He's not going to talk about specific products. Cheyenne Ehrlich, CEO of Northern Liberties based
Perceptual Networks, says, "We have not really gotten into much public detail about what we are doing."
Nonetheless, whatever he and partner Jim Young are planning is sufficient to have garnered $1 million in a seed funding round from some of tech's biggest players. At least 20 players, including
First Round Capital, founders of YouTube, PayPal, Rackspace, Bebo, and Demand Media have put chips on the table.
But Ehrlich remains mum on specifics. "Jim has a track record of building products that consumers love. People fundamentally get excited by people who make products that people love." Ehrich is referring to Young's product hotornot.com, which skyrocketed in a matter of months from launch to being one a top 25 web property.
Perceptual Networks, says Ehrlich, is in the process of building a suite of products intended to connect people to one another for work, for love, and for community. That's all Ehrich is willing to divulge at this time to everyone but investors. "Apple is an example of a company that builds great products that people love. That's what the focus should be on," says Ehrlich.
Ehrlich was scouting cities for some time, considering New York, the San Francisco bay area, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and ultimately chose Philly for its combination of great educational institutions, regional access to capital, easy access to New York City, lower cost of living and better quality of life, with great restaurants and culture and the growing tech community as added benefits.
With five on staff, Ehrlich says Perceptual is aggressively hiring right now, particularly in engineering to create products that will live on iOS, Android and the web, with possible expansion to other platforms in the future.
Source: Cheyenne Ehrlich, Perceptual Networks
Writer: Sue Spolan