Entrepreneurship : Innovation + Job News

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

If you've got an idea for a frictionless startup, then you have a shot at winning $5,000, no strings attached.

Philadev Ventures, the startup accelerator, has just launched Musemaka.com. A maximum of 200 entrants vie for one slot, paying a $100 entry fee. The winner gets a $5,000 budget to create a company. "We hold a challenge open until it has 200 entrants or for a period of three months, whichever comes first," says Philadev co-founder Chris Myers. "During a three-month period, we could fill one challenge or five. Whatever the number, winners are announced 30 days after a particular challenge closes."

Phil Ives, who co-founded Philadev with Myers, defines a frictionless startup as any business idea that costs little or nothing to start. Take the example of a blog. "If you are the writer, and you act as editor, it costs no money to start," says Ives. "Another example is a startup that begins with the design of a physical widget which can be outsourced to China, and requires a three to four thousand dollar initial investment to start selling products."

Philadev has been in business for one year, and Ives says of the six initial companies under its wings, two are about to launch publicly, although he cannot divulge details just yet.

"We have a couple of startups in our accelerator that would be better for this," says Ives of the inspiration for Musemaka. "For us as Philadev, if they don't raise venture or sell their idea, we can never see revenue."

Philadev will not take equity from Musemaka companies, but Ives is open to a future equity relationship. "It's a way for us to discover new startups," he says.

Ives is greatly influenced by the work of Tim Ferriss, whose bestselling book outlines the concept of the Four Hour Work Week. Ferriss defines a muse as an idea that can be tested for under $500, automated within 4 weeks and maintained within a maximum of one hour per week.

"The rolling nature of the application process is important because it helps to address the startup discovery problem I identify on the site regarding Y Combinator.," says Myers. "That's the most extreme example, but it is really difficult to imagine  how any venture group that employs business judgment to evaluate submissions is capable of handling 520,000 submissions a year, as Y Combinator does.

"The result is probably lots of good startups left out of the running. Their application numbers to class size gives startups something along the order of a 1 in 5,000 chance," adds Myers, who also indicates that an applicant has a better chance of getting into Harvard than Y Combinator. 

Says Ives: "This contest addresses a big piece missing from existing small business development organizations. Those places seem really good at helping people open up a physical retail space, but they haven't really cracked the nut on software as a service."

Money, he adds, is never the reason a business doesn't get built. And a big part of the Musemaka package is sage advice from Philadev, including when to call in the high priced lawyers, and when to start small and build.

Ives and Myers have just begun the process of getting the word out about Musemaka, and expect applications to start rolling in within the next month or so.

Source: Phil Ives, Chris Myers, Musemaka
Writer: Sue Spolan

It's one thing to use Craigslist to hook up or buy some furniture. It's quite another challenge to find an apartment that way. A new startup called Inhabi adds new dimensions and quality control to the process of matching renters with landlords.

Jameel Farruk, who founded Inhabi with partner David Friedman, has a pretty sweet apartment. While it's quite small (around 300 square feet), the location is killer: right in Center City, just steps away from a dozen popular bars and restaurants, and perfect for the single entrepreneur.

"Technology should make it an easier experience for the renter," says Farruk, who likens current online offerings to a digitized version of newspaper ads. With Inhabi, by contrast, renters don't bear the full burden of finding the right place to live. Inhabi plugs properties into a database so that renters can search for things like hardwood floors, whether the owner allows pets, and if parking is part of the package.

After filling out an online form which collects details about the renter's self reported income, credit score and desired neighborhood, Inhabi offers a list of available units sortable by price, location and size. If a desirable apartment pops up, the renter can submit a request to the landlord with one click.

Farruk and Friedman met while at Venmo,  the mobile payments startup that moved from Philly to NYC earlier this year. Friedman's background is in real estate, having spent the previous decade as an agent and Vice President of Operations at the Philadelphia division of Coldwell Banker. Originally, their idea was more of a scheduling tool for showing apartments, and the pair was accepted to Betaspring, an entrepreneurial incubator in Rhode Island in the summer of 2011.

"We launched the product halfway through the program, took it to market, and decided to scrap it," recalls Farruk. While the original idea was well liked by landlords and renters, it did not help property owners screen potential lessees. "They didn't want to commit without knowing who was showing up," he says. The evolved offering benefits both parties.

