The productized version of Moore's program is available to businesses for a low monthly subscription fee, and RJMetrics considers venture firms a lead generation channel. The company now has 60 customers, up from 20 in the beginning of 2011, and has grown from 4 to 12 employees in the same time period. The cash influx, which is already in the bank, will go to marketing and continued expansion.

Source: Robert Moore, RJMetrics
Writer: Sue Spolan

It's the classic impulse: make lemonade out of economic lemons. 2011 was the year of the startup. When the job market slumped, ingenuity kicked in, and entrepreneurs had places to gather. The Quorum at the University City Science Center opened to provide a common space for entrepreneurs, hosting events like Philly Tech Meetup, which drew increasing crowds to its monthly demos of startups.

Along with the Science Center's continued support of entrepreneurs, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania provided funding for many local companies including AboutOne. BFTP's Navy Yard neighbor GPIC has stepped in to centralize the future of energy efficiency.

Bob Moul, of Dell Boomi, took the helm at Philly Startup Leaders, which is re-tooling its mission while putting together a pair of fruitful Philly Startup Weekends.

DreamIt Ventures 2011 gave a boost to 14 fledgling companies, including frontrunners Cloudmine, ElectNext, SnipSnap, Metalayer, and Spling, all to remain in Philadelphia. Yasmine Mustafa, a past DreamIt participant, and most recently a Philadev Ventures member, recently sold her startup 123LinkIt to national content syndication network Netline.

Writer: Sue Spolan

Innovation in Philadelphia: it's not just all about tech. Government, retail, media and the way we work and live made major strides forward in 2011.

The University of the Arts' Corzo Center for the Creative Economy funded arts entrepreneurs this year, and businesses like Little Baby's Ice Cream, Kembrel, Gritty City Beauty, LevelUp and ReAnimator Coffee are just a few examples of the retail revolution underway in Philadelphia. Storably and Inhabi launched to re-imagine rentals. Milkboy Coffee expanded from Ardmore to Center City, and made plans to move its recording studio downtown as well.

Crowdsourced civic change is a major trend in Philadelphia's innovation efforts. We were named a Code for America city the second year in a row; programs like Open Access Philly and Change By Us live at the intersection of technology and civic engagement, with government stewardship by Jeff Friedman. Adel Ebeid arrived to lead the city's newly formed Office of Innovation and Technology in increasing broadband penetration.

TEDxPhilly, Young Involved Philadelphia, Philly Tech Week, PhillyStake, the Philadelphia Geek Awards and IgnitePhilly mixed business with pleasure, merging crowds and companies in festive settings.

Gaming and gamification continues to trend; local efforts include Cipher Prime, Port 127, Play Eternal and networking group PANMA.

Incubators and coworking spaces surged, with Indy Hall making expansion plans for K'House, Philadev's Musemaka, OpenDesks, Startup Therapy, and Novotorium in Langhorne.

In media, Wharton Publishing went all digital; Ryan Seacrest opened The Voice studio at CHOP; G Philly, Hidden City's Daily and Generocity launched; WHYY's Newsworks grew; and if it was relevant to technology, Technically Philly covered it all this year, never missing a beat.

Writer: Sue Spolan

Philadelphia's most recent unemployment rates checked in at 10.9%, which is well behind the national average of 8.8%. While the entire tri-state Greater Philadelphia area fared better at 8.4%, 2011 showed plenty of companies that are hiring.

When a company cannot hire employees fast enough, it's got to be NextDocs. The Microsoft SharePoint provider is bringing people in at breakneck speed. Transcend United continues to expand in IT, through mergers, acquisitions and hiring. GPIC is always looking to staff its constituent companies.

Google search challenger DuckDuckGo expanded from a basement operation to offices in Paoli and is seeking employees to fill the new space. VCopious, which provides virtual environments for enterprise, expects to double its staff by the end of next year. GIS expert Azavea continues to expand.

Center City based Cliq is looking for engineers who can assist in the mission to transform social data into social knowledge.

