Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (1/9/2012 to 1/15/2012)

I profiled Hoopla Software, Inc. of West Chester and its founder, Mike Smalls. Hoopla, which makes scoreboard display software for Salesforce.com CRM systems, recently received $2.3 million in VC funding led by Safeguard Scientifics.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners SEP approved $1.7 million in funding for 11 Philly area startups.

SAP AG posted strong quarterly results exceeding estimates, which look especially good given the questionable economic climate in Europe and Oracle's disappointing results reported in December. And SAP hired a new marketing VP with an interesting background.

First Round Capital is reported to be closing in on its fourth fund which would be about the the same size of its previous fund, around $125 million.

Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna Growth Equity placed a $35 million bet on Hazlet, NJ-based SaaS Human Capital Management vendor iCIMS.

Boston-based Rue La La, a part of GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin's holding company, Kynetic LLC., laid of 65 employees and folded its SmartBargains unit, which along with some announced reductions at Gilt Groupe raised some questions about the current health of the flash sales market.

And Wired did a fairly nice profile of Dell Boomi, but the author seemed incredulous that such an imaginative software business could come out of Philadelphia.



permalink