Daily Links 7/20/2012: DreamIt Ventures expands to Austin

Exclusive: Comcast Prepping 305 Mbps Tier To Counter Verizon's New Quantum FiOS Offerings (Broadband Reports)

NBCU combines news units, puts Pat Fili-Krushel in charge (paidContent)

Google Keeps Quiet on Plans for Moto (Light Reading Cable)

DreamIt Ventures Heads To Austin (TechCrunch)

Area venture investing falls off a cliff (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Five Below IPO a Home Run for Advent (and LLR Partners) (PE Hub)

How education startup Coursera may profit from free courses (Gigaom)
Not only is UPenn offering courses through Coursera, but this week it was announced that UPenn and Caltech would be equity investors in the online higher ed venture.

Universal Display agrees to $4M Plextronics OLED deal
Developer of organic LED materials and printed electronics specialist agree strategic alliance. (Optics.org)

Publicis Posts 2.8% First-Half Growth, and Maurice Levy Is Still Here (Ad Age)
Chaiman blamed a decline in the health-care sector, for which much of Publicis' presence is in the Philly area, for weak growth in North America.

Oracle Expands Project Management Offerings With Skire Acquisition (CRN)


Got the Next Great Idea? (New York Times)



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Daily Links 7/19/2012: Five Below raises $163 million in IPO; shares jump 56% after offering

Oracle Buys Skire to Boost Its Primavera Project Management Software (PC World)
I haven't heard too much out of Oracle Primavera recently, but I believe it is still primarily based in the Philly area. Oracle acquired the project management software pioneer founded by Joel Koppelman, which at the time was based in Bala Cynwyd, in 2008. Koppelman, who has since left Oracle, is now listed as "Chief Sculptor at JMK Adventures" on his LinkedIn profile.

Five Below prices IPO at $17.00, at high end of the range (Renaissance Capital)
Philly-based retalier raises $163 million.

Five Below's shares soar in initial trading (AP via Philadelphia Inquirer)
Shares jumped 54% after offering. Update: Five Below (NASDAQ: FIVE) closed the day up 56%.


Philly Fed Firms Continue to Report Weak Business Conditions (Business Wire)

Philly Fed factory activity shrinks for third month in July (Reuters)

Burke Creates NBCU News Group to Oversee NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC
NBCU EVP Fili-Krushel to Serve as Chairman (Multichannel News)

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Daily Links 7/18/2012: UPenn, Caltech invest in Coursera

Coursera, the online higher education portal that offers free courses from a consortium of universities including Princeton, University of Michigan, Stanford and Penn, yesterday announced that the University of Pennsylvania and Caltech have made a combined $3.7 million investment in Coursera, with further investment from New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The total investment in Coursera is now $22 million. Coursera also announced that 12 more institutions of higher education have agreed to provide online courses through its platform. Coursera has not unveiled a monetization plan yet.

Update 7/19: The University of Washington says it will offer credit for some courses it offers through Coursera for a fee.

Philadelphia-based youth-oriented discount retailer Five Below increased its planned IPO pricing range from $12 to $14 to $15 to $17 per share. At the high end of the range, Five Below could have a value in excess of $900 million. The offering is expected to begin tomorrow (Thursday).

EXCLUSIVE-Silicon Valley startup, Workday, quietly files for IPO-sources (Reuters)
Emerging threat to SAP.

SAP North America’s New President: She’s Not Playing It Safe (ASUG News)

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Daily Links 7/10/2012: Five Below sets IPO price; another Salesforce outage

Five Below sees IPO priced at $12-$14/shr (Reuters)

Why Is Enterprise Software So Bad? (Electronic Ink Blog)

Eurotunnel selects QlikView over SAP for business intelligence applications (ComputerWeekly.com)

Oracle Buys Involver (Involver Blog)
Another Oracle play in social media space.

