Entrepreneurship : Innovation + Job News

The day after Thanksgiving has become as sacred to retailers as any nationally-recognized holiday. The revenue they reap can make up for an entire year of lackluster sales. With another Black Friday approaching, the Enterprise Center's Retail Resource Network (RRN) wants to ensure that Philadelphia's commercial corridors get the most they can out of this holiest of shopping days. This Wednesday (Nov. 17), RRN hosts the Visual Merchandising Workshop, an annual event to help retailers with everything from holiday window displays to store layouts, all in the name of a successful holiday season.

"This workshop touches on the psychology of the shopper," says Retail Resource Network Director Andy Toy. "How you light your storefront, the types of colors you use, the way the aisles are laid out. If done right, it will definitely increase the amount of sales a business can make per shopper and just get people in the store."

The Retail Resource Network is a division of the Enterprise Center that helps retail businesses around the city connect with the resources they need--whether it be funding, consulting or supply chain--to be successful. Toy says that simple things--not having too many stickers on your windows, creating wider aisles--can have a great impact on business. Not only do these workshops seek to help retailers but if the Enterprise Center can target the Black Friday mobs to one store, their hope is that traffic to the rest of the commercial corridor would increase, making it a Happy Holiday for the whole neighborhood.

"If we improve one storefront on a commercial corridor, we will bring more people to that area," says Toy. "That helps improve business for all the stores, makes it safer because there are more people on the street and encourages others to do likewise."

Source: Andy Toy, Retail Resource Network
Writer: John Steele

When Cindy Gruenwald started Doylestown's Creating Community magazine 17 years ago, the term "going green" hadn't yet  taken over the American lexicon and Al Gore was famous for simply being the Vice President. Creating Community was launched with a very specific community in mind; those interested in healthy living, sustainability and personal fitness. All these years later, the community is stronger than ever, leading Gruenwald to take her green guidance to the next level. Her new dating website, ANaturalAffinity.com, matches singles with similar interests in leading a healthier, more active and more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

"All of my single friends, no matter how crunchy granola they may be, were doing online dating because they found it hard to meet other single people" says Gruenwald. "And then, in doing online dating, they go on Match.com and there aren't enough like-minded people. Or they go on GreenSingles.com but there are not many people in their area. People who are interested in this range of things, it is generally not a casual interest like loving German Shepherds. These are really cornerstones of someone's lifestyle."

For fans of a more active lifestyle, there are groups and events calendars so dates are built right into the social fabric. The site even offers a list of conversational topics and access to message boards so you can chat before you date. Gruenwald announced the site this week with the hopes of going live January 1. In the meantime, Creating Community is looking to hire two staffers to help manage the site going forward, so that all the features work as they should.

"People want to connect with other people in their area," says Gruenwald. "The range of topics is the thing, really, the range of interests we have put together really drives people."

Source: Cindy Gruenwald, ANaturalAffinity.com
Writer: John Steele

It isn't very often that you get the best of both worlds, especially in the world of technology mergers and acquisitions. Mark Zuckerberg isn't the only one to lose a couple close friends along the way. But to hear the heads of Berwyn cloud computing firm Boomi tell it, it is possible to get acquired without selling out.

Founded 10 years ago, Boomi created a niche connecting all disparate online applications together in a cloud. Say you have taken on a new client and you want to add them to your finance records. Boomi helps you automatically add the information, without having to create a separate file in a separate program. After raising $4 million to date, worldwide computer manufacturer Dell, which was interested in creating a line of office services, took notice. The deal Dell struck two weeks ago to acquire Boomi will let its newly acquired firm keep all employees and continue all client relationships.

"They kept the team in tact, I still run the team," says former Boomi President and CEO Bob Moul. "I just have a boss for the first time in five years."

After shelling out $3.9 billion acquiring Perot Systems a little over a year ago, Dell created Dell Services, a cost-saving, business solutions arm of the business. With the acquisition of Boomi, Dell hopes to create a full service office suite so that all facets of a business can run through Dell products. For Boomi, the company cloud kings are still innovating, using the Dell name to explore partnerships with new application developers and take on projects that come their way.

"Dell wants us to continue to offer the best cloud integration platform in the world but now we also have the backing of a major, global brand that gives everybody more comfort in adopting Boomi technology," says Moul. "In the first week, I have had at least a half dozen new opportunities that we are very excited about and probably wouldn't have known about otherwise."