Farruk is a transplant to Philadelphia, having grown up in the Washington, DC area. Philly's central location and affordable housing stock figured into the decision to launch Inhabi here. "The city's biggest strength is all the educational institutions that supply people to pick the product apart. They have no fear in telling you how much you suck," says Farruk, adding that Philadelphia is great for local talent. including designers, programmers, and people to help with marketing.

Farruk says that Inhabi is now bootstrapped, and the revenue will come in part from lead generation and in part, he hopes, from one of the many real estate investment firms headquartered here. The service is free of charge to renters, and owner and renter remain anonymous until both agree to share information.

Source: Jameel Farruk, inhabi
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

What if you could get an objective grade on your resume? RezScore, a Philadelphia based startup, wants to see you with an A-plus. Founded by Sean Weinberg and Gerrit Hall, the free and simple process runs your resume through an algorithm that delivers instant results.

"I've been thinking a lot about Napster," says Rutgers-Camden law professor Michael Carrier. "Google just gave me a research award to examine the effects of Napster on digital innovation." Nice gig if you can get it, and Carrier gets it.

The author of Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law, which came out in paperback earlier this year, Carrier promotes a new way to look at copyright, anti-trust and patent law as technology rapidly and dramatically changes commerce in several areas, including media, pharmaceuticals and innovation.

Ever since the advent of the VCR, issues of copying and sharing have kept courts busy. "Peer to peer offers real benefits to consumers," says Carrier, who points to the concept of dual purpose use, where a technology can be used for both infringement and non-infringement. As long as there is a single substantial non-infringing use, the technology should be upheld, he explains.

Carrier's work also extends to brand name and generic pharmaceutical products, a topic close to home, with the world's largest drug manufacturers within a 100 mile radius of Philadelphia. The big brands, says Carrier, pay generic makers out of court settlements to keep them off the pharmacy shelves. "The brand company is able to pay $100 million, which is a drop in the bucket for the billion it will make. The problem is that consumers don't have access to generic drugs," says Carrier.

On a grander scale, when asked if Carrier's bent is pro-consumer, he responds, "That's such a loaded term. Pro-consumer is consistent with what I am doing, but I would characterize it as pro-innovation." says the Rutgers-Camden prof, who also mentions threats to locally based media giant Comcast.

Two controversial bills were recently introduced into the U.S. Congress. The Protect IP Act, now known as the E-PARASITE Act (S. 968), goes after piracy and rogue sites all around the world. While E-PARASITE may be too controversial to move through congress, yet another bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was just introduced into the House on Oct. 26.

"It's a whack-a-mole game, designed to allow the government, and even private parties to shut down websites. The proposed laws are not as nuanced as those we have now," explains Carrier. "Internet service providers like Comcast would have to take measures to make sure these sites would not be able to be accessed."

While Carrier says anti-corporate sentiment is fashionable these days, he adds, "I don't know if I need to go that far. I believe in patents. Patents are needed for innovation, and for companies to able to make money." Rather, Carrier stands against the overly aggressive use of laws that limit innovation across a wide range of business practices.

Source: Michael Carrier, Rutgers-Camden Law
Writer: Sue Spolan

On a brisk fall night in Langhorne, Occupy Novotorium was going down. A publicity stunt that drew local police, three tents were set up at the entrance to Bucks County's newest tech incubator, compete with drum circle.

Novotorium, a concierge-level tech incubator, opened its doors last week to show off a full service facility aimed at mid-level startups that want to grow bigger. At no cost to participants, and with no contract up front, Novotorium offers a three month residency that includes brand new skylit offices, a fully outfitted fitness room, a data center and spacious kitchen. Currently, the space, located above Voice Systems Engineering (VSE) Inc., has room for 10 people, with lots of room for expansion.

"Novotorium seeks entrepreneurs who are at least beyond proof of concept and have some sort of product launched, and  looking to grow and become profitable," says Mike Krupit, Novotorium's General Manager. "Most incubators focus on seed stage startups, making entrepreneurs venture-fundable, and plan for an exit. Our structure is not fixed like that of many incubators. We develop a program specific to the strengths and challenges, needs, and goals of the company."

The incubator is funded by Baron Innovation Group, the venture arm of Gary Baron, Founder/CEO of VSE and Vector180, also housed in the same building. That means Novotorium gets its funding in part from the profits of VSE's many websites, which include 1-800-gaylive.com, astrosource.com, and psychicsource.com. Vector180's website describes itself as "hospitality solutions for WiFi and surveillance."

"Our goal is to have two companies start in December. If we find our assumptions to be correct, the plan for 2012 would be an additional 12 companies," says Krupit, who is the former CIO of VSE.

