Safeguard leads $5 million investment in Downingtown-based ThingWorx

I tried to find out a little more about ThingWorx, the Downingtown "Internet of Things" platform startup that yesterday announced it had received a $5 million investment led by Safeguard Scientifics.


My first thought was to see if there was a SAP connection here, since SAP has been a leader in developing the Internet of Things concept, and there is indeed. CEO Russell Fadel was co-founder and CEO of Lighthammer Software Development, which was later acquired by SAP (after which he apparently stayed on with SAP for a couple of years). CTO Rick Bullotta also came to SAP from Lighthammer; at SAP he served as VP at SAP Labs, which was followed by a tour at WonderWare as CTO. There is no indication that SAP has been involved in financing ThingWorx, however.


ThingWorx had one previous round of financing from Angels and founders.


The Internet of Things (explored somewhat skeptically in this recent Economist article) describes the concept of interconnecting the virtual world, people and the physical world through the Internet. Though most likely to be seen today in manufacturing and military applications, other areas such as energy and healthcare are considered to have great potential. ThingWorx describes itself as "the first platform designed specifically for applications connecting people, systems and devices", although I haven't seen much detail yet on how it goes about accomplishing that. The company blog has this post about the founders and their vision.


ThingWorx held an official company launch on February 8 in Downingtown.



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Daily Links 2/17/2011: Philly Fed’s factory index hits seven-year high

Venmo Refreshes iPhone & Android Apps With Social & Location Features (Mashable)

Internet service map data show no broadband access for up to 10% in U.S. (Washington Post: Post Tech)

SAP Hopes to Boost StreamWork Sales With OpenSocial (PC World)

SunGard Announces Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2010 Results (Business Wire)

Philly Fed’s factory index hits seven-year high
Gauge of current activity at 35.9 for February, eclipsing 20.8 forecast (MarketWatch)
Philly Fed Firms Report Increased Business Activity (Business Wire)

NBC weighs value of broadcasting future Olympics (LA Times)

FCC defends net neutrality to lawmakers, says Level 3-Comcast not covered by rules (Washington Post: Post Tech)

CLWR Up 5%: Sees Profit In 2012; Spectrum Decision In Q2 (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

CardioNet, Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2010 Financial Results (Business Wire)

O'Malley's venture fund draws tough questions
Lawmakers concerned Maryland would lose money (Baltimore Sun)



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Daily Links 2/16/2011: Comcast beats estimates and raises dividend

Comcast Tops Estimates, Boosts Dividend, Stock Buyback Plan (Bloomberg)
Comcast Press Release

New NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke: NBC Network Turnaround Will Take Years (Hollywood Reporter)

Comcast Sub Losses Slow; Is TV Everywhere Working? (Gigaom)

McDowell: Deal Desperation Fueled Comcast Acquiescence to Net Rules (Multichannel News)

Cablevision Eyes $50 Set-Top (Light Reading Cable)

Safeguard Scientifics Deploys $5 Million in Series B Financing for ThingWorx (Business Wire)
Downingtown-based startup provides platform for "Internet of Things" applications.

Webstock: An interview with the Daring Fireball (New Zealand Herald)
Interview with Philly blogger John Gruber from a faraway place.

Air Products Abandons Airgas Takeover Bid After Judge Upholds Poison Pill (Bloomberg)


Advanced Advertising 3.0: Addressability's The Goal
Panelists Weigh Short-Term Interactive Add-ons Vs. Targeting Technologies (Multichannel News)

If Sprint Bails on WiMAX, What Happens to Clearwire? (Gigaom)

Are Technology M&A Prices Getting Out Of Hand? (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)

SAP's McDermott Interview on Business Environment (Bloomberg)
Interesting-longer than the usual TV interview.

HP's Half Step Back Into Data Warehousing
Vertica acquisition fills a big gap, but it also raises questions about Hewlett Packard's alliances and broader ambitions. (Information Week)

Heartland Payment's Q4 profit misses Street, ups div (Reuters)



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Daily Links 2/15/2011: Tafler Steps Down As CEO of Conshohocken's PointRoll

Should Viddler Be AOL’s Next Acquisition? (CenterNetworks)

Comcast, Time Warner join IPv6 test program (CNET News)

Fitch assigns investment-grade rating to NBCU (Bloomberg)

College and Business Will Never Be the Same: Philadelphia University Integrates Design, Engineering and Commerce
(Xconomy San Francisco)

Pointroll’s Tafler Steps Down As CEO; Sales Head Gatto Will Succeed Him (paidContent)
PointRoll is headquartered in Conshohocken.

