Philly Tech News: 2016 top stories

Tom Paine

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I'm displaying here what is emphasized on Philly Tech News, so new or occasional readers might know what to expect from this site on an ongoing basis.

I focus primarily on deals, initiatives and developments that are likely to have a transformative effect on companies and markets, with an emphasis on the enterprise market.

Philly is my centerpiece, but I believe it is limiting to consider it in isolation. Most everything is connected to things happening in New York, DC, Silicon Valley, Europe, or Asia. I try to show where those connections are.

While its unclear whether there are any unicorns on the horizon, the depth and breadth of the startup pool today in the Philly area with the potential to scale is unparalleled. I'm going to double down on the startup sector, with particular emphasis on the booming Health and Life Sciences IT scene, IoT, and Fintech.

I always appreciate the contributions of Esther Surden, who has her own great site at NJTechWeekly. And I encourage other voices with distinct viewpoints to consider being content contributors to Philly Tech News.





Linode suffers repeated DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks (January 1)


LiquidHub acquires pure strategic digital agency in Atlanta's THINK (January 3)


East Falls' consumer IoT firm BuLogics spinoff StratIS says its breaking even, may seek to raise venture capital (January 8)


TierPoint: Local presence important part of national data center strategy (February 16)


Philadelphia's IntegriChain gets investment from Accel-KKR
Buys out all outside investors (March 1)


Investor Singer takes position, looks for changes at Radnor's Qlik (March 3)


Zonoff prepares for Connected Home IoT Platform Battles (March 30)


Radnor-based QLIK accepts Thoma Bravo's $3 billion, $28.50 per share off (June 2)


Thoma Bravo, one week after its $3 billion Qlik deal, acquires Wayne- based Elemica (June 7)


Safeguard Scientifics leads $17.5 million financing in SF-based Aktana (June 8)


Veeva Systems, off of strong earnings, holds commercial summit in Philadelphia (June 9)


Vanguard's McNabb: "We are a technology company" with 3,000 engineers (June 17)


Citi Prepaid, originally eCount, sold to German company (July 3)


Edison Partners Opens Princeton Office Doors to Early-Stage Tech Startups (July 9)


Philadelphia-based Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property & Science acquired by PE firms for $3.55 billion (July 12)


Philly Tech Venture Roundup: WeWork sues ex-employee over story; Zenefits, Evariant, roundCorner, CenTrak (July 17)


Michael Dubin, Main Line native & Haverford School grad, sells his Dollar Shave Club to Unilever for $1 billion (July 20)


A little background: Trump, Roger Ailes and Fox News (July 21)


Amazon Web Services continues to swallow the computer industry, and other Amazon notes (July 28)


Valuations are funny things; they can go up and down like YoYos
Theranos, SevOne, Jet.com, Birchbox, RJMetrics (August 6)


In early June, QVC’s US sales "began to experience significant headwinds" (August 6)


Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire majority stake in Columbia, MD-based marketing agency Merkle, valued ~ $1.5 billion (August 14)


Malvern-based Scala, pioneer in digital signage, sold to Ohio competitor (August 16)


Doylestown-based clinical trials tech firm Bioclinica is being acquired by buyout firm Cinven Ltd for reported $1.4 billion (August 23)


Does SAP still love Delco? (August 31)


TierPoint completes TekPark data center expansion (September 30)


Dreamforce '16: The Philly Connection (October 4]


Carrick Capital Partners invests $50 million in InstaMed (October 13)


Motherboard on Pittsburgh mayor's ties to Uber; Inquirer's editorial stance on Uber since Kopelman became chairman (October 15)


Salesforce's hacked & leaked acquisition target list included Qlik, Veeva Systems (Update: Tableau explored sale) (October 19)


Trump: Would not approve an AT&T / Time Warner deal, and would seek to break up Comcast / NBCU (October 22)


Move towards OTT causing upheaval in content, telecom markets; Comcast in the middle of it all (October 24)


CenturyLink buys Level3; Implications for Comcast (October 31)


Much of late election activity centered on Pennsylvania, Philly (November 13)


LiveRamp swallows 2 First Round-backed ventures for $140mm plus incentives (November 17)


Dell Boomi competitor MuleSoft looking at 2017 IPO (November 26)


With iPaaS market on growth tear, Dell Boomi ups game with new release (December 7)


Private Equity buyouts this week: Apple Leisure Group (Newtown Square) ; Phlexglobal (Malvern) (December 14)


CB Insights’ Tech IPO Pipeline Report; 369 2017 prospects, but not one in Pennsylvania (December 21)


eMoney Advisor benefitting from Fidelity acquisition: CEO Ed O'Brien: We're growing and hiring (December 23)


Wayne-based Fintech startup QuantaVerse has a compelling value proposition (December 27)