Following the three month period, startups are free to go, and if they stay on, negotiate a contract that includes an equity share by Novotorium that will be determined on a per company basis, according to Maria Collins, Novotorium's Creative Director.

"Since we have only started taking applications this past week, it may be difficult to generalize the types of businesses that are applying," adds Krupit. "We have seen interest from information technologies, online services, offline services that are enabled by technologies, including one in the education space, and even an online radio company."

Source: Mike Krupit, Maria Collins, Novotorium
Writer: Sue Spolan

How much smaller is the bubble going to get? If Google and Facebook have anything to say about it, predictive search will narrow your results to the size of bath bubbles, one cell of information at a time.

Enter DuckDuckGo, a search engine challenger to the big guys that aims to burst the bubble, offering a disruptive paradigm worth $3 million in recently raised first round VC funding, which also allows for DuckDuckGo's physical expansion, from self-funded, home-based business to offices in Paoli by next month. The company now has two full time employees and four contractors, with plans to double staff by the end of 2012.

MIT-educated Gabriel Weinberg is the mind behind the engine. He launched his company in 2008, garnering national press. "I was well aware of Google's domination but it didn't phase me," says Weinberg. "It's not my goal to make a dent. One of my reasons for starting DuckDuckGo was the feeling that Google was too cluttered with ads and commercial results." 

Ad clutter's not the only thing DuckDuckGoes after. Another feature is Zero Click, aka goodies, which are all free and open source. Type your query into the search box to get instant results for complex calculations, recipes, and statistics, rather than just links to web pages with answers. Weinberg and team are adding new features constantly, with growing contributions via open source channels.

To get the eye of the tech elite, DuckDuckGo rented a high traffic billboard in the SF Bay area at a cost of $7000 for two weeks. Weinberg, who grew up in Atlanta and went to school in Boston, strategically chose the Philadelphia area, and specifically Valley Forge, to raise a family and grow the business.

Weinberg attributes the surge of interest in DuckDuckGo as "a bunch of threads coming together," citing an increase in people looking for alternatives and growing concern about spam and privacy.

On privacy, and its increasing lack thereof, Weinberg says, "A large percentage of people would like their privacy reasonably protected if they had real choices and were educated on the issues."

Source: Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo
Writer: Sue Spolan

CloudMine is the developer's developer. The DreamIt Ventures backed company was the buzz of Philadelphia Startup Weekend. The fledgling company used the event as a platform to officially launch in open beta, providing the underlying structure for several mobile apps that were created during the 54 hour marathon. CloudMine's goal is to take care of backend programming for mobile apps so you don't have to. Their tagline is "The mobile developers' backend-as-a-service-done-right company."
 

Here's an analogy. When you get into a car for the first time, you have to figure out where the turn signal and lights are. Some manufacturers have standardized their design so these basic controls are always in the same spot. That's what CloudMine is doing for mobile apps. "The majority of what mobile developers need is the same," explains engineer Ilya Braude, one third of the CloudMine trio, which also includes engineer Marc Weil and Brendan McCorkle, who describes himself as the suit.
 

"We're doing a ton of extra work to make it plug and play for you," says Weil, who toys with the term productization to define CloudMine's server side operations function.  While CloudMine counts among its competitors StackMob, Kinvey and Parse, Weil points out that CloudMine is the first to launch in open beta, and one of the leanest in terms of initial investment.  The national blog TechCrunch gave big props to CloudMine's launch in a recent post, which subsequently increased customers from 50 to 380 in about 48 hours. There are now 410 customers on board.
 

CloudMine is free while in beta, and once billing begins, will make money with each API call, or single server request. While individual requests can cost as little as $0.0001, eight million of those add up to some serious money. CloudMine, which uses Amazon Web Services for cloud computing, is a disruptive technology. While there will still be need for front end developers to make mobile apps pretty, CloudMine aims to do the under the hood work, handling server maintenance and other tiresome tasks. Weil also points out that CloudMine is designed so that front end developers are not locked into any specific way of designing apps, adding and changing features easily.
 

The company is actively looking for first found funding, and is pitching both locally and nationally. Also on the agenda in the near future is team expansion, and has just added intern Tess Rinearson. CloudMine is operating out of DreamIt offices at the University City Science Center.

Source: Marc Weil, Ilya Braude, Brendan McCorkle, CloudMine
Writer: Sue Spolan

 

Matthew Griffiths and Jon Gosier dream of clean data. The pair formed Metalayer to sort and visualize any kind of information gleaned from just about any source. The DreamIt Ventures backed company grew out of Gosier's 2007 company Ushahidi, founded in Africa to collect and map eyewitness reports of violence in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election.

