Emerging Technology : Innovation + Job News

With six world premieres and two U.S. premieres set for the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, which announced the lineup for its 16th annual edition on Monday, there will be plenty of cutting-edge dance, theater, music, visual and interdisciplinary works by renowned contemporary artists. It will also feature the largest work in Live Arts Festival history with Sylvain Emard Danse's Le Grand Continental, which will feature 200-plus dancers on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and go down as the largest presentation of its kind in the world.

The Parkway will also host interactive public art from Montreal-based new media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Montreal will also be represented by urban circus 7 Fingers. Philadelphia's leading contemporary art-makers are in the mix as well, including Pig Iron Theatre Company, Headlong Dance Theater, Brian Sanders' JUNK and Lucidity Suitacase Intercontinental.

"Our mission to present artistic voices from around the world alongside Philadelphia's best and brightest talent continues with our 2012 programming," says producing director Nick Stuccio in a news release.

Other noteworthy performances include the only American presentation of Australia-based Back to Back Theatre's FOOD COURT, a centerpiece production that confronts bullying and body image, and New York's Elevator Repair Service and Young Jean Lee Theater Company.

The Festival runs Sept. 7-22. Tickets go on sale in mid-June and are priced between $10-$30. Discounts available to those age 25 and under and for Festival Members. A full schedule with Festival events, and performance dates, times and locations will be released shortly. PNC Arts Alive is the presenting sponsor for the 2012 edition.

Source: Carolyn Huckabay, Canary Promotions
Writer: Joe Petrucci

Philadelphia's open data movement recently got stronger by a factor of 311. The city has announced that PublicStuff will produce the long-awaited 311 mobile app to allow citizens to make faster service requests without disrupting city operations.

"The product is already built," says Lily Liu, founder and CEO of PublicStuff. "It's a mobile and web app that integrates with how workers are already working. The staff does not have to change what it does every day. They will still manage work flow and work orders, but it will be a much better experience for the citizen."

Liu adds that the integration piece is essential, and the custom designed app will be fully scalable and integrate with backend solutions.

While PublicStuff is a based in New York with over coverage of over 100 cities nationwide, Liu says PublicStuff will soon be opening a satellite office in Philadelphia, where it got its start with Good Company Ventures.

"Our original goal was to create something that could be utilized in any city, not necessarily in Philly," she says. "A lot of our mentors and investors are located here."

It was an easy decision to apply for the project once PublicStuff heard about the opportunity, which was a bit of a wait-and-hurry-up situation. While the idea for a 311 mobile app has been kicked around for several years, it was only a matter of weeks from RFP to selection, says Liu, who reports that her company is still finalizing details around the local office.

PublicStuff, with an $18,000, one-year contract from the city, hopes to set up shop here in the fall, and expects to roll out the app by Labor Day 2012.

Source: Lily Liu, PublicStuff
Writer: Sue Spolan

Here's something you may not know: When you click on a website, ads you see are often the result of a real time auction. It's an outrageously fast paced auction, where bidding takes place within 300 milliseconds.

LiftDNA, based in King of Prussia, is in the business of managing online publications that derive revenue from these advertisements, and the company is growing very fast. "We manage 80 to 90 percent of their revenue," says Dan Lawton, Senior Vice President of Operations. "The goal is that we allow them to focus on publishing, and we take care of field management and the technical concerns of an advertising operations department."

A typical LiftDNA client gets over a hundred million impressions per month, says Lawton, and in total, the company serves well over 20 billion monthly impressions internationally. "Every millisecond counts when talking about scale and volume. If the ad doesn't load fast enough, that creates revenue loss."

Try this: go to Philly.com on two different browsers. First use Internet Explorer, and then go to the same site on another browser, like Google Chrome or Firefox. You will likely see entirely different ads. Your eyeballs were purchased in nanoseconds, based on cookies and other stored information. It's not something the consumer realizes or considers. "It's definitely the wizard behind the curtain kind of stuff," quips Lawton.

