Daily Links 4/2/2013: Tableau Software, Marketo file for IPOs





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A Start-Up Fund That Lets College Students Make the Decisions (New York Times)

Wolff: Someone at NBC should be fired (USA Today)

Vodafone Jumps on Report AT&T and Verizon Mulling Joint Bid (Bloomberg)

Tableau files for $150M IPO (TechFlash)
One of QlikTech's strongest competitors; strength in data visualization.

Marketo Files For $75M IPO To Grow SaaS Marketing Platform
(TechCrunch)

Dell CEO Says Business Unit Is Making Progress Amid LBO Talks (Bloomberg)

PHD Virtual Acquires VirtualSharp Software
Acquisition Provides the Industry’s Best Value in Virtual Backup and Disaster Recovery Assurance Solutions
(Business Wire)

Financial Transaction Services Rebrands as CardConnect, Relocates Headquarters to Philadelphia
Payment processor changes name, brings its growing workforce to Philadelphia region

(Business Wire)

The genie is out of the bottle: Aereo’s court victory and what it means for the TV business (Gigaom)

Aereo Wins a Court Battle, Dismaying Broadcasters (New York Times)

Artisan Research Indicates that Native Mobile Apps are a Top Priority for Most Retailers (Business Wire)

ElectNext Raises $1.3M To Provide Contextual Political Data To News Sites (TechCrunch)

MeetMe® Launches Native Feed Advertising Powered by Flurry (Marketwire)

Newsbyte: SAP Plans Delivery of Accelerated Reporting and Real-Time Information for Supply Chain Customers (PR Newswire)




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At NJTC Venture Conference, Some Old and Some New NJ Companies Take Home Honors




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Laurie Peterson
NJTechWeekly.com

Technology companies dominated the March 2013 NJTC Venture Conference, held recently in New Brunswick, and life sciences pulled in a close second. This year’s crop included a number of already well-developed businesses.

New Jersey companies took home roughly half the awards presented at the conference, which drew participants from as far as California. Angels and VC investors who attended last year told NJTechWeekly.com this year’s event had better energy even with the smaller setting at its new location in the Hyatt Regency.

Participants listen to speakers at the NJTC Venture Conference.
 | Laurie Petersen
Some were repeat winners. 

AllWeb of Newark, last year’s best informational technology winner took the best healthcare information technology company award for its cloud-based identification and password-management system. This year’s award recognized how the fingerprint ID and two-step user authentication connects to HIPPA privacy regulation of medical records. 

Most innovative product/service company winner was ProServices of Trenton, N.J., a company which has been in business for more than 15 years, is profitable and offers independent software security and quality assessment services to Fortune 1000 companies and the Federal government. 

TransendIT of Mount Laurel won best e-commerce company honors. Founded in 2003, the company customizes point-of-sale terminal software and is now assisting its U.S. customers with their conversion to standardized EMV chip technology for credit and debit card processing. 

Six-month-old and cash flow positive TelAPI of South Amboy took the best communications company award for its web-based API products that enable developers or companies to perform telephony applications with code.

HATCHEDit of Westfield, one of two winners with women at the helm, took best early stage company honors for its social network for the future that streamlines personal communication for creating shared calendars and making plans with your inner circle. 

Best Green Company was mPhase Technologies of Little Falls, N.J. whose consumer division mPower Technologies unveiled an mPower Jump class of jumpstarters small enough to fit in most automobile glove compartments and with fast recharge times. 

Best management team award went to HRAcuity of Chatham, N.J., a SaaS-based best practice software and service company, for mitigating the legal and financial risks associated with employee-related workplace issues. President and CEO Deborah Muller has 20 years of HR experience. 

Company Most Likely to Have an IPO was Pervasive Group of Clifton, which has developed MMGuardian for parents to control their kids’ texting and smart device use remotely. The app has had 53,000 downloads since January. Echolocation, which came out of the TechLaunch (Montclair) accelerator along with Pervasive, was Judges Choice. 