QVC has become a fashion force (Philadelphia Inquirer)

MEDecision to Release Mobile Application for Access to Clinical Summaries
InFrame Mobile App Enables Users to View Clinically Validated Electronic Health Records on Smartphones, Tablets and Other Devices (Business Wire)

Cloud-based content management in the Veeva Vault (MedAd News)

Oracle Unveils Health Care Analytics Application for Supply Chain (eWeek)

Virginia Museum Launches "Augmented Reality" Picasso Shows in New York, Philadelphia, D.C., Starbucks (Art Info)




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LoKast and Qualcomm put more muscle into wireless file-sharing (VentureBeat)

Ben Franklin group announces $2M in early-stage grants (Philadelphia Business Journal)


Can Cable Block the Google TV Revolution? (Wired: Epicenter)

Drumming Up More Internet Addresses (New York Times)

Can Videoscape Save Cisco's Set-Top Business? (Light Reading Cable)

Samsung, SAP to Roll out Analytics for Android Devices (PC World)

HP To Acquire Analytics Specialist Vertica (Information Week)

First Round Capital Roundup: 2/12/2011

One Kings Lane, an online social shopping site focused on household furnishings in which First Round Capital was an early investor, has raised an additional $23 million led by Greylock Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. First Round also re-upped. The company, cofounded by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus’ wife Alison Pincus, reported that 2010 sales were up 500% over 2009. (See also Fortune article).


Another First Round portfolio company, Path, turned down a $100 million + incentives offer from Google, according to TechCrunch, instead taking a $8.5 million round led by Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures. Path, cofounded by Facebook veteran Dave Morin, is a mobile social network, and although it is still rather small Google is said to have wanted the talent base.


New York-based Tremor Media has acquired First Round portfolio company Transpera, expanding its online advertising platform into the mobile space. In November of last year, Tremor had acquired another First Round-backed company, SanScout, for a price reported to be at least $65 million. comScore has ranked Tremor a close second to Hulu in terms of the number of video ads served. Also, mobile data solutions platform Motricity agreed to acquire mobile marketing and advertising provider Adenyo for $100 million and incentives that could add up to $50 million more; Adenyo had acquired First Round-backed MoVoxx in 2010, although it is not known what, if any, First Round's resulting equity position in Adenyo might have been.


Digiday: Daily has a brief interview with Ari Jacoby, CEO of First Round-backed "CAPTCHA" advertsing service Solve Media, which has offices in New York and Philly. Gigaom has an article on BankSimple, a New York startup close to launching, which will not actually be a bank itself but rather provide a user-friendly, mobile-oriented platform for consumers to interface with smaller banks. BankSimple's CTO is Alex Payne, an early Twitter employee. The startup has raised $3.1 million to date from First Round Capital, Ron Conway and others. Truveris, a New York startup focused on providing automated pharmacy benefits review services (an area that King of Prussia's Health Market Science is also trying to get into) raised $3.8 million, led by GSA Venture Partners with First Round Capital also participating.


Josh Kopelman has joined GSI Commerce's Board of Directors, a move that appears to make sense in a number of ways, given his background in ecommerce and ad tech and the strength of many of First Round's portfolio companies in these areas. Kopelman also spoke at the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Outlook conference in New York late last month, emphasizing the need for general partners to align their fund size to “exit-market realities". “When I hop on a train in Philadelphia I can either take the local or the express,” the Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch quoted him as saying. “I think most traditional VCs when they fund a company kind of buy an express ticket to an IPO. And I think what you’re seeing with some of these smaller funds, they’re buying a ticket on a local train".



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Philly Tech People News 2/13/2011

Kenexa CEO Rudy Karsan Hits Best Seller Lists With "We" (Marketwire)


Global Spectrum names Matthew Homan new GM at Wells Forgo Center, Tim Murphy promoted to Regional VP (Philly Ad Club News)

TrafficCast names Traffic.com co-founder as CEO (Milwaukee Business Journal)

BioNanomatrix Board Elects R. Erik Holmlin CEO (Business Wire)

Monetate Adds Seasoned Online Marketing Veteran Nathan Richter to Strategic Services Team (PR Web)

e-Dialog Appoints Joe Gagnon as Chief Client Officer and Executive Vice President of Product Marketing (Business Wire)

AMETEK Names Mark A. Gordon Vice President and General Manager (PR Newswire)

Former SAP Channel Executive Takes Top Sales Post At GFI Software (CRN)

CardioNet, Inc. Appoints Peter Ferola General Counsel and Senior Vice President, Corporate Development (Business Wire)

Former Huffington Post CEO Named to Journal Register Company Board of Directors (Marketwire)

Daily Links 2/11/2011: Lockheed Advanced Technology Laboratories' software helps predict unrest

Are Nokia And Microsoft Hoping Two Wrongs Make A Right? (Gigaom)

Pentagon’s Prediction Software Didn’t Spot Egypt Unrest (Wired: Danger Room)
Article says most promising work is being done at Lockheed's Advanced Technology Laboratories in Cherry Hill.