LiftDNA was recently acquired by Los Angeles based OpenX for an undisclosed sum comprised of stock and cash. On the heels of that acquisition, LiftDNA is planning on doubling staff in the next few months, going from over 20 to nearly 40 employees. The majority of hires will be in operations, says Lawton, plus a handful of developers and administrative support staff.

LiftDNA is going up against the giant of ad servers. "Google has taken over the entire ad ecosystem. They own Double Click Ad Exchange and AdSense, but they are advertiser focused.

We write code against Google to benefit the publisher," says Lawton. "There's nothing for free in this world. The only way the cost of free content is justified is to have effective ads on a site. Without ads, the content goes away."

The next big opportunity in online advertising will be mobile, says Lawton, who predicts we will see major changes in the coming months as real time placement jumps from desktop to handheld. "Mobile devices are outpacing PCs for the first time. There's a huge global impact. The reach is huge, and the dollars are going to follow that audience."

Source: Dan Lawton, LiftDNA
Writer: Sue Spolan

Zonoff, in the business of facilitating smart homes, has just received $200,000 in funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Zonoff is hiring three: a web and mobile UI developer, an embedded software engineer, and a contract technical writer. Cooper reports that the $200,000 from Ben Franklin will go toward ongoing product and market development.

The recipient of the largest sum in this most recent round, Zonoff launched in April 2011 to provide software that no one will ever see. Residing inside any "always on" device, like televisions, thermostats, security systems, door locks, garage door openers and refrigerators, to name just a few, Zonoff's software allows homeowners to control a variety of processes remotely.

The name of the revenue-positive company comes from the letter Z plus on and off, says Bob Cooper, Zonoff's Chief Marketing Officer and one of its co-founders. There are two smart home industry standards, he explains: the Z-Wave Alliance and the ZigBee Alliance. Zonoff works with both. "Consumers don't care if it's Z-Wave or ZigBee. They just want it to work," says Cooper.

"What's happening in the space now is the convergence of a number of factors," says Cooper, who attributes increased interest in the smart home to concurrent rises in broadband penetration and smartphones, along with a higher awareness of energy management. "Big players are entering the market." Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, for example, are beginning to take steps into facilitating the connected home.

Suppose, for example, you could turn on your hot tub, turn off your home security, and run your dishwasher from a mobile app. With Zonoff, it doesn't matter if it's a Z-Wave or ZigBee enabled device. Further, Zonoff learns from the homeowner's habits. If the thermostat is getting turned down to 62 every night, the program will ask if it should add the adjustment as a regular feature.

"We found Bulogics, another company in Philadelphia, that had developed the technology," says Cooper. "It was world class, but it was the best kept secret out there." Bulogics spun off its consumer technology portfolio and Zonoff was created, with a much more assertive go to market plan. Michael Balog, Zonoff's CTO, left Bulogics and joined Cooper and CEO Mike Harris at the Malvern HQ.

Cooper envisions all manner of disruptions. Alarm companies would be rendered obsolete by technology that automatically turns on cameras and sends a live feed to the owner's smartphone when a secure area is breached. The software can also alert the police.

Zonoff will soon be seeking an A round of funding and is forging relationships with channel partners for international distribution.

Source: Bob Cooper, Zonoff
Writer: Sue Spolan

ReadySetWork has served tens of thousands. While it all began with a sandwich franchise, co-founders Joel Frisch and Jacob Dreyfuss are in the business of serving those who serve. The company is hiring ASP.NET MVC developers, mobile developers and business development experts, on the heels of an acquisition for an undisclosed amount by national payroll solutions provider PrimePay.

ReadySetWork was created to schedule shift workers, first in the restaurant industry, and now branching out to any vertical that employs hourly, on-demand labor. Frisch and Dreyfuss first got the idea for the company when they owned several Pita Pit franchises, and developed the technology to fix a major pain point that had previously been a pencil and paper solution. "The whole pitch of our product is taking the schedule off the back wall and bringing it to life," says Frisch.

The RSW suite is a set of web and mobile tools that allow managers to schedule workers online, but also allow employees to tell bosses when they are available. "When employees have more access with ReadySetWork, they feel more a part of the process. Accountability and morale are higher," says Frisch.