Griffiths and Gosier met in Uganda, and although neither is Ugandan, both profess a love for all things African. "We met two years before Metalayer, working to find signal in noise," says Griffiths. "We identified key bits of information in times of crisis." Ushaidi's SwiftRiver project was awarded the 2011 Knight News Challenge.

Both came to the United States this year, where Gosier was raised (Griffiths hails from the UK), and realized that Ushaidi's algorithm could have verticals in other industries, particularly journalism. "Our passion is tools for better data narratives." For example, you might want to mash up a real time Twitter feed with XML, email, and a document you downloaded onto your hard drive. You might be looking for certain keywords.

Once Metalayer gathers data from diverse sources, the user can create infographics or visualize it on a map. Griffiths recalls that the whole process began by going through the motions of research themselves to understand the steps that human brains take. Gosier put together a video to explain the way the application works.

As far as revenue, Gosier says the idea is to package the technology. "We plan to offer the underlying APIs to developers. The application will be available for businesses or individuals to use." One potential revenue source is governments, which could use Metalayer to pre-empt or respond rapidly to uprisings and crises.

Gosier says Metalayer has virtually no competition because the only other companies doing this kind of data mash up are at a very high level, working for the military. "In that landscape, there are a couple of key players at the top."

Metalayer, now in talks with investors, is looking to hire in the area of business development. In addition to being a DreamIt company, Metalayer is also supported by the Comcast Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program.

Source: Jon Gosier, Matthew Griffiths, Metalayer
Writer: Sue Spolan

 

When Comcast is your first customer, you know you're doing something right. It helps that Gary Aron has ties with the media giant, but as vice president of business development for AssetVUE, he has a lot more to offer than just some friendly advice.

Aron and company president Sean Cotter explain that AssetVUE has adapted RFID technology to rapidly read and inventory assets in massive data centers. AssetVUE works within the Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) framework, cutting inventory time by up to 90 percent.

Aron and Cotter had worked together previously, when Cotter was CIO for the DVL Group and Aron was an executive running data centers for Verizon, JP Morgan Chase and Comcast. "We talked for a period of time about things that didn't exist," says Aron. "I said, 'Let's go after those holes in the products.'" The biggest one, says Aron, is keeping information up to date. "Building a data repository is time consuming. People purchase products that can take years to implement, and they don't take full advantage of the tools they purchase."

The second piece is validation, which takes a considerable amount of time as well, working out where physical assets sit, as well as validating information pertinent to specific clients. This maintenance level information is kept in massive databases.

Before RFID technology, the client would go in, open up the doors to a rack, count information and compare. Now, with RFID, the same data gathering happens instantly, and it's also possible to get advanced views of a rack. "With these tools, you can get a top down, or elevation view," says Cotter. "When you click on a rack, it brings up every device in that rack within a minute's time."

Asset VUE now employs three full-timers as well as two contractors, with a recent $200,000 investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania slated for marketing and staff development.

"We have just two clients installed right now and we've engaged in a handful of proof of concepts that have gone well, so we expect that half dozen more companies will come on board," says Aron.

Source: Sean Cotter, Gary Aron, AssetVUE
Writer: Sue Spolan
 

Buying and eating local is easy during the summer months, when produce is literally falling off the back of farm trucks. It's a different story after the ground freezes over, but a new company has launched to address that seasonal shortfall and provide sustainably grown fruit and vegetables -- from farm to freezer.

"It's not easy to eat food grown closer to home year round," says Winter Sun Farms Greater Philadelphia co-founder Sara Gordon. Sure, there are storage crops, like apples, winter squash and root vegetables, "But for things like green beans and corn, unless you are putting them up, those items are coming from California and South America."

Winter Sun  is selling a total of 250 CSA monthly shares that provide a five month regional produce subscription that's available in two sizes, costing $175 and $315. Each share is made up primarily of flash frozen produce with some fresh items in the mix. Husband and wife team Sara and Adam Gordon started the business three months ago.

Originally from Connecticut, Adam Gordon landed a job in the Philadelphia area two years ago and the couple relocated to Bucks County. They immediately got involved in the strong local food movement here, joining a CSA and becoming part of a buying club that's grown into the Doylestown Food Coop.

