Exclusive: Campbell Soup Invests $10M in Meal Kit Startup Chef’d (Fortune)

SoftBank Takes $4 Billion Stake in U.S. Chipmaker Nvidia, Sources Say
(Bloomberg)

IBM's ShinyHappy™ SAP Ariba deal papers over SaaS fail (The Register)

SAP SuccessFactors vs. Workday vs. Google?!? (HRE Online)

Activist Dan Loeb says Dow-DuPont merger plan may leave $20 billion on the table (CNBC)

Pharmacy far from slam dunk for Amazon (ChainDrugReview)

Osage Venture Partners Closes $90M Fund Maintains Decade-Long Focus on Early-Stage East Coast Business-to-Business Software Investing (Press Release)

Osage Venture Partners Closes $90M Fund
Maintains Decade-Long Focus on Early-Stage East Coast Business-to-Business Software Investing


BALA CYNWYD, PA--(Marketwired - May 23, 2017) - Osage Venture Partners (OVP), today announced the closing of Osage Venture Partners IV, a $90 million fund focused on investing in early-stage, business-to-business (B2B) software companies on the East Coast. OVP IV represents the latest fund executing on OVP's decade-long strategy of backing exceptional East Coast entrepreneurs building leading B2B software companies that target large emerging or shifting markets.

"With OVP IV we advance our mission of finding and funding the highest quality startups on the East Coast", said OVP managing partner, Nate Lentz. "Innovation in the U.S. is no longer constrained to a small handful of U.S. markets, and our investment strategy focuses on established and emerging technology hubs including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Washington D.C. / Northern Virginia, Raleigh-Durham, and Atlanta, among others. OVP III made investments in each of these markets and OVP IV's portfolio will reflect an increased focus on opportunities in 'Rise of the Rest' cities."

OVP IV represents a meaningful increase in commitments over OVP III, a $66 million fund, allowing more flexibility with the size of initial and follow-on investments. Since the first closing, OVP IV has completed five platform investments including Phone2Action, Noodle Partners, and Galactic Fog, with two recent investments to be announced shortly.

"We are grateful for the support that our many returning investors and new limited partners have shown for our strategy and our team," commented Bob Adelson, managing partner at Osage Venture Partners. "We also fully recognize that the lion's share of our success at OVP has been driven by dozens of outstanding entrepreneurs who have since become brand ambassadors for our fund. These relationships are critical to our continued success."

The investing team of Bob Adelson, Nate Lentz, David Drahms, and Sean Dowling has been together since the start of OVP III and will continue to expand as OVP IV is deployed. Osage Venture Partners is part of a family of investment funds within Osage Partners, which is based just outside Philadelphia, PA and manages in excess of $500 million.

About Osage Venture Partners
Osage Venture Partners (OVP) invests in early stage, business-to-business (B2B) software companies on the East Coast from its offices just outside of Philadelphia, PA. With over $150 million under management, OVP seeks to invest in determined and creative entrepreneurs and provide them with the capital and support required to build high-growth, market-leading businesses. For more information, visit osagepartners.com.

5/23: Altice explores entry into U.S. wireless business: executive; Comcast to Compete Head-On with Alarm.com

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Altice explores entry into U.S. wireless business: executive (Reuters)

Verizon CEO confirms company’s plan to launch a streaming TV service (TechCrunch)

Comcast to Compete Head-On with Alarm.com, Offering Dealers ‘Aggressive’ Pricing (CEPro)


Vanguard's Bogle tells CFA Institute confab indexing-firm concentration concerns him (Philly.com)


W. Conshohocken firm manages Manchester Arena (Philly.com)


How Big Pharma's App Maker Pushed A Struggling Stock To All Time Highs (Forbes)



PTC's industrial IoT platform ThingWorx gets new apps, more AR support
(ZDNet)

Qlik announces Qlik Sense updates, doubles down on cloud (ZDNet)


How SAP stopped worrying and learned to love the cloud (Reseller News)



Verizon reaches settlement with South Jersey towns complaining of lousy service (Newsworks)

5/22: Rimini Street merger takes company public to fuel future growth; Company behind disastrous Fyre Festival claimed to be worth $90 million, as details emerge in court

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Rimini Street merger takes company public to fuel future growth (Inside SAP)

Supreme Court Messes With Texas ‘Patent Troll’ Hotbed in Win for Tech Industry (Fortune)
SAP has been dragged down to east Texas, among many others.