The acquisition does not affect the management team or the location of company, which remains in Malvern. Frisch says the company's national client base has been built up through distribution channels, not one-by-one sales, and PrimePay is now offering a co-branded version of ReadySetWork.

Frisch reports that the company now schedules hospitality, healthcare, and recreation staff, and is moving into the rapidly growing on demand workforce that includes home health care, catering and security. "A tool like ReadySetWork is situated perfectly for that change." Look for a new RSW mobile app, to be launched this summer. By the way, RSW has lots of branded merchandise for sale, including a clock.

Source: Joel Frisch, ReadySetWork
Writer: Sue Spolan

Michael Raber was not taken completely by surprise when AppRenaissance made an acquisition offer on his startup UXFlip. While Raber will not disclose the specifics of the deal, he is now employed full time as a Senior Product Director at the Old City HQ of the mobile app developer, which is part art gallery and part workspace. The street level suite at 309 Cherry was previously home to lighting craftsman Warren Mueller, and it retains a creative sensibility absent in most tech shops.

The Fall 2011 DreamIt grad already had a relationship with AppRen CEO Bob Moul. "Bob was my mentor during DreamIt, from the early days," says Raber, who entered the incubator with the plan to develop a company called Feedback Trail.

But halfway through DreamIt, while attempting to validate the idea, a method for developers to get enhanced feedback on mobile apps, Raber realized there was a problem. "It was a product people liked, but there was no revenue model." Eight weeks into the 12-week program, Raber and his wife/partner Jessica pivoted and created UXFlip. "I decided to focus on things I'd heard all along, that mobile app development is really hard, and UXFlip makes native mobile app development a much richer and easier experience," says Raber, who recently won top prize for UXFlip at Phorum 2012.

Rather than an assembly line approach, where a designer creates static representations of what screens will look like, then passes it to a programmer who carves everything up, UXFlip offers a round table approach in which team members can work together building the app, collapsing the process to be far more collaborative. Raber says Moul recognized the value of such a disruption early on, and not long after joining AppRenaissance in February 2012, Moul inquired as to whether Raber was interested in joining forces, combining AppRen's proprietary Unifeed middleware with UXFlip technology. Living on savings, having bootstrapped since September 2011 after leaving his job at NAVTEQ, Raber couldn't be happier. "It's been very good for both sides."

Incidentally, Raber and teammate John Romanski also won last month's Lean Startup Machine competition for their HeartMe mobile app, which allows married couples to track favors, keeping relationships on even footing. The HeartMe team is planning a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds.

Source: Michael Raber, UXFlip/AppRenaissance
Writer: Sue Spolan

The multi-partner organization GPICHub is now EEB Hub, which stands for Energy Efficient Buildings Hub. Same players, but a redesigned website, logo and tagline to reflect a change of focus. "From early on the name was made to speak to the Department of Energy, and be region focused," says Christine Knapp, Manager of Public and Client Relations for the EEB Hub, who feels that the shorter name says more in fewer words.

EEB Hub is more market focused as well, according to Knapp, with pages that break down content into four sections she calls "point-of-view" pages: Owners/Operators/Occupants, Architects/Engineers/Suppliers, Policy and Finance, and Education and Workforce. An even more granular approach is in the works, says Knapp, with some of the categories broken out further to address specific needs, say, of building owners.

The multi-stakeholder organization, which began life last February with temporary headquarters at the Navy Yard, is now in the process of constructing Building 661, a showplace for green building innovation. In what Knapp terms an entrepreneur's dream come true, even the current headquarters has become a lab.

"The temporary building we are in now is one of the most highly instrumented buildings in the country. It collects 1500 data points every minute," says Knapp, who looks forward to the ability to dashboard all that data, which will include energy, weather and occupancy data, to name just a few.

"ICon, our immersive construction lab, is up and running," reports Knapp. "It's a virtual 3D environment which allows design teams to put schematics into the system, put goggles on and walk around a building together." EEB Hub's Building 661 design team is using the technology now, and EEB Hub will soon make it available to regional architecture and design firms. "They can bring all their architects and engineers into the room together," says Knapp.