Wrapping up the awards presentations as a 2012 success story was Lyndhurst-based SpeechTrans, which offers a universal language translator. The company was last year’s people’s choice and also voted company most likely to succeed. Co-founder Yan Auerbach said the company has partnered with HP and as of April 20 its translator will be installed as an API in every HP product shipping with Windows 8.

Auerbach’s advice: Be patient and persistent at achieving your goals and while publicity is nice, your ultimate goal should be revenue.


This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is reposted here with the permission of Laurie Peterson and NJTechWeekly.com.



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Daily Links 4/1/2013: TV service Aereo beats back major legal challenge





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E-Commerce Companies Bypass the Middlemen (New York Times)

Diller-Backed Aereo Beats Network Bid to Close TV Service
(Bloomberg)

Aereo beats broadcasters' legal challenge, trial likely (LA Times: Company Town)


Aereo Looks To TV Providers, ISPs To Accelerate Growth (TechCrunch)
First Round Capital was a seed round investor in Aereo.

Telemundo Buys Out Affil In Philly for $19M
Seller ZGS Communications, headed by Ronald Gordon, bought the full-power station five years ago for $10 million.
(TVNewsCheck)

CxO Talk: Microsoft, salesforce.com, CRM, and the science of hugging ( Michael Krigsman/Enterprise Irregulars)

Real-Time Project Data: Collaborative Tools Reduced Risk, Built Confidence and Met Deadlines (Dewberry Blog)
Bentley Systems' ProjectWise being used to manage huge South Jersey highway project.



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Philly Tech People News 3/31/2013







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Another Turning Point: Why I Joined QlikTech (James Richardson/QlikCommunity Blog)

PointRoll Names Mario Diez Chief Executive Officer
Industry Veteran to Lead Digital Advertising Technology and Services Company
(Business Wire)



Comcast Promotes Both Jennifer L. Daley and James P. McCue to Vice President and Assistant Treasurer (Business Wire)


My Alarm Center Names Tammy A. Beil Vice President of Marketing
Former FedEx Freight VP of Marketing brings over 20 years of Expertise
(PR Web)

Welcome Bill Conn! The PeopleLinx Team Continues to Grow (PeopleLinx Blog)

InterDigital Strengthens Executive Team, Adds Don Dinella as Chief Licensing Officer (Globe Newswire)




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The price of sports on TV, like it or not (Philadelphia Inquirer)

eBay Outlines Three Year Growth Strategy at Analyst Day (EcommerceBytes.com)
Ebay sees GSI Commerce revenue growing about 14% per year to $1.5-$1.7 billion in 2015, with direct segment margins of 16 to 18%.

Michael Dell Said to Consider Blackstone LBO Only With CEO Guarantee (Bloomberg)



The First Honest Cable Company (Video: ExtremelyDecentFilms)






Warning: Some vulgar lanquage




Today in Philly Tech History 3/28/2011: eBay announces it will acquire GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion





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On March 28, 2012, eBay announced it would acquire King of Prussia-based ecommerce company GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion, or $29.25 per share.

As part of the deal, eBay agreed to spin off 100% of GSI Commerce's sports licensing business and 70% of flash sales site Rue La La and delivery service ShopRunner, into a newly formed holding company to be led by GSI Commerce founder and CEO Michael Rubin, later to be named Kynetic LLC and based in Conshohocken. eBay also agreed to loan Rubin's new company $467 million.

In an interesting move, First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman, a former eBay executive for a period after it acquired his company Half.com, joined GSI Commerce's board less than two months before the deal was announced.

At eBay's analyst day this past week, the company indicated its expectation for GSI Commerce was for its revenue to grow at about a 14% annual rate to between $1.5 and $1.7 billion in 2015, with a direct segment profit margin of 16 to 18%.