Snag great angel investors at OAF Philly - deadline next Friday (Gabriel Weinberg's Bog)
Great list of Angels attending.

New 24-hour traffic channel on TV here finding viewers (Philadelphia Inquirer)

CANOE, ANA ANNOUNCE INITIAL PARTICIPANTS IN THEIR CEE MEE INITIATIVE TO STUDY INTERACTIVE TV ADS (Interactive TV Today)

New look, new faces emerge at NECN
After ownership change, news network retools to appeal to younger viewers (Boston Globe)

FCC Chiefs to Testify at GOP Net Neutrality Hearing (Wireless Week)

Cisco: 'We Are Not Exclusively in the Set-Top Box Business' (Multichannel News: BIT RATE)

SAP’s business intelligence roadmap still a mystery to most (SAP Watch)

SNBL USA Purchases Provantis Preclinical Solution Suite; 500 Users to be Deployed (Business Wire)



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Daily Links 2/10/2011: NBC, Versus said to have inside track on NHL deal

Costs drag down GSI Commerce 4Q earnings by 32 pct (Bloomberg)

NBC, Versus have inside track on NHL deal (SI.com: Red Light)

Mobile payment startup builds buzz through causes (Reuters)
On Philly's Xipwire.

Sprint in 'Good' Talks With Clearwire on Financing (Light Reading Cable)

Cisco Cable Set-Top Sales Tumble Again
Vendor Pins Turnaround Hopes on 'Videoscape' Converged TV Strategy (Multichannel News)

Arris Revenue Falls On Weaker Sales To Comcast, TWC
Revenue Drops 11.3% for Fourth Quarter of 2010, Income Plummets 66% (Multichannel News)

Verizon iPhone Lines Inversely Proportional to Verizon iPhone Rumors (All Things Digital: Digital Daily)

Dish Network stock jumps amid talk of AT&T bid (LA Times)

Phila. Early Stage Venture Showcase report (Philadelphia Business
Journal)

Pulse Electronics Corporation Reports Fourth Quarter Results
(Business Wire)

ENIAC Day to celebrate dedication of Penn’s historic computer (Penn Current)




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GSI Commerce to Acquire Fanatics, Inc.
Company announces new $400 million credit agreement and $50 million share repurchase authorization (Business Wire)
Acquisition valued at about $277 million.

GSI Commerce Reports Fiscal 2010 Year and Fourth Quarter Operating Results
(Business Wire)

Clearwire Said to Stop Retail Expansion, Keep Existing Stores in Save Cash (Bloomberg)

Defense contractor Kratos buying Herley Industries (Bloomberg)
Herley Industries is based in Lancaster.


Data Centers Offer Hope for St. Louis Office Market (New York Times)
Highlighted by Unisys's new software development center.

DDMAC's Abrams gives update on policy making (Medical Marketing & Media)

Time Warner Cable slapped for "fiber optic" claims (Reuters)
The ads by Time Warner Cable and some other cable companies misusing the term "fiber optic" to compare themselves to FiOS are absolutely deceptive.

Comcast's Next Big Battle May Be in Its Backyard (Daily Finance)
I'm not sure Comcast agrees with one of the premises of this article: that the agreement with the FCC necessarily changed the terms under which it must offer Comcast SportsNet programming
to others.

Daily Links 2/8/2011: Josh Kopelman joins GSI Commerce board

Rediscovering WWII's female 'computers' (CNN)

Ken Olsen, cofounder of Digital, dead at 84 (Boston Globe)

SAP preps 'huge' BI upgrade (Computerworld)

A Techie Explains Just What Happened With San Diego Comic Con 2011 Ticket Sales (Or Lack Of) (Bleeding Cool)
Post by Keith Fitzgerald, VP Engineering at Ticket Leap.

GSI Commerce Elects Josh Kopelman to its Board of Directors (Business Wire)

Was Eric Schmidt Wrong About the Historical Scale of the Internet? (Read Write Cloud)
RJMetrics cofounder Robert J. Moore gets to the bottom of it.

Kenexa Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2010 (Business Wire)

Vishay's 4Q profit boosted by improving sales (AP via Bloomberg)

Bubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble – or Not? (Safeguard Scientifics Blog)

Airgas Ruling Still to Come (New York Times: DealBook)

Entercom Communications Corp. Reports Fourth Quarter and 2010 Annual Results
Announces 7% Increase in Same Station Net Revenue and 22% Increase in Free Cash Flow in Fourth Quarter (Business Wire)