Philly Tech News VentureWatch: 11/16/2011: G2Link, AboutOne, Sidecar and more
Ed Sullivan, the Delaware County native and serial entrepreneur who founded rapidly growing SaaS billing company Aria Systems and previously internet service provider LaserLink, has a new startup, Drexel Hill-based G2Link. It appears, from what I can see at this point, to use both third-party information sources and peer reviews (crowdsourcing) to provide ratings on businesses, including customers, vendors, and prospects, for credit and risk/reputation assessment. If G2Link can really incorporate the kind of information it talks about, it could be a very interesting concept. G2Link is just launching, and will compete in Philly Startup Leaders' Founder Factory Beta Bowl tomorrow.
Malvern-based AboutOne founder Joanne Lang is featured in Microsoft's new documentary, CTRL+ALT+COMPETE. The film follows Lang as she works to make AboutOne a reality, with comments and analysis from outside experts. The film debuted at the Napa Valley Film Festival on November 11. Lang had worked at SAP Labs, where she became knowledgeable about Cloud computing and realized from her own family situation the need to keep all kinds of family records online in one place. Also see this post on Joanne in Women 2.0.
Philadelphia-based Snipi, having just raised $2.52 million, has morphed into Sidecar, which is described in its press release as "the first-ever 100% automated online marketing platform for ecommerce companies". Not sure exactly what that means yet, though it sounds like an extension of Snipi"s original social recommendation platform. The Series-A round was led by Innovation Ventures, L.P., of Wilmington, with a long list of additional investors including e-commerce entrepreneur and GSI Commerce Founder Michael Rubin, NextStage Capital, Gabriel Investments, MAG Fund, and ARC Angel Fund. Sidecar says in the release that it has automated Paid Search, Comparison Shopping, On-site Personalization and Personalized Email for online retailers through a single platform. Founder Andre Golsorkhi continues as Sidecar CEO.
Bleacher League Entertainment of Upper Darby has raised $140,000 in debt-based financing, according to an SEC filing. Bleacher League provides an app, for baseball only now, that enables users to follow games and compete against friends by making virtual bets on the outcome of events during games. It is currently available for iOS and on Facebook, with an Android app coming, according to its website. Bleacher League started off with a board game.
CapTech, the expanding Richmond-based mobile app development firm that I posted last week was opening an office in the Philly area, has apparently opened it in King of Prussia.
Search Engine startup DuckDuckGo, which until now has been largely a one person operation run out of Gabriel Weinberg's home, will move into its new offices in Paoli next month. DuckDuckGo recently received about $3 million in VC funding lead by Union Square Ventures.
Philly-based Viridity Energy's CEO Audrey Zibelman was honored earlier this month along with others by the White House as a "Champion of Change".
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