Source: Bob Moul, Dell Boomi
Writer: John Steele

For motorcycle enthusiasts, slang phrases describe everything from a type of muffler to a type of accident. One such term passed between riders---'keep the dirty side down and the shiny side up'--has not been lost on RevZilla, the South Philly biker accessory shop-turned-online vendor. With seven-figure sales numbers and a Chamber of Commerce Emerging Business of the Year award under their belt, founders Nick Auger, Anthony Bucci and Matt Kull look to take their business to the next level as they expand staff and marketing this winter.

"We were hobbyists, casually into riding and we were a little bit frustrated with our options buying online from the companies who would become our biggest competitors. We were also hard-core technology guys, all of the founders had worked in the web world, and we thought we could bring something to the motorcycle industry that hadn't been done before," says Bucci. "We aspire to be the Zappos of the motorcycle industry. Everything is about the customer experience, much less about being Wal-Mart and more about being like Barney's."

Started out of an apartment, RevZilla eventually expanded to a small store at 4th and Fitzwater before moving to it's current location, a 4000 sq. ft. retail store at 38 Jackson Street in South Philly. But with their technology backgrounds, an expanded web presence seemed a natural fit for the founders, who have added hi-def video, digital buying guides and sleek social networking functionality that they feel sets them apart in a crowded e-commerce marketplace. Now, as they expand, they are hoping to find kindred spirits who can keep up technologically but who also live what they sell. 

"We are looking to grow the company and our team to spread the RevZilla brand even further," says Bucci. "But we are really looking for people to join the team who love motorcycles, who live and breathe the sport, just like we do."

Source: Anthony Bucci, RevZilla
Writer: John Steele

Philadelphia Brewing Company's newest "Select Series" brew Harvest From The Hood is known as a wet-hop ale. When hop flowers are harvested, they are traditionally dried so that they can be shipped to breweries across the country. But with wet-hop ale, you get the hops into the boiler within 24 hours of the harvest to get the maximum flavor. PBC is located in Kensington, where there isn't a hops plant for 3,000 miles, but these beer barons weren't going to let a little thing like that stop them.

Through a partnership with the urban agriculturalists Greensgrow Farms, PBC brewers grew the hops on urban farm space both in their own courtyard and on Greensgrow's farmland, creating the world's freshest wet-hop ale and bringing a new brewing style to the table this harvest season.

"When you think about how things were marketed years ago, everybody bought something from their neighborhood," says PBC sales rep Tony Madjor. "Even with beer, especially in the Northeast, all the breweries were very regional and, in some cases, just in their own neighborhood."

Harvest From The Hood is the first beer in the PBC Select Series, a group of high-concept brews PBC hopes to offer seasonally while it works on its next great "session" beer.  On November 15, the company celebrates the release of Winter Wunder, a spiced ale containing plums, dates, cinnamon, allspice, clove, and a sprinkle of ginger. Mid-December will bring Shackamaximum, a chocolate imperial stout. And Kilty Pleasure, a Scottish ale, comes in January. These seasonal offerings will toy with local tastebuds, offering an endearing seasonal treat as well as sparking the creativity for PBC brewers.

"We are only approaching our third full year of brewing so we are looking at where the market is going but also looking at styles that we want to make," says Madjor. "We would like to keep this around though and have it come out every October.

Source: Tony Madjor, Philadelphia Brewing Company
Writer: John Steele

When Mayor Michael Nutter unveiled 500 Big Belly solar garbage compactors all over the city in April 2009, there was skepticism as to the effectiveness of this new technology. But when this test run was complete and the Philly Throws Green case study was released in June, city officials found the compactors would save over $1.5 million in waste collection man-hours per year. The city hopes its newest garbage-related investment in composting will yield the same results.

In an effort to conduct a real-world test of its effectiveness, the city of Philadelphia has granted $18,700 to Niche Recycling for one of its composting "Bio Bins." By trapping in natural gasses released from food waste using a sealed bin, a recirculating air system and wood chips, Bio Bins break down food waste so that fewer collections are needed.

"With food waste, you typically have three days before you start to get anaerobic conditions and smell," says Niche Recycling founder Maurice Sampson II. "With Bio Bins, you can handle this on-site. There is a tremendous savings to not have to collect every other day and, unlike a typical composting operation, we can use normal garbage trucks."

The grant comes as part of the Greenworks Pilot Energy Technology (G-PET) program, which is funded through the federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program. With the exposure of this project and the recent opening of the Wilmington Organic Recycling Center, Sampson hopes to offer a full composting service that will give him a competitive advantage over trash collectors.

