Entrepreneurship : Innovation + Job News

When software developer Andrew Kortina was living in New York, friend and former University of Pennsylvania roommate Iqram Magdon-Ismail often visited him. But when Magdon-Ismail forgot his wallet one weekend, he borrowed a few bucks from Kortina. Magdon-Ismail promptly repaid using a check but with normal banking delays, it took Kortina a week to get his money back. That's when the pair decided there had to be a better way.

They created Venmo, a bill-pay service where users can link a credit card or bank account to make instant payments to friends from the comfort of their mobile device. The service is free and, Kortina says, it will remain free. The company will charge merchants--like several coffee shops in Philadelphia and restaurants in New York--to accept the service. Founded in 2009, Venmo has already put its founders in Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30. But its creators admit it's still a work in progress, adding features and refining the platform for iPhone and Android markets. The company looks to add three new positions in the next six months to help make Venmo a household name.

"We are always looking to make the site work better," says Kortina. "Any time we meet someone who is really smart and excited about Venmo, we want to hire them."

More than just a bill-pay service, Kortina and Magdon-Ismail see Venmo as a social network; a way to show friends where you have been and what you've been up to. By targeting merchants instead of consumers, Venmo hopes to increase publicity both for their service and for the merchants who use it through Facebook and Twitter connectivity. Forgetting your wallet has never been so much fun.

"We encourage users to make their payments public," says Kortina. "Most of the time, when you are exchanging money with a friend, you are doing something fun like going to a bar or restaurant, going on a ski trip, going to a baseball game, usually something your friends might want to know about."

Source: Andrew Kortina, Venmo
Writer: John Steele

Susan Ng and her team at Villanova's Real Time Tomography have made a living at perfecting the science of mammogram imaging. Their software products have made traditional film-screen images obsolete, allowing faster mammogram results and more accurate imaging. With a new $275,000 match grant from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, RTT begins the commercialization process this month, bringing their software to the giants at Seimens and GE and, hopefully, saving lives.

"With digital imaging, the image that is produced is not what the radiologist sees, it is processed and enhanced so that lesions are more visible," says Ng. "As the industry moves from film screen to digital, we can process images six times faster, reducing patient wait-time and making images clearer for doctors."

After introducing their 2-D imaging software, Adara, in 2009, Ng and her team have created a 3-D platform to give radiologists an even better view of critically affected breasts. Ng hopes commercialization goes smoothly as RTT has gone to great lengths making compatible software, not just for large companies but for small and mid-sized manufacturers as well. Because everyone deserves a great picture.

"There are a lot of mid-sized companies in Europe and a very big market opening up in Asia," says Ng. "These mid-sized companies have smaller R&D groups and often purchase their software from third parties like us."

Source: Susan Ng, Real Time Tomography
Writer: John Steele  

It's a CEO's worst nightmare: your company's most valuable data suddenly disappears. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft sounded the alarm in 2004, when he estimated that intellectual property theft accounted for losses of $250 billion a year. Numerous case studies from Coca-Cola and Forbes have shown the effects as well. From trade secrets to client lists, document security may feel like paranoia but that is no consolation when it happens to you.

Center City cyber security designers DDC (formerly Document Depository Corp) created RADAR, a full-service critical data management system that recently added two new features. The first is a contract tracker that allows companies to share contracts and get digital signatures remotely. The second is a secured online chat room with document-sharing capabilities that DDC calls a Virtual Data Room. With these new products, DDC goes beyond just document sharing solutions to the protection of a company's most critical documents. 

"Most companies store data in filing cabinets, on CD's in e-mail so pulling that all together is a very painful process," says DDC Executive Vice President of Business Development Cristina Greysman. "Not to mention, the fact that, what if your CFO who has all that data stored on their laptop gets hit by a beer truck? What then? Can you get to all that data and if not, how much will it cost to recover it?"

As the company transitions from document sharing to a more security-focused firm, it has drawn private funding for recent additions like the Silicon Valley facility it opened in August or the European facility opened in Dublin, Ireland in September. As the rollout continues for RADAR, DDC will be adding staff as it tries to expand marketing efforts and online product offerings.

"We want to build out our customer support staff," says Greysman of new hires. "We will do consulting with clients to help them determine best practices for putting information into RADAR. It is possible that we will hire some additional sales staff as well."

Source: Cristina Greysman, DDC
Writer: John Steele

It's the curse of the middle child: your older sister's worn out jean jacket that went out of style two years before she bought it is now the only thing you have for the first day of school. Hand-me-downs can make your closet look like the wardrobe trailer for a John Hughes movie. But a new service from Penn's Wharton School of Business ensures that your kids won't suffer like you did.

It's called Drop Swop, a children's clothing trade-in service that allows parents to trade in their child's unwanted or outgrown clothes for points that can be put toward a growing online collection of gently used clothing cast-offs. A simple concept could have only come from experience and founder Marcus Hathaway says his inspiration came a little over a year ago after moving from California to attend Wharton.