Other growth areas are in life sciences; Greenphire, founded to streamline clinical research, expects to double staff following a Series A round of funding. Echo Therapeutics reported earlier this year it was hiring 25.

Farm to table continues upward. South Jersey based Zone 7 and Chester County's Wyebrook Farm expanded considerably this year. Philly Cow Share, Bennett Compost, and Common Market all thrived this growing season. The Healthy Carts initiative launched to address the problem of food deserts in underserved areas of the city.

Writer: Sue Spolan

Joanne Lang has star power. It wouldn't be surprising if the founder and CEO of AboutOne left a trail of glitter dust in her wake. In the past several months, the Malvern based startup has received a huge amount of attention and money, including nearly $2 million in funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA, which pledged $100,000 in May, and a $1.6 million Series A round led by Golden Seeds, a majority women owned national investment network. Lang's company also just announced partnerships with Microsoft and Suze Orman's IDSafe.

AboutOne addresses the needs of an increasingly powerful online contingent: moms. While dads can also use AboutOne's family management tools, Lang's idea was borne of her own pain point as a parent. Lacking proper medical information in an emergency involving one of her four children, Lang realized that data stored in the cloud could literally be a lifesaver.

She left her job at SAP to start AboutOne, which aims to organize all household management tasks. In addition to medical data, subscribers can store images and videos, keep track of bills and receipts, maintain contacts and calendars with important family dates and deadlines, and even automatically send out cards. "I have Facebook for friends and LinkedIn for business, but nothing in the middle for the people I love the most: my family and children," says Lang. "There was nothing to manage my home life more smoothly."

The service has been in beta since April, and in January launches the full gamified version, using feedback from beta tester moms. Several key improvements include automation of information gathering via social media sites and points for using AboutOne that translate to gift cards and credits.

Lang is featured in the soon to be released documentary about entrepreneurs called Control+Alt+Compete, produced by Microsoft. "There were 63 companies presenting, and they picked three to follow," says Lang, whose gentle charm and enthusiasm outshines the other two companies profiled.

AboutOne is on a mission to give back, with a lifestyle blog, special help for military families, a Comeback Mom program for women re-entering the workforce, and promotions designed to give back to the community. The company, which was founded with five employees, has just doubled staff and is continuing to hire.

Lang will also be featured in an upcoming series The Alchemist Entrepreneur. "It's how about when you want something mentally, the forces come together and help you achieve that goal. Really weird things happen to me all the time. I feel like I have a business angel. When we got our office space, we couldn't afford to buy furniture. Twenty minutes later, someone's mom called asking if anyone wanted office cubicles. She dropped off top of the range furniture."

Look for the full scale release of AboutOne in mid-January. Those who sign up friends will be entered into a contest to win an Amazon Kindle.

Source: Joanne Lang, AboutOne
Writer: Sue Spolan

Todd McNeal's company Snapline looks like a whole lot of money: slick website, professional press release. "Snapline is just me," says Bella Vista based McNeal, who presented his idea at this month's Philly Tech Meetup.

Snapline uses information readily available on the Facebook API to provide a better shopping experience. McNeal has developed a set of plug-ins based on the social data. The first one, now in use, looks at your profile and gives recommendations based on things you like, as well as what other people of similar gender, age, and interest like.

A retailer using the Snapline plug-in can segment and market specific products. "A jeweler shows engagement rings to people who are single, and anniversary presents to people who are already married," says McNeal, who is now beta testing Snapline with one of the largest online flower and gift retailers. McNeal does not want to publicly divulge the company name just yet.

"I was with IBM out of college, working as a consultant with an e-commerce platform that was used by a lot of top retailers." It was there that McNeal developed a deep understanding of what was lacking in the retail interface.

McNeal plans on releasing several more plug-ins for e-commerce data management over the next month. "My goal is to get enough information to prove that we are a viable business, and then go look for funding in the early part of next year." McNeal's current marketing strategy is personalized face to face demos, making a go as a bootstrapped one-man startup with an enterprise solution.