"We are very proud to be selected for this grant that is about commercialization, so that we can test it and find out what the criteria are," says Sampson. "Composting is not something we typically think of in America but oh my goodness, it is going to make such a difference."

Source: Maurice Sampson II, Niche Recycling
Writer: John Steele

In Scotland two weeks ago, the Scottish Police Service agreed to European firm ITM Power's Hydrogen On-Site Trials, a test of hydrogen fuel cell technology and fueling stations. The trials, scheduled for early 2011, will also be conducted in England (Sheffield and Southampton). The trials are one of thousands of hydrogen-based projects going on across Europe. And Drexel University-spinoff company AlumiFuel Power--the company responsible for aluminum-powder capsules that, when delivered to water, create valuable hydrogen and steam--plans to be involved. This week, AlumiFuel announced the sale of $7.5 million in common stock of its majority-owned subsidiary, AlumiFuel Power International. The sale, officials say, will allow the company to expand internationally.

"This Memorandum of Understanding is the first step in our goal to broaden our reach outside of North America and provide access to capital for expansion of our product development and marketing activities," says Alumifuel CEO Henry Fong.

While much of the company's business currently focuses on lift-gas for weather balloons and flameless heaters, executives hope to expand the use of these cylinder capsules in back-up and auxiliary power for fuel cells and turbines. But they will have to act fast, as hydrogen is rapidly catching on in key worldwide markets.

"While we must still conduct further due diligence, we believe this can be accomplished in a relatively short time-frame for a deal of this nature," says Fong. "The creation of AlumiFuel International and this funding, if successfully completed, will allow us to expand our reach internationally and raise significant capital to fund our operations."

Source: Henry Fong, AlumiFuel Power
Writer: John Steele

When most guys play pool, they talk about girls, music, sports; but when Drexel University electrical engineering grad students Ryan Buchert and Dr. Michael Balog gathered to shoot stick in their basement in 2003, the conversation was a bit more complex. Just as a stick is used to strike one ball against another into the pocket, the pair posited, what if all our tools could be controlled wirelessly, for simpler device management?

Those late-night pool games became the vision for BuLogics, a green gadget firm allowing for wireless control of everything from lights to smoke detectors. This week, the Greenworks Pilot Energy Technology Program--the first pilot program for the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster--announced an award of $175,000 to help these energy-efficient electricians bring light controls and metering technology to the Navy Yard in South Philly and the Inn at Penn in University City.

"Energy costs keep going up and small businesses are suffering because of that," says BuLogics CEO Mirka Walczak. "Everyone is on the bandwagon of reducing parasitic power and we have a solution in place will offer better control and allow them to really keep an eye on that usage."

For these two commercial institutions, BuLogics starts with the Smart-Grid controller--"the glue that holds it all together" says Walczak--that allows all devices to run through the same command center and be monitored for energy consumption. This, along with metering power strips and wireless transponders, gives office and hotel managers the power to run a more efficient business.

"When you lock up the door for the last time, you can punch in a code that shuts off the power to all the devices and lock the doors and the thermostat gets set back," says Director of Operations Jennifer Doebler. " I think that automation piece that makes energy management so much simpler is what makes our technology a little more comprehensive and a little more desirable, especially in commercial applications like the Navy Yard."

Source: Mirka Walczak, Bulogics
Writer: John Steele


 

When the state Department of Community and Economic Development announced this week that Philadelphia would receive $785,000 in grant funding for commercialization projects, local development officials had to feel flattered. After all, very few of DCED's grant programs are this competitive and when all was said and done, Philadelphia programs took nearly half the funding, including the only two universities included in the funding round.

Drexel University's Health Innovation Partnership of Southeastern Pennsylvania ($100,000) is a research-in-action program creating products from transitional life sciences research and Temple University's Pennsylvania Environmental Technologies for Pharmaceutical Industry ($600,000) will develop energy-efficient technologies for waste management in the pharmaceutical industry. But the scrappiest competitor may have been the University City Keystone Innovation Zone. After their first proposal was duplicated by another KIZ, officials submitted a new proposal for a suite of programs to help would-be business owners through the commercialization process.

"We are going to re-scope the grant to include workshops on how to pitch to funders, grant writing advice, that kind of thing," says Jeanne Mell of the University City Science Center. She and Science Center colleague Kristen Fitch worked on the proposals, which earned $85,000 from the DCED. "Beyond that, we are looking to continue the great programming we have offered for the last five years."