EEB Hub is seeking a full time manager for demonstration projects. Currently there are two, but up to five more are in the works, and will soon grow beyond the confines of the Navy Yard and into the larger region. Also available are ten paid summer internship positions for both undergrad and graduate students.

EEB Hub seeks to reduce energy use in the area's commercial building sector by 20 percent by 2020.

Source: Christine Knapp, EEB Hub
Writer: Sue Spolan

"There's no question," says Ryan Feit, founder of SeedInvest, "entrepreneurs are a job creation engine." SeedInvest, which won third place at Philly Startup Weekend 3.0, is perfectly timed to rise from newly enacted legislation that changes 80 year old securities laws. Feit graduates from Wharton with an MBA in just a few weeks, but is already on a fast track to becoming a major player in finance.

SeedInvest was born when President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law on April 5, allowing individuals to make equity investments in startups. Taking crowdfunding a step further than Kickstarter, the JOBS act allows anyone to gain an equity stake in an entrepreneurial effort. "It opens up investment to the 99%," says Feit, who sees SeedInvest as an evolution from microfinancing and investing clubs.

Feit, who worked on Wall Street before entering Wharton, caught wind of the JOBS Act movement around nine months ago, and began working closely with Startup Exemption founder Sherwood Neiss, who garnered bipartisan support in congress.

SeedInvest puts a cap on individual efforts, so that those with under $100,000 net worth, or who make under $100,000 salary can invest 5% or $2,000, whichever is lesser. Over $100,000, a 10% annual investment, up to $100,000 per year, is the max.

Since Startup Weekend, Feit has been very busy. "I've had a lot of people who reached out from the Philadelphia community who are interested in investing." Feit is now in the process of seeking a seed round of funding in an undisclosed amount. The business is still in pre-launch, and interested investors can sign up for more information at the website.

"I am hoping to have a leadership role to help think through issues with later stage financing," says Feit. "This new business model of crowdfunding has not happened before. If you are a later stage investor, this is something you will find challenging to invest in. There are creative ways for companies to raise seed funding that will not preclude fundraising down the line. There is a solution."

Source: Ryan Feit, SeedInvest
Writer: Sue Spolan

Life sciences ruled at this year's Wharton Business Plan Competition, held April 25. RightCare Solutions won first place and will receive the $30,000 grand prize. Competing against seven other finalists, RightCare created D2S2, a discharge planning and readmission decision support system. The evidence-based tool was developed by Dr. Kathy Bowles, Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, and the business plan was written by Eric Heil, who graduates from the Executive Wharton MBA program this year.

"It was the topic of my senior thesis as an undergrad at Penn engineering in 2005. Kathy and I worked on it then, and she continued her research in the field and perfected the algorithms," says Heil. "We stayed in touch over the years, and given some of the changes in the reimbursement and regulatory landscape, we decided to create the tool to commercialize her research."

RightCare addresses a $30 billion problem in the United States: preventing readmission. Working with hospitals, insurers, and homecare agencies to identify patients at high risk for readmission, the tool was developed from a study led by Dr. Bowles using referral decisions made by discharge planning experts for 355 hospitalized older adults.

Used at the beginning of a hospital stay, D2S2 can help care coordinators identify high-risk patients quickly, and provide them enough time to coordinate the right care for high-need patients post-discharge to facilities such as home-care, skilled nursing, rehab, or a nursing home. Beta testing is now underway at three hospital systems, according to Heil, and D2S2 is scheduled for national implementation this summer.

Second prize at the Business Plan Competition went to 1DocWay, an online doctor’s office connecting hospitals with underserved patient populations, including the rural, elderly and disabled, via a secure video chat platform. Samir Malik, who graduates from Wharton next year, was the lead on the business plan development team.

In third place was Calcula which is developing urological medical devices for the removal of kidney stones without anesthesia.  The People's Choice Award winner was ChondroPro, which is developing therapeutic technology to treat osteoarthritis. By the way, Heil says the health care focus of the finalists and winners was happenstance.

Previous winners of the Wharton Business Plan Competition include Warby-Parker and Stylitics.