Source: Todd McNeal, Snapline
Writer: Sue Spolan

Stephan Jacob began his Wharton MBA with a specific plan. The day he decided to start Kembrel, an online retailer that now has a brick and mortar presence, was the day he applied to Penn. "For me, those two years were about finding partners I could trust to start a business," says Jacob of Cherif Habib and Aymeric de Hemptinne, Kembrel co-founders and fellow MBA grads. Kembrel recently raised $1 million in startup funding from MentorTech Ventures, Blazer Ventures, and private sources.

Jacob, who grew up in Germany, came to Philadelphia with a degree in computer science from the University of Mannheim. None of the founders was born in the United States.

"I was not at all into fashion," admits Jacob. "Fashion as consumer, yes. But I was more into web and software development. It's been an interesting learning curve, understanding how the industry works in the United States, identifying the supplier network."

Jacob credits Wharton with essentials like connecting Kembrel with advisors and investors, and even the company name, inspired by Wharton's Vice Dean of Student Life, Kembrel Jones, AKA Dean Of Happiness.

The retail operation launched its first beta version in April 2010. "It was a business with a plan, not just a business plan," says Jacob. "We dedicated that summer full time to the business and launched in September of 2010 with the vision of being a marketing platform for consumer brands that reach the college demographic."

With 32,000 online subscribers and 400 members who have signed up for the newly introduced  VIP level, Kembrel has a national reach, with a presence on over 2,000 campuses. The greatest activity is at Penn, University of Texas, University of Cincinnati, Northeastern, Harvard, Florida State, Ohio State, and University of Michigan.

Kembrel just opened up a store at 1219 Locust, which is also the company headquarters and fulfillment center. "We've only been open since Nov. 18, and it's interesting to see the cross conversion. It's something we are still experimenting with, how we can create a consistent experience for our customers in store and offline." The ability to stop in and try on clothing alleviates the fit problem with online purchases, Jacob adds.

Jacob agrees that Kembrel must compete with the big brick and mortar players who already have an online presence, but that Kembrel represents more aspiring, less known labels and young designers who are not in national chains.

The company, with five full time employees and under $50,000 in monthly sales, is hiring on the buying and merchandising end, and is now looking into growing its national physical presence.

Source: Stephan Jacob, Kembrel
Writer: Sue Spolan

PCS Technologies, located in the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia, has been around for 20 years, but the past two years have seen rapid growth under the leadership of Chandra Allred.

"We just hired two people, and we are looking for more," says Allred, chief operating officer of PCS, who is still in search of a technical/creative writer, as well as programmers.

With clients that include Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie, The Gap (which also owns five brands, including Banana Republic and Old Navy), and Bed Bath and Beyond, PCS is a supply chain software firm. Their product, PCSTrac, helps companies keep tabs on millions of pieces of inventory.

"The Gap has 3,500 stores," explains Allred of just one of PCS Technologies' clients. "They use our scanning software to populate the enterprise wide system. Store associates don't scan at all. It's a huge labor savings." And a huge responsibility. "If there is an issue with our application, it's not just affecting the logistics and supply chain, but it's also affecting national and international inventory."

With under 25 employees, PCS software makes sure a million cartons a week get from the manufacturer to the store. Allred left her consulting business to join PCS in 2009. She was hired to retool the company's strategy.

"They were at a pivotal point in terms of growth. One of the co-owners of the firm approached me about running the company," Allred explains. "Since then there has been tremendous growth. In two years, our client base has more than doubled, and our installations have tripled."

PCS, says Allred, makes its money through recurring revenue. While there are initial licensing fees for its software, the company's main revenue stream comes from monthly product support fees.

"It's the reverse of a lot of software applications," says Allred. "In this industry, normal maintenance costs are 18 percent of licensing costs. Ours is completely flipped. Our software is very high maintenance. If data isn't showing up, you're stuck. It's a production environment."

Next time you're trying on a fuzzy cardigan at Urban Outfitters, it's PCS that gets it there.