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Today in Philly Tech History March 28, 2005: Wayne-based SunGard Data Systems agrees to $11.3 billion LBO





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On March 28, 2005, Wayne-based SunGard Data Systems agreed to be taken private in an $11.3 billion leveraged buyout, the second largest of all time at that point. The deal, organized by Silver Lake Partners (Michael Dell's partner in the proposed Dell buyout currently under consideration), included a consortium of seven companies, including Bain Capital, The Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Providence Equity Partners and Texas Pacific Group in addition to Silver Lake.

Although LBOs are often done on the basis of cash flow, rather than growth prospects, SunGard's growth since going private has likely been a disappointment to its investors. Each of its principal business segments saw flattening growth; SunGard Financial Systems was negatively impacted by the problems in the financial sector the past few years. SunGard Higher Ed, which also saw diminished growth, was sold in 2011 for $1.775 billion and merged with competitor Datatel. The combined company was renamed Ellucian. Plans to take SunGard Availability Services public have surfaced periodically but never progressed. Its business has not been growing despite areas of potential as a cloud computing provider.

The SunGard LBO was among the deals included in a lawsuit filed last year alleging that major PE firms conspired with each other to hold down bidding competition on target companies.




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Phorum Philly '13 Highlights: PeopleLinx wins "Best in Show"; Philly Enterprise Hackathon 2013 announced



Tom Paine



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The second annual Phorum Philly conference, held at World Cafe Live on March 21, focused this year on "harnessing disruptive technologies", specifically social, mobile and big data.

I was eagerly awaiting to hear what Gus Hunt, CTO of the Central Intelligence Agency, would say addressing Phorum on the topic of managing big data. In particular, it might have been timely for him to say something regarding reports that the CIA had reached a ground-breaking (for both parties) agreement with Amazon Web Services for AWS to provide private cloud services to the necessarily security-obsessed CIA. It was first reported by Federal Computer Weekly at the beginning of last week to be an arrangement worth up to $600 million to AWS over 10 years.

Unfortunately, in typical CIA fashion, Hunt was called away by a last minute emergency. Salesforce.com's VP and Head of Platform Research, Peter Coffee, who had given the opening address to the conference in the morning, by all accounts did a fantastic job filling in for Hunt on big data, demonstrating how versatile he is.

But on the previous day, Hunt did address the issue of big data at GigaOM’s Structure Data event, where Gigaom said he responded to a question about the Amazon connection by saying said he could not comment now but “maybe someday.” Hunt also said in his Structure address, "we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever."

The Demo Pit at Phorum 13 was filled with a strong group of locally based ventures. PeopleLinx, the Philadelphia-based startup which builds applications that help companies better utilize LinkedIn and earlier last week announced it had received $3.2 million in funding from Osage Venture Partners, Greycroft Partners and MissionOG, was voted "Best in Show" by attendees, besting fellow finalists Curalate and iMomentous, with the award being presented by Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz (D-PA 13). PeopleLinx' Bill Conn described the Phorum experience for the company on the PeopleLinx Blog.
MissionOG is an interesting new locally-based fund focused on BtoB, technology-oriented startups that has also invested in CloudMine and Cloudamize.

Another Demo Pit participant, Philadelphia-based enterprise app and collaboration platform WizeHive, announced during the week that it had received additional seed funding from investors including Gabriel Investments and Goldin Ventures. WizeHive also announced that DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg had joined its board.

Also at Phorum, the Philly Enterprise Hackathon 2013 was announced, sponsored by PACT and several Philly area companies. The Hackathon, which will offer prizes valued at $100,000 and incubation opportunities, will run from April 2 through April 19.




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Daily Links 3/29/2013: Fisker preparing for possibe bankruptcy filing?; Dell filing details declining fortunes





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Christie touts missile defense contract with Lockheed Martin in Moorestown (NJ.com)

Fisker hires law firm to prepare possible bankruptcy filing -WSJ
(Reuters)

Dell’s Go Private Case Emerged as Business Eroded (All Things D)

Oracle Flim-Flam Alakazams Missed 3Q Earnings (ReadWriteEnterprise)

The First Ever Honest Cable Company Ad (Mashable)

In march towards IPO, Salesforce rival SugarCRM snags another $15.1M (VentureBeat)