Source: Eric Heil, RightCare
Writer: Sue Spolan

"We're still getting attendee numbers in, but we'll be around if not above 10k, double last year," reports Christopher Wink, who co-organized Philly Tech Week along with Sean Blanda and Brian James Kirk on behalf of Technically Philly. Culminating with the Signature Event, a chic cocktail party featuring high end demos from The Knight Foundation, Wharton Computing, T-Mobile, NextFab and Hive76, Philly Tech Week was a total success by all measurement. For Wink, one highlight was when "the mayor dropped an open data executive order that we've been pushing on for a year." The impact of Philly Tech Week, says Wink, is real.

"It's like family," said Novotorium's Mike Krupit of the startup community that packed Thursday night's Fourth Annual Entreprenur Expo, held at the Gershman building of the University of the Arts. Presented by Philly Startup Leaders and organized by Gloria Bell, forty entrepreneurs lined up in a ring around the perimeter of the auditorium. Dozens of enthusiastic teams were on hand, some of which are so familiar that they've set up permanent space in this reporter's head, such as Lokalty, CloudMine, AboutOne, Basecamp Business, PalmLing and HeartMe.

Others doing a great job of bringing attention to their product included Patty Tawadros' iWoof'd Up, a pre-launch company offering a behavior modification program to reward family members with points redeemable for wish list items; Artsy Canvas, from the talented Kendall Schoenrock, whose large scale graphic repro company LTL has become the go to business for tech startups (LTL has created sheets of nametags for many Philly Tech Week Events).

ConXt, from Eric Sauers and Eric Greenberg, automatically updates your private address book using social media. Said Sauers, "The part of the expo that really stuck out to me was the great collection of attendees. I've been to other expos and have found the audience really doesn't fit the companies displaying." Indeed, it was not unusual to see participants floating around the room, away from their tables, catching up with their colleagues. In attendance were many familiar faces from the Philly Startup community, including several teams from Startup Weekend, like Zazzberry, Yagglo and Credit Cardio, who were still aglow from the high of building businesses from the ground up in 54 hours.

"The growth of Entrepreneur Expo, from 20 companies and approximately 200 attendees four years ago to 40 companies and over 500 attendees this year, has been a direct reflection of the growth of the tech community as a whole," said organizer Gloria Bell. "It just seemed such a natural fit to schedule the event as part of Philly Tech Week this year. For me, the highlight of Expo is always watching the intense interest on the faces of the attendees and exhibitors as they interact.  Last night was no exception."

Tonight is the Signature Event of Philly Tech Week, to take place at Moore College of Art, and the week wraps up tomorrow with 10 more events.

SnipSnap Clips the Competition at Switch Philly

Like magic. On the same day that Ted Mann's SnipSnap mobile app debuted on the iTunes Store, Switch Philly awarded Mann and team the winning spot in Wednesday night's tech startup competition. Switch, one of the highlights of Philly Tech Week, took place at the University of the Arts.

SnipSnap is on a fast track forward, and it's the second win this week for the coupon scanning team of Mann, Kyle Martin and Kostas Nasis. Earlier in the week, SnipSnap won Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic.

"I'm the father of two kids and an unsalaried CEO of a startup," says Mann. "We have what we call the bowl of shame in our house. It's filled with coupons."

Elsewhere, the coo-pon versus kew-pon pronunciation debate continues at The Reckoner, whose creator Dan Koch, now on board as a Senior Architect at AppRenaissance, was in attendance on Wednesday.

SnipSnap impressed judges Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, Mayor Michael Nutter, and Ellen Weber of Robin Hood Ventures, triumphing over worthy contenders PalmLing, Inhabi, Yagglo (which won Philly Startup Weekend), and Airtimem.

Weber, speaking after the event, reports that she is getting an iPad this weekend as a result of her time at Philly Startup Weekend with the Yagglo team, whose designer Shawn Hickman, she says, is one to track.