Source: Chandra Allred, PCS Technologies
Writer: Sue Spolan

Cipher Prime has the market cornered on the music of beauty, and the beauty of music. The startup game developer based in Old City recently released Fractal: Make Blooms Not War on the Steam network, which Cipher Prime co-founder and Creative Director William Stallwood terms the largest game distribution platform in the world, for Mac or PC in English, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

With in-game titles like Clustodial Duties and Bippity Boppity Bloom, Fractal is a good example of Cipher Prime's philosophy of fun, creating a new genre of trippy puzzle games.

"I like pretty pictures and colors," jokes Stallwood, who is responsible for the gorgeous graphics that set apart Cipher Prime games like its newest title, Pulse: Volume One, which Stallwood says was the number one selling iPad music game in the world in May 2011, and Auditorium, the team's first title and its largest revenue generator.

Like the other titles in the Cipher Prime catalog, Pulse is easy to learn and hard to put down. A review in Digitally Downloaded called the newest release of Fractal " a thoroughly charming and chilled out little puzzle game." 

Co-founder Dain Saint is the soundtrack powerhouse of the duo, and Cipher Prime's music is set to spin off, with an upcoming CD release of game tunes.

Stallwood says the three and a half year old company is about to launch a fourth title, Splice, in the next month, although he cannot furnish details just yet. Stallwood, who is from South Jersey and attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and Saint, who grew up in North Jersey, are able to make a living having fun. Auditorium was a web based game that was then launched on iPhone, PS3 and PSP.

Fractal, built using Flash, initially didn't do as well, says Stallwood, hence the new and improved relaunch on Steam. Pulse began life as an iPad only game, and has won many awards, with 10,000 downloads a day at the outset, and currently purchased an average of 100 times a day, at a price of $2.99. Fractal is available at the iTunes store for $1.99, and Auditorium on Steam sells for $6.99 per download.

Source: William Stallwood, Cipher Prime
Writer: Sue Spolan
 

It is possible to make money in your sleep. Yasmine Mustafa, founder and CEO of 123LinkIt.com, has created such a successful affiliate marketing tool for use on Wordpress blogs that the company has been acquired by Netline Corporation, a national B2B syndication network. Mustafa is now onsite at the company's east coast office in Lansdale, where she is serving as Product Marketing Manager.

123LinkIt automates the advertising process for bloggers. Once you install the Wordpress plug-in, 123LinkIt does the work for you, finding keywords in your blog and creating hyperlinks to places like Amazon and other online retailers.
As a blogger, you don't have to do anything special to make money. There are no ads on the side of your page. There are no annoying pop-ups when the reader rolls over particular words. A 123LinkIt hyperlink looks like any other. The magic is under the hood.

"What's special is it has a tracking code," says Mustafa of the link, which drops a cookie in the reader's browser. "When someone buys the item mentioned in the blog, it lets us know there was a sale involved. We split the commission with the blogger, who gets 85 percent, and we take 15 percent." With over 20,000 dowloads of the 123LinkIt software, those commissions add up.

Mustafa, who grew up in Royersford, Montgomery County and attended Temple University as an entrepreneurship major, was struggling with her own blog readership and advertising revenue when she hit on a winning formula one day, almost by accident. "I wasn't seeing results, so I forgot about it. Usually my posts took hours to write and research, but one day I was on the train, and wrote a silly post on the top 20 entrepreneurial quotes. It blew up. The first day I had 20,000 hits. There was advertising on that post.  The next month, I got all these checks from AdSense and Commission Junction and I realized there is something here." Mustafa found the process of creating links to be time consuming, so she came up with the idea of automating the process, enlisting the help of developer John Bunting, who developed the first version of the product.

123LinkIt first targeted mom bloggers, says Mustafa, because they know how to engage their readers and promote their blogs, they write about products, and are not necessarily tech savvy, so an automated plug-in is ideal. The next groups 123LinkIt will target are fashion and technology bloggers. The company is part of Philadev Ventures.

Mustafa is a frequent tweeter, and has hinted at the announcement regarding 123LinkIt's upcoming deal on social media, so stay tuned to her twitter account @myasmine for details in the next few weeks. 

