Links 3/6/2014: Comcast ties down FreeWheel deal

Comcast Finishes FreeWheel Acquisition (Re/code)
Price said to be $360 million, plus potential $15 million in various payouts, a bit higher than reported previously.

A Q&A with Comcast's top government guy (Fortune)

U.S. antitrust chief recused on Comcast, Time Warner Cable review (Reuters via Chicago Tribune)


OnDeck Capital Raises $77M Led by Tiger Global to Expand Small Business Lending (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)
Prior investors First Round Capital and SAP Ventures participated again.

Payoneer Secures $25 Million Funding Led by New Investor Susquehanna Growth Equity, LLC (Business Wire)

$70M upgrade to telecom hotel at 401 N. Broad (Philly.com: Philly Deals)


Safeguard Scientifics Announces Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2013 Financial Results (Business Wire)

New York VC Investments Top $1B In The First Quarter (TechCrunch)



Oracle: Villain Or Scapegoat In Oregon Insurance Exchange Mess? (Information Week)

LLR Partners closes 4th fund at $950 million

Tom Paine

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Philadelphia-based middle market private equity firm LLR Partners today announced the close of its fourth fund, LLR Equity Partners IV, L.P, at $950 million.

The firm said in a statement that LLR 4 began investing in 2013 and has closed investments in five companies – ACRE, Cigital, iJET, Logi Analytics and Ultisat. LLR Partners "remains focused on a broad range of industries, including business services; consumer and education; financial services; security, defense and government services; healthcare services; and software and IT services," according to LLR.

The firm also announced that Todd Morrissey and David Stienes were promoted to partner in LLR 4. LLR Partners was founded in 1999.

LLR has also made recent efforts to boost its presence in the Washinngton, DC area and the government technology sector.

Amerimar Enterprises Acquires 401 North Broad Street, Key Telecom Carrier Hotel in Philadelphia
(Marketwire)

Former SevOne CEO Phelan joins Osage Venture Partners; Drahms promoted to Partner

Tom Paine

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Osage Venture Partners, Bala Cynwyd, announced today that Michael Phelan has joined the firm as a Venture Partner. Until last year, he had served as CEO of Wilmington-based SevOne, in which Osage is an investor, seeing it reach a $150 million recapitalization led by Bain Capital Ventures in late 2012.

In a statement, Osage said that Phelan is joining the firm "with a focus on providing hands-on support to portfolio companies and on strengthening Osage's relationships with the regional entrepreneurial community."

Osage also announced the promotion of David Drahms from Principal to Partner. Drahms joined Osage in 2005.

Links 3/5/2014: SAP adds subscription pricing for HANA cloud services; Bucks firm planning huge NJ data center

Verizon Wireless Plans to Triple AWS Deployment This Year to Ease Congestion (Re/code)

Netflix and Comcast Are Only Trying to Help You (Bloomberg Business Week)

Dishing Out Some OTT (Multichannel News)

Comcast Marches Toward 1 Million Wi-Fi Hotspots (Multichannel News)



SAP adds subscription pricing for Hana cloud services (PC World)

NetSuite CEO Nelson: Spare me the Workday collision talk (ZDNet)


Tableau and Splunk partner up (ZDNet)


Bucks firm starts $650M data center at ex-Pfizer site (Philly.com)
Two years ago the same firm, Steel ORCA, announced a similarly sized facility in Fairless Hills, Bucks County, but that facility has not been built.

Why India’s answer to Alibaba & eBay is the tech IPO to watch (VentureBeat)
Started by Wharton grad who couldn't obtain US visa.

Fed: Phila. region's economy slipped in January, February (Philly.com)

Veeva Systems posts results, extends Salesforce partnership

Tom Paine

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Veeva Systems, the life sciences cloud software company with its Eastern US offices in Radnor, announced today it had extended its global partnership with Salesforce for another ten years through 2025.

Veeva will continue to use the Salesforce1 platform for its CRM product, and Veeva will continue as Salesforce’s preferred worldwide partner for the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. The agreement includes minimum payment commitments from Veeva over the term of the extension. Otherwise, the commercial terms of the agreement remain largely unchanged, the company says.

Meanwhile, for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2014 Veeva reported today total revenue of $210.2 million, up 62% from the prior year, while net income was $23.6 million, a 26% increase.

Quarterly results were slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations, and Veeva's guidance for the next fiscal year was mostly in line with expectations.

Links 3/4/2014: Dish, Verizon up OTT talk

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Netflix CFO: Comcast Bandwidth Deal Doesn’t Change Our Economics (Variety)

McAdam: Verizon talking to networks about 'wireless over-the-top play' (FierceCable)



Comcast extends 'Internet Essentials' program indefinitely (CNET News)


Disney, Dish Network reach truce on ad-skipping AutoHop (LA Times)

Dish Takes Lead in Race to Offer Streaming TV to Rival Cable (Bloomberg)


Field Service Software Developer ServiceMax Raises $71M From Kleiner Perkins, Meritech Capital (TechCrunch)

Marketo Sets Its Sights On B2C (Ad Age)

Silk Road Had Digital Outpost in Pennsylvania (New York Times: DealBook)
At Lafayette College.

Links 3/3/2014: Newtown-based EPAM Systems down 24% over Ukraine concerns

Brian Roberts' Jewish Roots and Outsized Ambition Drive Comcast's Rise in Media (Jewish Daily Forward)

David L. Cohen quite influential without being a "lobbyist" (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Multiple companies want to launch online TV services, says Comcast (Gigaom)

Comcast and AOL Deals Highlight Collision Course Between Web Video and TV (Mashable)


Cablevision: Broadcaster Anti-Aereo Argument is Myopic (Multichannel News)

Justice Department sides with broadcasters in fight against Aereo (LA Times)


(Newtown-based) Software contractor EPAM hit by Ukraine-Russia standoff (Reuters)
EPAM finishes the day about 24% down.

Workday vs. NetSuite: Is a collision inevitable? (ZDNet)

Fifteen minutes with NetSuite’s Zach Nelson (Diginomica)

The mysterious disappearance of Cloud for Financials: Solved (SAP Community Network)


In-Memory Databases: Do You Need The Speed? (Information Week)

Early adoption of Bitcoin puts Philly ahead of the economic curve (Philly.com)
Is that a good thing?

Parody: Why Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger would be a good thing (Funny or Die)

From the website Funny or Die , comes this parody of a Comcast spokesperson telling you about the benefits that viewers would see from the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger.

DirecTV posted a link to the piece on twitter yesterday (without comment).

Comcast Doesn't Give a F*CK from Tarik Ellinger

Philly Tech People News 3/2/2014

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Melissa Easy, Founder of DrugDev Selected as a Finalist for IIR Partnerships Woman of the Year (Business Wire)

Former CIA CTO Gus Hunt Joins Venture Capital Firm Artis Ventures' Board of Advisors (Globe Newswire)
Hunt remains an Operating Partner with LLR Partners.


Unirisx Expands to Serve Insurance Organizations in Asia-Pacific Region (Marketwire)

John Wookey Joins the Kenandy Board of Directors (Marketwire)

Enterprise Sales Veteran Doug Grigg Joins Plex as Chief Sales Officer (PR Newswire)


PBJ's new tech reporter: I'm back and ready to hit the ground running (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Comcast To Acquire Video Ad Platform FreeWheel (Re/code)
Price may be in excess of $300 million.

Sports programmers, teams could benefit from cable merger (Sports Business Daily)