Francisco Said to Target More Than $3 Billion for Tech Buyouts (Bloomberg)



Company behind disastrous Fyre Festival claimed to be worth $90 million, as details emerge in court (Bloomberg via Chicago Tribune)

Comcast CFO Touts New Universal Studios Theme Park in Beijing (Hollywood Reporter)

T-Mobile: 'Capital Structure' Would Be Key In Sprint Merger (IBD)

Verizon CEO: Combined Yahoo-AOL Will Be Platform to Test Over-the-Top Video Service (Variety)
Didn't know AOL bought Yahoo! for an OTT platform.


Dish App Streams Live TV, VOD to Amazon’s Fire TV (Multichannel News)

TPG to Buy Wave Broadband for $2.36B
(Multichannel News)
TPG also owns Princeton-based RCN.

Cloud Computing Wins Preakness Stakes, and Techies Are Stoked
(Fortune)

FCC won't publish evidence of alleged DDoS attack, amid net neutrality battle (ZDNet)


EMR change cited as one of the reasons IBM Watson and MD Anderson collaboration failed (iMedicalApps)

Pittsburgh Welcomed Uber’s Driverless Car Experiment. Not Anymore. (NY Times)

Weekend Highlights; Cloud Computing Wins Preakness Stakes, Techies Stoked; Pittsburgh Welcomed Uber’s Driverless Car Experiment. Not Anymore

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Cloud Computing Wins Preakness Stakes, and Techies Are Stoked
(Fortune)

FCC won't publish evidence of alleged DDoS attack, amid net neutrality battle (ZDNet)


EMR change cited as one of the reasons IBM Watson and MD Anderson collaboration failed (iMedicalApps)

Pittsburgh Welcomed Uber’s Driverless Car Experiment. Not Anymore. (NY Times)


Walmart’s U.S. Online Sales Rise 63% (Fortune)

Salesforce sails into record territory, and analysts see calm waters ahead (Marketwatch)

2017 Healthcare Prognosis (Venrock)
Will Epic start making acquisitions? Would people rather bet on Flatiron, Clover or Oscar?

Cloud-services company's [EvolveIP} Upper Macungie office could grow after acquisition of Arizona firm (Morning Call)


U.S. Startups Fail to Attract Crowd of Small Investors (Bloomberg)

Huntsman Is Said to Be Close to Merger With Clariant (NY Times: DealBook)

5/19: Benioff Touts Amazon as Salesforce’s New Best Friend; Comcast launches site for Xfinity Mobile sign-ups

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Salesforce's strong results allay slowing growth concerns (Reuters)


Marc Benioff Touts Amazon as Salesforce’s New Best Friend (Fortune)

PACT honors for Richard Vague, deals of the year (Philly.com)

Jonathan Bush’s Athenahealth Has a New Activist Investor (Fortune)
Paul Singer's latest target.

Comcast launches site for Xfinity Mobile sign-ups (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Comcast shuffles its digital ad business (Recode)

Roger Ailes lived in Media when he worked on the ‘Mike Douglas Show’ in the ‘60s (Philly.com)

5/18: Poynter on Philly papers (or website, really) ; Why Amazon’s Probably Not Going To Blow Up Wireless Next

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In Philadelphia, 3 newsrooms had to become 1. Now, they’re taking on a whole new kind of change (Poynter)

Why Amazon’s Probably Not Going To Blow Up Wireless Next
(Fortune)

Here’s Why Brookings Thinks Philly’s Innovation Scene Isn’t Competitive Enough (Philly.com)

Spark Therapeutics completes regulatory filing application for its experimental gene therapy medicine (Philly.com)

Salesforce Rising:: Trumpets Rising Profit Margins, Market Share (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)


​IBM Watson meets SAP Leonardo for cognitive procurement (ZDNet)

Ben Franklin-funded blockchain startup AlphaPoint racking up awards. and clients (Correction: mea culpa)

Tom Paine





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AlphaPoint, the innovative blockchain startup that began life in the Philly area but appears to have mostly migrated to New York, was  named the overall winner in the 2017 Benzinga Fintech Awards.