Source: Yasmine Mustafa, 123LinkIt
Writer: Sue Spolan

From headquarters in stately Wayne, Transcend United Technologies is taking over the world of IT and telecom through mergers and acquisitions. The company originally known as Fastech is on a fast track, acquiring nationally to provide infrastructure, networking, telephony, data center optimization and more, becoming a one-stop shop for the CIO.

"Historically, a CIO might be approached by two to four vendors," says Transcend United's CEO Rick Hirsh. "We saw that was inefficient." Companies, he says, have an easier time dealing with one partner.  While Hirsh says Transcend United isn't 100-percent vendor neutral, he terms his offerings vendor agnostic. The newest challenge for his company, and for IT in general, is keeping up with the explosion of wireless bandwidth requirements. Employees now have WiFi enabled smartphones, laptops and tablets. "Estimates of how they would use the network weren't even close," explains Hirsh of the BYOD revolution (Bring Your Own Device).

"We started with a strategy in 2009 to change Fastech’s model," says Hirsh.  "That strategy was based on the convergence of IT and telecom, the fact that most mid-market VARs were only successful at either IT or Telecom, but not both, and that we could build scale on both geography and breadth of solutions."

Fastech, originated in the Philadelphia area. Hirsh engineered the acquisition of two Philadelphia area companies, and another two in the upper Midwest, with a current total of 115 employees, 15 of whom were hired this year. Roughly half of the company works out of the Wayne facility, with centers of activity in Minneapolis and Omaha. "We can grow organically at about the speed that the tech market grows, which is 20-25 percent," says Hirsh of his company that is two-thirds employee owned.

Transcend United continues to hire in sales and marketing, and plans to acquire more companies in the near future.

Source: Rick Hirsh, Transcend United Technologies
Writer: Sue Spolan

Philadelphia continues to grow in its national leadership role as a center for all things green and sustainable. This weekend, The Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia hosts the 2011 Social Venture Institute, a two-day seminar with the mission of growing green businesses now in its ninth year.

"The Social Venture Institute is our region's premier sustainable business event. SVI was one of the first conferences to discuss the Triple Bottom Line business model of incorporating People, Planet and Profit into a business’ success," says Jennifer Devor, Events Manager at SBN. "While the audience is primarily from the Greater Philadelphia area, we do have a handful of entrepreneurs coming from around the country. We have people registering from as far away as Washington State."

Mayor Michael Nutter, who was handily re-elected for a second term last week, emphasized the role of Philadelphia as a center of sustainability in his acceptance speech:

"Four years ago I said that Philly could be the greenest city in the United States of America. Today the federal government is investing $130 million at our Navy Yard to build a clean tech hub, our recycling rate is three times higher than it has ever been, and we are one of the leading cities in America taking advantage of the growth in the green economy."

The Social Venture Institute (SVI) will take place at The Hub, self-proclaimed as the only privately held LEED Silver certified meeting space in the country. Rather than keynotes, SVI has True Confession Speakers, including Paul Saginaw, co-owner of Michigan based Zingerman's Community of Businesses, and MaryAnne Howland, owner and president of Nashville, Tenn., ad agency Ibis Communications.

The schedule, aimed at teaching "entrepreneurs how to run successful businesses that have a positive social and environmental impact," includes workshops and networking sessions that cover topics from finance to social media. Devor expects around 200 attendees and 30 experts, including representatives from Praxis Consulting Group, Women’s Business Development Center, Valley Green Bank, and Technically Philly.

"This conference is about learning how to balance your business goals with your passions and change the way people run businesses," says Devor.

Eighty scholarships, funded by The Prudential Foundation, are available to minority entrepreneurs and low-income applicants and reduce the cost to $40; full price tickets range from $45 to 180, depending on the number of sessions you'd like to attend. Both scholarship and full price tickets are still available.

Source: Jennifer Devor, Sustainable Business Network, Mayor Michael Nutter, City of Philadelphia
Writer: Sue Spolan