Entrepreneurship : In The News

The USA Today reports the young professional population is on the rise in urban centers, especially in Philadelphia, which saw a 57 percent increase among college-educated 20- and 30-somethings.

In more than two-thirds of the nation's 51 largest cities, the young, college-educated population in the past decade grew twice as fast within 3 miles of the urban center as in the rest of the metropolitan area - up an average 26 percent compared with 13 percent in other parts.

"This is a real glimmer of hope," says Carol Coletta, head of CEOs for Cities, a non-profit consortium of city leaders that commissioned the research. "Clearly, the next generation of Americans is looking for different kinds of lifestyles - walkable, art, culture, entertainment."

Source: USA Today
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An Allentown battery manufacturer is installing its large format lithium ion energy storage system ona 2,700 square foot building at the Philadelphia Navy Yard as part of its Energy Innovation Hub, reports CNET.

"The Energy Innovation Hub will include a live demonstration of a microgrid with a 2,700 square foot net-zero energy home. International Battery will provide Sunverge with an 8.2 kilowatt-hour Lithium Iron Phosphate battery pack for use in the residential SIS (Solar Integration System)," the company announced Thursday.

The battery pack will be used to store solar energy that can be retrieved for later use in conjunction with the solar system and micro smart grid, also being constructed on site, according to International Battery.

Source: CNET
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Online auction giant eBay announced it will acquire GSI Commerce, a leading provider of eCommerce and interactive marketing services, according to GigaOm.

Auction giant eBay said today that it will buy GSI Commerce, a King of Prussia, Pa.-based provider of e-commerce and marketing services for a whopping $2.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal is part of eBay's continued makeover from an auctions-oriented company to an e-commerce platform.

Source: GigaOm

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Rock music idol maker Bob Marcucci, who created the careers of Frankie Avalon and Fabian, has died at age 81, according to the New York Times.

Bob Marcucci, who discovered Frankie Avalon and Fabian and helped make them two of the biggest rock 'n' roll stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s and whose career inspired the 1980 film "The Idolmaker," died on March 9 in Ontario, Calif. He was 81 and lived in Los Angeles.

Mr. Marcucci was a lyricist and co-owner of Chancellor Records, a Philadelphia label hungry for a hit, when he first laid eyes on Frankie Avalon in 1957.

Source: The New York Times
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Philadelphia's Osage University Partners has set up a fund to provide profit to schools where initial research is done, according to The New York Times.

THERE are a lot of smart people in universities. Some may even be geniuses. Many of them are certainly good at inventing technologies that will change our lives.

But for the most part, universities aren't particularly adept at extracting the full measure of profit from all those innovations. While university technology transfer offices routinely license the intellectual property developed on campus, the schools themselves often aren't very nimble at retaining large stakes in the start-ups that exploit that property.

Source: The New York Times
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After just two paper issues, the bilingual tech and culture magazine Tek Lado is going to an online only format, according to Technically Philly.

Editor Liz Spikol, with whom we spoke last fall about the new gig, and former publisher Mel Gomez have struck out on their own, aiming to build Tek Lado as an online-only brand, grabbing the naming rights and the tek-lado.com domain.

The Tek Lado blog will still feature English and Spanish writing on geek culture, gaming, gadgets, social media and the like, the same as the magazine, but won't have to remain tied to this region exclusively.

Source: Technically Philly
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The Washington Post goes hunting for the best of Philly's abundant crop of vegan treats.

So one Saturday last month, my vegan friends and I hit the streets of Philadelphia - where the Phillies claim the country's top-ranked vegetarian ballpark - intending to do no harm to animals, the environment and presumably our health. (At our first stop, Cafe Mocha, we did, however, sample vegan donuts and cookies, and a quick sugar high reminded me that "vegan" doesn't always equal "nutritious.")

We headed to the South Street district for lunch at Blackbird, a vegan pizzeria with a chalkboard menu, a drab interior and space heaters. Blackbird's owner, Mark Mebus, is a Philly native and former chef at Horizons, the upscale restaurant that put vegan dining on the map here. He opened the pizzeria last fall.

Source: Washington Post
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Rick Ross Signs Philly rapper Meek Mill to Maybach Music Group, reports HipHopWired.

"The Bawse" Rick Ross has announced Philadelphia's own Meek Mill as his latest signee.

The young spitter states, "coming from the bottom, 2 years ago I was in my [expletive] cell hoping I wouldn't get 20 years... now I get out and take it to the next level"

Meek became one of Philadelphia's hottest underground rap artists on an independent label in 2007.

Repping North and South Philly, he released his Flamerz mixtape series and the single, "In My Bag," broke through to radio in his hometown.

Original source: HipHopWired
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Philadelphia's DreamIt Ventures opens a satellite office in New York, reports TechCrunch.

The program will run from mid-May to mid-August this year. Applicants to DreamIt Ventures' NYC program will be reviewed on a rolling basis with an early decision deadline of February 28, 2011 and a final deadline of March 16, 2011, according to the accelerator's site. DreamIt has "Hacker" and "Strategist" tracks where individuals not yet affiliated with a company can apply to potentially join a portfolio startup, on either the technical or business front.

DreamIt Ventures plans to admit ten to fifteen companies into its NYC program, five of which will be digital education businesses. That's the same setup as the Philly program. In both cities, DreamIt Ventures partners with Startl--an organization funded by the MacArthur, Hewlett and Gates Foundations--to help five, digital education startups build their businesses.

Original source: TechCrunch
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You've got to give attorney David Orphanides a lot of credit. He's come up with an alternative to "artisanal," one of the more awkward-sounding terms in the English language. Jettisoning the word, but not the concept, Orphanides uses the more classic "crafted" when describing the four tenets that make up the philosophy of Fairmount's soon-to-open Fare restaurant, which also relies on local, organic and sustainable practices.