AlphaPoint received a $1.5 million seed investment in October 2014 from investors including Ben Franklin, Robin Hood Ventures and Invite Media cofounder Scott Becker. CEO Joe Ventura and VP of Development Jack Sallen are founders; Igor Telyatnikov (ex-LiftDNA) is President & COO. Vadim Telyatnikov, founder of King of Prussia-based LiftDNA (acquired by OpenX) is on the board.

CrunchBase shows AlphaPoint having raised a total of $2.5 million; CrunchBase also reported a March 2017 investment by SocialStart, a relatively small but interesting Seed / Series A VC , but the amount is not specified.

In addition to the Benzinga award, AlphaPoint also won Water's Technology Sell-Side Technology Award 2017 for Best Infrastructure Provider to the Sell Side. AlphaPoint is also a finalist in PACT's 2017 Enterprise Awards' Technology Startup category, with the winners to be named tomorrow night.

The AlphaPoint Distributed Ledger Platform (ADLP), which runs on Microsoft Azure, is currently installed at over a dozen “revenue-generating customers,” Water's Technology reported AlphaPoint as saying, including CME Group; Scotiabank; BTCC, a Chinese bitcoin exchange; and Brighton Peak, a Melbourne-based bitcoin exchange. It is designed to resolve key bottlenecks faced in high-performance enterprise environments.

Asked by Philly Tech News about its Philly area presence, COO Telyatnikov responded by email, "We have been growing our PA Technology and Operations teams and are currently hiring. We are excited to be expanding our Pennsylvania team and are committed to helping the region become a hub for blockchain technology." When asked whether its headquarters was in New York, he responded, "Our New York office is our primary sales office." AlphaPoint has offices on Sugartown Road in Berwyn, though as best as I can tell from LinkedIn maybe two of its roughly twenty employees are based there. A few others are scattered elsewhere in the US.

Clarification: I missed some email responses in the thread with COO Telyatnikov:

 "We actually currently have 7 people in PA."

"Worth noting we also recently brought on a VP of Sales based in Philadelphia, the tech and ops roles are the current open roles we are hiring for (5 in total)."

"Per the number we have in PA also would not agree that we mostly have migrated to NY. We only have 7 full time in NY as well - and we previously had offices in both locations as well (we also have staff in North Carolina and San Fransisco)."

I sincerely apologize for my error. I had asked a question explicitly aimed at gathering this information,  and  failed to note the full response.

Update 5/22: AlphaPoint Unveils an Asset Issuance and Custody Solution for Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)




Philadelphia-based Chaikin Analytics also was a winner in the 'Trading Recommendation' category. Wayne-based Quantaverse, which I profiled last December, was also nominated for an award. Its also a nominee for PACT's 'Technology Startup' award.

5/17: Comcast's smart home app has a new hue; URBN looks beyond the store for growth

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Comcast's smart home app controls your Philips Hue lights (Engadget)

Comcast’s new wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, is now live (TechCrunch)


RDK Stokes Global Growth (Multichannel News)

Media firm Deltatre ready to move into U.S.
(SportsBusinessDaily)

Cheddar ​streams $19 million in new funding (Axios)



With Stores Slipping, Urban Outfitters Looks to Wholesale, International (WWD)
And also ecommerce.

Amazon, Dish Network In Wireless Partnership Talks: Report (IBD)
Big news if it materializes.

SAP unveils blockchain service in the cloud (CNBC)

5/16: DreamIt alum LevelUp gets $50 million; Report: Amazon eying pharmacy market

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SAP now offering multicloud option with AWS, Azure, Google (ZDNet)

SAP sends Leonardo digital innovation system into full swing (ZDNet)

LevelUp mobile app gets $50 million in latest fintech fundraising round (CNBC)
LevelUp, an early DreamIt grad now based in Boston, has had its ups and downs but appears to have found major traction; Chase relationship a key.

Why the Companies That Actually Make Your Drugs Are in a Merger Frenzy (Fortune)

WOW Sets Price Range for IPO (Multichannel News)

Comcast Places Bigger Target on Bigger Business (Multichannel News)


Amazon's streaming software powers new smart TVs (AP via Philly.com)

Amazon is hiring people to break into the multibillion-dollar pharmacy market (CNBC)

and... LevelUp mobile app gets $50 million raised $20 million from Thrive
(TechCrunch)
Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump assistant Jared, is one of Thrive's founders.
,,


Bullpen raises $83.6 mln for third fund (PE Hub)
Part-time Doylestown resident Paul Martino is founder and managing partner.