But the most important thing the UC KIZ hopes to offer is funding. Through a new micro-grant program, UC KIZ hopes to redistribute this funding award to back worthy business plans, getting some products and business concepts to the marketplace sooner rather than later.

"We will continue to offer a steady stream of networking, professional development and entrepreneurial support programs in Philly," says Mell. "What the micro-grant project will allow us to do is add funding as well to get these companies moving."

Source: Jeanne Mell, University City Science Center
Writer: John Steele

Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, a five year-old Philadelphia company founded by Dr. Daniel Skovronsky and focused on novel molecular imaging able to detect the early stages of Alzheimer's and a host of other degenerative brain diseases, will be acquired by global pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

A news release issued on Monday by the Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly says the deal could be worth up to $800 million, including a $300 million upfront payment for all outstanding shares of Avid. Skovronsky and company have made a big splash in Philly. The former scientific director at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young in 2009, the same year the company landed more than $34 million in investment.

"We've had a productive and long-standing relationship with Lilly, and believe in their approach to providing improved outcomes for individual patients," Skovronsky says in the release. The release also says Avid and its team will remain in Philly and will continue its support of ongoing clinical trials for other pharma firms. Avid recently submitted a marketing application to the FDA for florbetapir, a molecular imaging agent being investigated to detect the presence of amyloid plaque (a defining pathology of Alzheimer's) in the brain.

According to an Associated Press story, Eli Lilly halted development of semagacestat, a drug being studied as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's, so the Avid acquisition would give it a leg up in getting back in front of a market expected only to get larger.

Source: Eli Lilly, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals
Writer: Joe Petrucci

When CMS Made Simple founder Ted Kulp created the open source website management software in 2004, Wordpress didn't exist and blogging was not yet a way of life. He needed a simpler way of inputting content to websites, so he created one. With designers for the Shops at Liberty Place, the Philadelphia Sun and the African American Chamber of Commerce using the platform, Kulp has spread the simple around, and has been rewarded with users in 219 countries. This month, CMS Made Simple hit its biggest milestone yet, reaching one million downloads.

"After I made it, I just put the code out there to see if other people were interested and it and it has grown so large, and there are so many people who have worked on it, there is no way we could close it now, it's out there for the world to use," says Kulp. "I do things like support and custom development around it so there are a lot of different avenues for everything except the software itself. And it's worked fairly well for me."

As a partner with interactive ad agency Defined Clarity, Kulp has been building websites for years. Today, CMS Made Simple's forum message board allows customers direct access to this CMS and the professional designers who created it, allowing for a fully functional customer experience that Kulp and Defined Clarity partner Bruce Marable hope will continue to grow.

"It's time for all the people who are not using it to know about it," says Marable. "It has been growing organically for the last five or six years. We want to make the project grow and to position it as the number one content management system out there."

Source: Ted Kulp, CMS Made Simple
Writer: John Steele

From a few tomato plants in a rooftop garden to acre-sized community farms, profitable plants are sprouting up all over Philadelphia. With the end of the harvest season upon us, Penn State University comes to the Enterprise Center in West Philly this week, pulling farmers out of the fields and into the classroom in the name of good agribusiness.

With open-enrollment extension course "Income Opportunities in Agriculture," students will learn successful business practices for urban farmers interested in taking their crops to market. How do you set prices? How do you market yourself? Who can you partner with to become more profitable? Enlisting professors from PSU's College of Agriculture, many with corporate farming backgrounds, this course will make sure you always have a plentiful harvest. 

"The people we are attracting are people following their passions and hopefully building it into something bigger," says Penn State extension director John Byrnes. "Philadelphia has some larger urban ag institutions--Greensgrow and the Weavers Way farm. These are places where people can hold down jobs and make a living. This is giving people the opportunity to learn about business and give them a shot at augmenting their income."

The course is part of a series of Penn State urban agriculture offerings delivered annually around the end of the market season. Penn State's agricultural extension program partners with local learning professionals to bring course offerings to people off campus as well. The College of Agriculture first presented "Exploring Your Small Farm Dream" for beginning farmers looking for an idea. "Income Opportunities in Agriculture" starts Tuesday, Nov. 9 from 6-8 pm at the Enterprise Center. Registration is $20 and can be taken care of here.