Source: Mike Krupit, Novotorium; Ted Mann, SnipSnap; Ellen Weber, Robin Hood Ventures
Writer: Sue Spolan

Returning to the University of the Arts, site of the first Philly Startup Weekend, PHLSW 3.0 was the most impressive yet, yielding a creative crop of disruptive tech startups. Winner Yagglo, from Shawn Hickman, Michael Kolb and Harland Pond, offers a new web browser for the iPad, a much needed graphic interface that even a toddler could master. Second place went to CreditCardio, led by the charismatic Anittah Patrick, and third place was awarded to SeedInvest, founded by well-connected Wharton MBA candidate Ryan Feit.

Pitching at Philly Startup Weekend offers its own thrill. While over 50 lined up from the diverse pool of 132 attendees which included three teens, plenty of women, and a wide range of ages and ethnicities, only 18 made it past the initial round on Friday night.

Several teams concentrating on finance stood out early on. CreditCardio's pithy mission to promote fiscal fitness made it a sure contender. "Fear is the main reason people are afraid of the word finance," says Patrick, who's an educator with years of work experience in the credit card industry. "CreditCardio offers fun graphics, accessible language, a quick quiz and tutorials."

SeedInvest, which rides the wave of the recent JOBS Act signed into law by President Obama on April 5, takes equity startup investing into crowdfunding territory following changes in 80 year old securities laws. Feit, who left his job on Wall Street to attend Wharton, says, "Nine months ago, I caught wind of this movement. I've been working with Sherwood Neiss, who achieved bipartisan support in Congress for the JOBS Act."

Perhaps the most thrilling new business to come out of the weekend was StagFund, a bachelor party funding and planning site. Making it rain, the hopeful startup included PHLSW organizer Brad Oyler and repeat participant Ted Mann of SnipSnap, whose Eff the PPA won PHLSW 2.0. The team is looking for $100,000 in funding, preferably in singles.

Ted Miller's Zazzberry, a startup that proposes a permanent version of the Startup Weekend ethos, had the most polished look and feel of all the teams. Transportation and travel inspired many: Truxi, Special Places, Art Avenue, Carcierge, Offtrack Online, Family Time (created by the father-son team of Michael Raber and his offspring) and Itinerate all cater to a world on the go.

On a related note, AppRenaissance announced today that it has acquired Michael Raber's UXFLIP, The Fall 2011 DreamIt grad will join Bob Moul's company, merging his product with AppRen's Unifeed.

Chris Barrett's Tubelr, a social video viewing site, was a crowd pleaser with great original video in the final presentation. QRag and Roshamgo gave the weekend game. One2Many proposed goods in trade for volunteer services. Do a good deed and receive an iPod for your efforts.

PHLSW 3.0 judges were VCs Gil Beyda and Austin Neudecker from Genacast Ventures, First Round Capital's Chris Fralic, Wayne Kimmel of Artists and Instigators, and Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger.

Startup Weekend mentors were legion, with a total of 38 sponsors and coaches including Stephen Gill of Leadnomics, who was on the winning LaunchRock team of PHLSW 1.0; CloudMine's Marc Weil, Brendan McCorkle and Derek Mansen kept a constant presence. Rumor has it that the recent DreamIt grads are set to announce an oversubscribed seed round. Lokalty's Balu Chandrasekaran and Philip Tribe provided meals and advice. Attorneys Lenny Kravetz and Geoffrey Weber circulated. Chuck Sacco, president of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic, stopped by. Elmer Thomas of SendGrid came from San Francisco to sponsor and provide funding for the afterparty at Fado.

Bob Moul, PSL leader and AppRenaissance president, was on hand all weekend. Chris DiFonzo of OpenDesks, Yasmine Mustafa of NetLine, serial entrepreneur Bob Solomon, Kevin Jackson of Dell Boomi, Elliot Menschik of VentureF0rth, and SeedPhilly's Brad Denenberg and Yuriy Porytko (who also helped organize the event) were all circulating throughout the 54 hour marathon. Tom Nagle, Alli Blum, Melissa Morris Ivone and Chris Baglieri rounded out the management team.

But don't get too comfortable, Philly entrepreneurs. Startup Weekend Health is just around the corner, literally, at VentureF0rth June 1-3.

Source: Ryan Feit, Annita Patrick, Brad Oyler, Philly Startup Weekend
Writer: Sue Spolan