Orphanides eats organic and shops sustainably at home, so it makes total sense, he says, that Fare mirrors that lifestyle. "It's second nature for us. We couldn't see doing it any other way." Also on board are Savvas Navrosidis, who owns Fairmount Pizza, and attorney Andy Siegel.

Fare, which opens to the public in "early spring," eschews heavy creams and sauces for "food that's still very satisfying and filling." The projected 85-seat bar and restaurant located at 2028 Fairmount Avenue, across from Eastern State Penitentiary, is fit out with completely green, locally sourced furnishings. The black walnut bar comes from Pennsylvania trees. Wine, beer, and liquor served on that lovely expanse of local wood aims to be "biodynamic and organic, from local vineyards and distilleries," according to Orphanides.

Fare's menu evolved from an original concept of smaller snacks to include dishes for all appetites. Small plates and snacks range in price from $2-$8; salads are $6-$9, and main dishes range from $11-$18. Fare "started out more as a place for people to have a drink and socialize, more of a lounge" for Fairmount locals, but when chef Tim Bellew signed on, the menu expanded. Bellew's previous engagements include Fire in Cherry Hill, Black Eyed Susan in Long Beach Island, and MANNA catering in New York.

Source: David Orphanides, Fare Restaurant
Writer: Sue Spolan

The managing director of Berwyn-based magazine company JTE Multimedia, John Elduff, paid $2,000 for the rights to the Collier's Weekly trademark with hopes to resurrect the brand, reports Daily Finance.

While the magazine has been dead for over half a century, its once-prominent spot in American culture continues to cast a long shadow. Elduff asserts that he has already gotten a lot of attention from prominent writers who want to be part of the new magazine: "I get between five and 10 unsolicited offers per day from authors who want to write for the new Collier's." And with Collier's redux aiming for the caliber of its namesake, he emphasizes that "It will not be a novelty to be published in Collier's. It will be an honor."

It's a hard time to keep a magazine open, much less raise one from the dead, but Elduff knows quite a bit about the business. His company publishes a trio of successful medical journals: Postgraduate Medicine, The Physician and Sportsmedicine and Hospital Practice. He notes that his target demographic includes the nation's largest cadre of prescription drug users, which would put Collier's in a prime position to draw from a steady stream of prescription drug ad revenues.
 
Original source: Daily Finance
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Jack Abraham and Nat Turner, one-time Wharton Venture Award winners, recently sold their companies for big profits, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Abraham sold two-year-old Milo Inc. to eBay Inc. last week in a deal worth about $75 million. Milo, which operates a website that helps consumers find products in brick-and-mortar stores, raised a $4 million Series A funding in November 2009 from True Ventures, Founder Collective and a roster of prominent angel investors.

Turner sold three-year-old demand-side advertising platform Invite Media Inc. to Google Inc. in June for a price north of $70 million. Invite Media, backed by First Round Capital, Comcast Interactive Capital and angels, helps ad buyers more efficiently purchase from the numerous and increasingly more real-time advertising exchanges.

"Penn produces these people that are tech and business savvy," (angel investor Chris) Dixon said. "I would love to say I mentored (Abraham and Turner), but they're just great."

Original source: Wall Street Journal
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The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is introducing a new curriculum that includes a focus on ethics and communications and will periodically offer tuition-free executive education, reports Bloomberg.

Wharton, ranked third among U.S. business schools by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, follows the Yale School of Management, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, near Palo Alto, California, in overhauling its curriculum. The new plan offers students more choice in what they study and a greater emphasis on global business education as well as statistics and microeconomics, according to the statement.

"Wharton's new curriculum design offers our students a framework for success in a rapidly changing world," Thomas Robertson, Wharton's dean, said in the statement. "Business schools must equip the next generation of leaders with the knowledge, skills and perspective they need to meet the global economic, environmental, humanitarian and policy challenges of the future."

Original source: Bloomberg
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The National Science Foundation has awarded a $216,000 grant to Philadelphia-based Azavea to develop its advanced crime risk forecasting software, reports UPI.

HunchLab is a Web-based geographic crime data analysis and early warning software system that provides advanced crime mapping and automated notification to authorities about changes in the geographic patterns of crime incidents.

The system is targeted at the law enforcement agencies and enables police officers to develop and evaluate hunches about geographic patterns in criminal activity in the communities they patrol.

Azavea said it is collaborating with Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe from Temple University, a leading expert in statistical crime analysis who has worked with academic colleagues to develop statistical techniques for detecting "near repeat" patterns in crime.

Original source: UPI
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Managing partner Josh Kopelman writes about the evolution of Philadelphia-rooted First Round Capital, which successfully closed on its third fund last week, in Business Insider.

Over the years, First Round Capital has evolved. We've become one of the most active seed-stage investors with the most visited VC website in the country. However, we have not changed our investment style or strategy. We still fund Powerpoints (though more Keynotes these days). We still fund pre-launch, pre-revenue ideas And, despite our growth, we have not really increased our average initial investment size. We still make investments as low as $50K. Our average initial investment size is still under $500K -- and we have never made an initial investment larger than $1M.

Over the last several years, First Round Capital has also grown our geographic footprint. Our investment team has grown from Howard and myself working in Philadelphia to an eight-person investment team working out of three cities. Our San Francisco office, led by my partner Rob Hayes, continues to be our most active office � with over half of our portfolio based in California. Rob is joined by Kent Goldman and with Christine's recent departure for Intel we are seeking to grow our west-coast presence by adding a SF-based Associate. (If you're interested in the position, please reach out to Rob Hayes with why you think you might be a good fit).

Original source: Business Insider
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