"At that time, my son was growing, going through his clothes so we had piles of clothes that we just ended up storing in his room," says Hathaway. "We kept buying more clothes and storing clothes and he didn't even have a chance to wear most of the stuff."

Like the clothes that have become its specialty, rapid growth caused Drop Swop to outgrow its original location at the University of Pennsylvania. Today, parents can find Drop Swop bins at Turning Points for Children in Center City and at the Caring People Alliance at the West Philadelphia Community Center as well as Penn's Family Resource Center in University City. As the word spreads, Hathaway hopes to add more facilities and staff to fill them in the coming year.

"When we talked to our friends and members of our family, we recognized that ours was a shared experience," says Hathaway. "Drop Swop was a way to interact and help parents get the most out of their kids' clothes."

Source: Marcus Hathaway, Drop Swop
Writer: John Steele

When most people strap on a helmet and hit the road on a bike, they are probably not thinking about carbon tonnage or sustainable energy credits. But with each pedal push, cyclists are putting a dent in Philadelphia's carbon footprint. And University City bike sharing consultants CityRyde want you to know how much your morning ride is effecting the planet.

Creating a personalized version of the carbon metering software they have in city-wide bike sharing programs from Paris to Portland, CityRyde introduced a new mobile application this week helping bikers and walkers monitor their carbon savings and see how much their car is polluting.  The company is beta testing on Android phones with hopes to expand to Blackberry and iPhone in the next month and is working on adding public transit to the application.

Twenty-five percent of the world's carbon emissions come from daily transportation.

"Knowledge is really power," says CityRyde CEO Tim Ericson. "I don't think anyone really understands the impact of their daily activities."

Through corporate partnerships, Ericson and his team hope to offer incentives for people to reduce their carbon emissions. Using increasingly comprehensive mapping software, CityRyde can examine a user's location, route and rate of speed to determine what mode of transportation a rider is using to keep things honest, holding sustainable to a higher standard and making it worth your while in the process.

"A perfect example would be (all-natural foods maker) Cliff Bar or one of those type of companies offering product samples or other incentives in exchange for those carbon credits, essentially giving them a marketing piece and a PR piece combined into one package," says Ericson.

Source: Tim Ericson, CityRyde
Writer: John Steele 

After seeing the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, millions dreamed of a day when everlasting gobstoppers would hit candy store shelves, oompa loompas could manage household errands and edible wallpaper would make the snozberries taste like snozberries. Only one true Wonka-esque innovator made it happen.

Entrepreneur Adnan Aziz dreamed of a marker that could draw edible taste strips onto paper, like the wallpaper in one of his favorite movies. With a little seed capital from Penn's Wharton Investment Management Fund and guidance from business partner and current CEO Jay Minkoff, Aziz founded First Flavor, a Bala Cynwyd-based food marketing company specializing in dissolving taste-test strips that allow consumers to taste new beverage and product flavors before they buy. It's a concept that has added a new dimension to the way companies market new brands.

"It's all about empowering the consumer," says Minkoff. "Before you bought your car, you took it for a test drive, before you buy a suit you try it on. It's funny that you walk down the aisle of the supermarket with all these new products and flavors and rarely given the opportunity to try them before buying."

Recently, First Flavor received early-stage financing from Ben Franklin Technology Partners in the amount of $100,000. When Aziz first introduced First Flavor, he thought of the greeting card industry. With a birthday card, he thought, why not offer a piece of cake. With new financing, increased brand presence and a partnership with American Greetings, First Flavor brings Tasties, a new line of flavorful greeting cards, to market this fall.

"Consumer products use us as a promotional marketing vehicle to launch new products and in 2009 and the first half of 2010, most national companies were not launching products," says Minkoff. "This should create more recurring revenue for us."

Source: Jay Minkoff, First Flavor
Writer: John Steele

As anyone who has ever tried to buy a car in Philadelphia knows, dealers are closed on Sundays. The same puritanical blue laws that used to restrict alcohol sales still prohibit car dealerships, to the chagrin of salesmen and shoppers alike. Wayne's mobile application firm Advanced Mobile Solutions provides a solution to shopping restrictions like blue laws, allowing car shoppers and home shoppers to access dealer information right from their smartphones with a simple text-message code. Launching brands like Cars2Go, Homes2Go and Classifieds2Go, AMS hopes to modernize digital listings markets made famous by sites like Craigslist many years ago.

"The difference between us and (Craigslist) is that we take data that is already out there and make it mobile ready, whereas they only have data that has been edited and listed by another person," says AMS Marketing Director Dan Curry. "We take, for example a builder that has 80,000 homes nationwide. That is something that is impossible for them to go in and list in that way. With us, they can do anything on the phone that they would be able to do anywhere else."

Since its founding in 2006, AMS has shown marked growth, finding partnerships with clients like Apartments.com and Builder Homesite. Recently, the company has eyed further expansion, bringing new features to their iPhone applications and adding compatibility with the Android market. This summer the company received financing from Ben Franklin Technology Partners to expand its staff by four and prepare to increase sales and features for 2011.