Adam's job came to an end this year, and the timing was perfect, says Sara, for the launch of a new business. While future plans are to run the entire operation out of the Philadelphia area, this first year Winter Sun is getting everything from its Hudson Valley counterpart, which is already set up with a processing facility with an IQF (Individually Quick Frozen) machine that uses nitrogen to flash freeze individual peas and corn so the home cook can open a bag and use just a portion.

This year, the couple hopes to break even, and is marketing the new service at area farm markets and on social media. Right now, about half of its 250 total shares are spoken for. Interested customers can register online.

Source: Sara Gordon, Winter Sun Farms Greater Philadelphia
Writer: Sue Spolan
 

VCopious is expanding rapidly. The nine month-old, Conshohocken-based software company just announced it has received funding of an undisclosed amount from a consortium of four funders, including Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA, Emerald Stage2 Ventures, MAG and Silicon Valley Bank.

CEO Ken Hayward says VCopious is now "into a stage of development geared toward market facing activity," and capital raised in this round of funding will go toward global expansion. VCopious also announced that Siemens Corporation has signed a multi-year agreement to use the VC2 platform, billed as the "world's first virtual spaces application server appliance." The firewalled networking, socializing and tracking tool allows people to meet in cyberspace, regardless of physical location.

VCopious already has a strong relationship with SAP, which it counted as one of its first customers. "It's a proven model," says Hayward of the technology that was built with no original outside financing. "Unlike other tech startups that are trying to raise money to build the technology, we've been out raising money to expand market activities."

The next step for VCopious is to build out a sales organization that's focused on high level direct sales to enterprise, and then find distribution partners that will move the product beyond the reach of its own direct sales force, according to Hayward. "One of the most sought-after destinations is around collaboration, ecommerce and social media. Between those, the VCopious platform is an aggregation tool for all those capabilities."

While Hayward will not talk about revenue or company growth in concrete terms, he projects that the company's staff will double by the end of 2012, from 25 to 50 employees, which is impressive for a company that only launched in early 2010.

Source: Ken Hayward, VCopious
Writer: Sue Spolan
 

If you want to get ahead in the startup world, it helps to be audacious. Startup Weekend Philadelphia took place this past weekend, and the winner was Eff the PPA, a mobile app for finding parking, preventing tickets, and fighting parking tickets for a mere $5 fee. Second place went to HangPlan, a mobile app and website that helps people make plans with friends. Third place was awarded to Intro'd, a simple mobile app for connecting your colleagues.

Philly Startup Weekend (Twitter hashtag #phlsw) took place at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University, thanks to law professor Karl Okamoto, who was also a participant in the 54-hour event. Okamoto's initiative, ApprenNet, with the Law Meets project, grew out of the first Philly Startup Weekend in February and is already in use in 60 law schools as a way to leverage peer learning, with potential vertical applications in other kinds of businesses. In fact, Okamoto and team will be meeting with a national restaurant chain this week to see if the Meets model can translate to hospitality management.

But back to the winners. Eff the PPA draws its rebel energy from the team of Drexel Law student Hans Smith and entrepreneurs Ted Mann and Ashwin Dhir. In short order, the team built a powerful app that even includes a geolocation function and timer so you don't lose track of your vehicle or the time left on your meter. The team exhorts, "It's time to beat the parking authority at their own game. This app gives you the inside scoop on how to score a legal spot. And if you are still socked with a ticket, it gives you a quick and easy way to get it thrown out." While judge Tracy Welson-Rossman voiced her concerns about the name, saying she didn't want to sign up for the startup's twitter feed, the group got the most audible and hearty audience response of all presenters.

HangPlan, which came from the mind of Melissa Morris-Ivone, who recently made an impression at Ignite Philly with her presentation about the Operation Nice blog, is a way to streamline social gatherings. Rather than find out after the fact about a great party, HangPlan, endorsed by Philly Party Ambassador, lets users get the scoop before the first toast. "We not only created a web app, mobile app, and an API, but we developed a brand, gathered research, and put together a social media presence," says Morris-Ivone.

You can see a full list of all 20 startups that presented this weekend. Brad Oyler, one of the organizers of the weekend, thinks the more full-time presence of mentors made a big difference and he's looking forward to the next startup weekend in April.

"Also, a lot of the teams focused on customer feedback to help shape their business," says Oyler. "A few teams, like SME Brain and ApprenNet, even had meetings with some serious clients."

Source: Karl Okamoto, Brad Oyler, Melissa Morris-Ivone, Philadelphia Startup Weekend
Writer: Sue Spolan