Source: John Byrnes, Penn State University
Writer: John Steele

When geek-themed slideshow franchise Ignite came to Philly in 2008, the event could have taken many forms. As only the second city to host an Ignite event, founder Geoff DiMasi (of P'unk Avenue fame) was unsure how to play it at first. So he went to the originators for guidance. Started in Seattle by O'Reilly Media Technology Evangelist Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis of Makerbot.com, Ignite was designed to introduce Seattle to its own tech and entrepreneurial scene, allowing presenters five minutes to talk about, well, pretty much anything.

After meeting Ignite's inner circle at South By Southwest, DiMasi decided he wanted to start Ignite in his hometown and decided that a traditional conference vibe was so not Philly. So he brought it to Fishtown rock club Johnny Brendas, charged five bucks and set the speakers loose. Five sold out events later, Ignite is going strong and No. 6 is set to be the largest event yet.

"Some people run it like a business and have it in an auditorium and people sit very demurely and listen very carefully to everything," says DiMasi. "We have taken the punk rock approach where you pay your five bucks, it's at Johnny Brendas, it's meant to be really fun and spirited so that the speakers feel like rock stars."

The event used to be free but as attendance increased, DiMasi began charging to donate the profits to worthy causes. Philadelphia Food Trust received money as well as all-girl rock summer camp Girls Rock Philly. With the $1,250 they received, Girls Rock Philly was able to offer scholarships to girls who couldn't afford the camp.

"That culture of giving back to the scene in Philadelphia is what inspires me," says DiMasi. "Someone came up, they shared their idea, and we try to find something that will have a real impact on the city. Coming up with that mechanism is something we are really proud of."

Source: Geoff DiMasi, P'unk Avenue
Writer: John Steele

As document sharing has transitioned from walking a manila envelope down the hall to e-mailing a digital image, document viewing has become a complicated task. With hundreds of file types and varying security measures, it's hard to be sure your document will get where it's going and will be read when it gets there. Manayunk software firm Vuzit designed the DocuPub platform to simplify the process, allowing companies to view documents of all file types safely and securely, over a cloud-based server system that can even be read on mobile devices.

Founded by former Traffic.com employees Chris Cera and Brent Matzelle, Vuzit has drawn recent investments from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Robin Hood Ventures, allowing Vuzit to make some upgrades. This month, the company announced it will be using the investment to add advanced search capabilities over the whole cloud or within document files. The company also plans to add search engine optimization.

"Chris and Brent saw that, as people wanted to send more and more files over the internet, they were going to want to do more than just send PDF files around, without having any idea what people were doing with the files," says Board Advisor Coley Brown.

With investment in place, Vuzit hopes not only to upgrade its software but its staff as well, looking to hire three to five new engineers and development professionals over the next sixty days. With these investments, Vuzit hopes to expand DocuPub's versatility, adding more file types (it allows 40 already) and allowing an ease of use not yet available.

"Most people turn everything into PDFs but in many cases, it's a pain or there are conversion problems," says Brown. "What most people would rather do is say 'here is my Visio file and even though you never paid for Visio, don't have a license for it, you can see it as if you did."

Source: Coley Brown, Vuzit
Writer: John Steele

Philly Startup Leaders' lecture series Entrepreneurs Unplugged can always be counted on for a great bootstraping, one-man-against-the-world story. But for Mike Rappaport, founder of tech consulting firm Chariot Solutions, going it alone was not an option. Founded in 2002, Chariot has become a million-dollar application consultant company with over 50 employees and has been voted the best place to work amongst small businesses in Philadelphia. So what advice will he have for the struggling entrepreneur when he hits the EU stage on October 20th? There's no I in TEAM.

"The title [of the lecture] is 'Philosophy-Driven Business Growth,' but if I had it to do over again, the title might be better as something like 'The Power of True Team Management,' says Rappaport. "This is not the story of an entrepreneur or a CEO that led his company to greatness, its about a team. Its about how I relied on so many people and really spent my time picking the right people."

Not only is Rappaport a firm believer in a team environment in the workplace, he credits his very existence to delegating, finding quality partners and getting the most out of your business relationships. Once the funding was in place, he chose a team, created a philosophy and was careful to pick people who could share his philosophy. But it all started with those first relationships to get the business off the ground.

"We started with a small level of funding and we go to a point about six months in where we thought we might run out of money," says Rappaport. "Even though the business was going according to plan, we were undercapatolized. One of my mentors really helped us and let us in on other ways to raise money that I was completely unaware of. It was so helpful to know all the resources that were out there."

Source: Mike Rappaport, Chariot Solutions
Writer: John Steele