Oracle Adds to Social-media Software Arsenal With Involver Acquisition (PC World)

Major Outage for Salesforce.com (Data Center Knowledge)

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Daily Links 4/18/2012: InterDigital may move some jobs to Delaware; Five Below files for IPO

InterDigital eyes Delaware
Patent-rich wireless technology company looks to add jobs in state (Wilmington News Journal)
No, the entire company is not moving from King of Prussia.

Five Below, Inc. Files Registration Statement for Proposed Initial Public Offering (Business Wire)

Five Below initial public offering to raise $150 million (AP via USA Today)

Five Below: Another winner for First Round's Kopelman? (Philly Tech News)
Reposted from last month.

eBay’s Stock Jumps Thanks to Double-Digit Revenue Gains (All Things Digital)
Says GSI Commerce business generated $715 million in merchandise sales, up 26 percent from the same period last year.

Bill McDermott Talks Jobs on Fox Business (Video/SAP TV)

Software maker SAP eyes cloud acquisitions: report (MarketWatch)

SAP Designs Facility for 'aGile' Cloud Application Development (CIO)

Wow Buys Knology for $750 Million (New York Times: DealBook)

Rockefeller Tees Up Online Video Hearing
Meeting to Focus on Migration from Traditional TV to Online (Multichannel News)

Verizon selling 700MHz spectrum, but only if government approves its AWS purchase (Engadget)

Sony, AU Optronics in talks on OLED TV production: report (Reuters)
What might this mean for Universal Display?

Chariot Solutions Launches Scholars Program to Increase Diversity of Software Engineers in the Philadelphia Region; Scholarship Recipients to Receive Mentoring, Training, and Continuing Education (PR Web)

ICG Company Procurian Demonstrates Strong Q1 Traction
ICG Increases 2012 Annual Guidance (Globe Newswire)



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Five Below: Another winner for First Round's Kopelman?

Tom Paine




Last night, after reading about Philly retailer Five Below's reported IPO plans, I remembered who one of its early investors was: Josh Kopelman. He had invested in Five Below through his personal (non-institutional) pre-First Round Capital fund, Midas Capital.

Midas Capital's portfolio also included Boomi (acquired by Dell), a little company called LinkedIn, Delicious (acquired by Yahoo and later sold back to founders), Philly-based medical payments processor InstaMed, and TurnTide, on which Kopelman turned a quick and tidy profit by selling to Symantec. While most of these were likely very small stakes, as an early investor Midas probably saw some outstanding returns. One can only imagine what the IRR on that fund is.

Of course, Kopelman hasn't been perfect. He passed on an early opportunity to invest in Twitter.



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Daily Links 3/22/2012: Verizon Wireless/Cable deal gets blowback at Senate hearing

Comcast, Verizon face critics at Senate hearing (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Lawmakers fear Verizon Wireless deal with cable firms will limit consumers’ choices (Washington Post)

VZ for VOD? Don’t Bet on It, Says Bernstein (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

Tech Talk Episode One: The Cloud(Comcast Voices/Official Comcast Blog)

AT&T, Comcast, Other ISPs Urged by U.S. to Step Up Cybersecurity on Home PCs (Bloomberg)

Company dumps SAP support for Rimini Street, funds projects with savings (SearchSAP)


Oracle, SAP getting rattled by the ‘Cloud’
Web-based software attracting bigger corporate customers (Marketwatch)

Discount retailer Five Below eyes IPO -sources (Reuters)
Philly-based company backed in part by LLR Partners, co-founded by Encore Books founder and former Zany Brainy CEO; article speculates that market value could exceed $1 billion.

Kembrel's Killer Business Model: A Pop-Up with Weekly Flash Sales (215 Magazine)

EHR cost debate heats up (Government Health IT)

AWS partners with open-source private cloud provider Eucalyptus (Computerworld)

A video aerial view of Apple's NC data center (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Yummly raises $6M to build its digital kitchen (Gigaom)
First Round Capital was a seed funder of Yummly; its founder, Dave Feller, goes back aways with Josh Kopelman to Half.com.

Dog Vacay Raises $1 Million in Seed Funding Lead by First Round Capital to Fuel Nationwide Expansion (PR Web)



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