"We want to go a little heavier on updating the whole platform and adding new features every month from here on out," says Curry. "The product has been proven, tested and now we are just going to go into further making this product something that no one can really touch.

Source: Dan Curry, AMS
Writer: John Steele

Farmers across Central Pennsylvania will be celebrating another plentiful harvest season this fall, but thanks to Weavers Way and the Awbury Arboretum, there will also be plenty of celebrating to do in the city. The Weavers Way Community Farm, a Northwest Philadelphia urban farm tended by high school students and used to make local products by community members,  is honoring another successful year. The Weavers Way farm celebrates this Saturday from 11am-3pm at Awbury Arboretum with the second annual Northwest FarmFest, a country festival for Philadelphia's city farmers.

"This farm is making sustainable agriculture a part of this urban community," says farm committee member Josh Brooks. "This is a time to gain acknowledgment for the farm, spread awareness and just celebrate that it's there. And have fun."

As the Weavers Way urban farm offers students and community members all the benefits of local agriculture--fresh produce, low prices, local cultivation--the Chestnut Hill food co-op's members and community program directors bring all the country comforts of a small-town festival to the big city. The Northwest FarmFest is free and open to the public, presenting musical performances from local acts, pumpkin painting, hay rides, and farm tours. And of course, the Weavers Way Farmstand will have plenty of homegrown produce on sale, along with prepared food from the Weavers Way's Marketplace Program, a school-based cooperative food business run by students. Weavers Way hopes the event will be a venue to show off many school programs focused on the benefits and lessons of local, healthy eating. And of course, to celebrate the harvest.

"We will also be promoting the whole aspect of Weavers Way Community Programs who work with schools to create a marketplace, teaching about food and creating a market" says Brooks. "We'll have food, some barbecue, the marketplace will be selling some food and drink."

Source: Josh Brooks, Weavers Way Farm
Writer: John Steele

This week, Center City District CEO Paul Levy acquired the Holy Grail of city planning; a detailed set of data collected by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. The data may not provide eternal life for city developers but it will make life a whole lot sweeter.

After years of educated guessing to determine demographic breakdowns of Philadelphia's downtown, this data set has pinned down where the 267,331 Philly workers (as of 2008) make their living and hang their hats. Previously only having county data to work with, 48 states participated in a federal program to determine demographic data for cities. CCD published Philadelphia's Major Employment Nodes: Where City Residents Work, a 12-page report outlining where we work and where that may soon take us.

"This is the Holy Grail we have been searching for for 20 years because all this time we have been estimating how many people work downtown," says Levy. "A retailer wants to make a decision on where to locate? We know exactly how much money residents earn, how many work here. This is a huge tool for economic development."

One of the key myths busted by this wealth of new information is the idea that suburbanites hold most of the jobs in Center City. In fact,
Philadelphia residents hold 51 percent of Center City's private-sector jobs. And many city-dwellers, the report states, commute to outlying corporate hubs for work, which Levy says may drive transportation policy in the future.

"We know now that 15 percent of the jobs in the King of Prussia area are held by Philadelphia residents," says Levy. "So that starts to have huge implications for transit planning. In this report we can clearly show the importance of the downtown and how many people would benefit from improvements to transit."

Source: Paul Levy, Center City District
Writer: John Steele

Anyone who has used eBay before understands the ease of PayPal. But for the medical industry, where costs come with a long list of variables--whether or not a patient has insurance or if there is a deductible--the simplicity of PayPal is even more desirable. Center City-based InstaMed allows doctors and health care centers the ability to turn any computing device into a payment terminal, able to calculate the copay and deductable for a complete check-out. The technology now operates in over 7,500 health centers, representing all 50 states. This week, InstaMed announced receipt of $6 million in new capital growth funding, bringing total investment to $22 million.

"We allow health systems to get rid of all the hard terminals you would typically see at a retail store or pizza shop where they swipe your card," says InstaMed CEO Bill Marvin. "What's unique about InstaMed is we are one integrated platform for handling everything that has to do with money in health care."

With the new funding, coming from existing investors including Bala Cynwyd's Osage Partners, InstaMed will continue to expand market share, launching new marketing campaigns, and aggressively expanding business development. But as a relatively young company, Marvin is keeping an eye on quality, looking to update technology systems. By keeping their message and technology strong, Marvin's team hopes to make InstaMed as common as Tylenol in American hospitals.

"As a business that was really just an idea six years ago, we implemented our first hospital only three years ago," says Marvin. "We have experienced tremendous growth in the last three years and we are at the point where the existing data centers and technology infrastructure that we built needs to be upgraded and taken to the next level."

Source: Bill Marvin, InstaMed
Writer: John Steele

If you're interested in innovation and job news from throughout Pennsylvania, do yourself a favor and check out our sister publication called Keystone Edge. Keystone Edge covers Innovation and Job News from Erie to Easton in its weekly online magazine, which publishes each Thursday and is also available via free subscription here.