UPenn's Weiss Tech House holds PennVention Innovation Fair finals

James Feuereisen

Kinecthesia, a belt-mounted navigation device for assisting the visually impaired (see a demo), took first place and $5,000 after besting 11 other finalists in the University of Pennsylvania’s PennVention competition, where $20,000 in prizes were awarded on April 18.

Forty-three student teams, a record, entered the first phase of the competition back in February, and faced a rigorous process to narrow the field to twelve. Kinecthesia was started by junior computer engineering students Jeffrey Kiske and Eric Berdinis, who have been working on their product for nearly a year now.

Kiske says “After seeing the competition this year, I can't really say I was expecting to win. All of the teams were so well put together and presented very well".

The second place winner was Invisergy, which makes a solar powered window that is completely transparent and can be implemented into existing infrastructure. Invisergy has participated in other pitch competitions and is in the running for the MIT Clean Tech Competition.

The third place winner was The Campus Rep. The Campus Rep is a tool for startups to easily access students to represent them on college campuses across the nation. They are already on the ground at several schools and are planning a large scale expansion.

The panel of nine judges, who selected the winners and the sponsored prizes, included Michael Aronson of MentorTechVentures, serial entrepreneur Jay Tapper, and Jason Glickman and Bert Navarrete of the newly established TigerLabs incubator. The competition has been heating up over the years and several companies have seen success after the competition. Last year’s winner, uBeam, has been featured in the All Things D conference and one of its founders, Meredith Perry was one of Forbes' 30 under 30 for 2011.

New this year was the automatic placement of two selected teams (Firefly and TouchMe) from the PennApps Hackathon in January to the final round. TouchMe was the winner of the hackathon and Firefly is a screen sharing software that can help companies improve the efficiency of their customer support.

Penn has seen a flurry of entrepreneurial activity as of late. Coursekit (recently renamed Lore), the academic social network started last year by three Penn students, has since received $6 million of funding and now has a team of 12 in New York. One of the co-founders of Family Leaf is a Penn student who has taken the year off to work on his company in Y-Combinator. Warby Parker, started by MBA students a few years ago, has disrupted the eyewear industry through its online collection of glasses.

Previous to the competition Kinecthesia won round three and $50,000 at the newly established Intel Innovator Award competition, which had over 100 applicants nationwide. In October they won Google Zeitgeist, which is an invite only TED style event, and Eric was interviewed by Chelsea Clinton . They have also received support from the Perkins School of the Blind. To top off their victory, they won $3,000 in-kind design services from Design Circle at the PennVention competition.

PennVention is part of the Weiss Tech House at Penn, which puts on other entrepreneurial events throughout the year and houses an in-house fund for startups.

About the author: James Feuereisen is a freshman at the University of
Pennsylvania and was an organizer for the PennVention competition. He can be
reached at jamesfe@sas.upenn.edu

Results Sheet:

1st place-Kinecthesia: $5,000.

2nd place-Invisergy: $2,500.

3rd place-The Campus Rep: $1,000.

Nursing Innovation Prize-BodyWars: $500.

Social Innovation Prize-The Global Latrine : $250.

Dr. Chris Mader Award for Information Technology-Firefly: $1,000.

Design Circle Inc Award-Kinecthesia : $3,000 in-kind.

RJ Metrics Business Software Award-SizeSeeker : $6,000 in-kind
services.

The
Finalists:

Graphene Frontiers-Production technology to make advanced graphene
manufacturing cost effective. Richard Liu.

StudyHeist-A forum where students can exchange class materials
with fellow students. Samuel Stern.

SizeSeeker-Uses Kinnect technology to make clothing measurements
in one’s home in order to facilitate online fashion purchases. Mona
Safabakhsh, Ian Campbell.

Ledao-Online marketplace to buy professional services
intended for Chinese students. Yuanjiao Shen, Haoda Li, Yang Wei, Yanwei Lu, Qi Zhang.

Body Wars!-Board game to teach youth about healthy habits.
Antonette Shaw, Mackenzie Mapes, Kristen van der Veen.

Urban Herb Garden-Home hydroponic system that uses less water and energy
than current models. Gabrielle Pettinelli.

SmallSmall & The Global Latrine Project-A communal toilet design
that can improve sanitation in impoverished regions across the world.

Kinecthesia-A belt to help the visually impaired navigate that uses
vibrations and senses to alter a wearer of objects in their pathway. Jeffrey
Kiske, Eric Berdinis.

Inivsergy-Treatment to make solar powered windows that are
transparent and can be implemented existing infrastructure. Ryan Marschang,
John Foye, Rishabh Jain, Steven Shimizu.

The Campus Rep-Site that connects startups and brands with potential
campus reps on college’s across the country. Elizabeth Wessel, Andrew
Harrington, Jason Mow, JJ Fliegelman, Kendall Haupt.

FireFly-Screen sharing software to help customer support agents
save time that is all in-browser and HIPAA compliant. Patrick Leahy, Dan
Shipper, Justin Meltzer.

TouchMe-Uses sound vibrations to make any surface into a
dynamic device. David Wang, Thomas Ly, Bezhou Feng, Eric O’Brien.

permalink

Daily Links 4/26/2012: QlikTech reports revenue of $79.2 million, up 26% compared to Q1 2011

Qlik Slips: Q1 Beats, Q2 View Light; Year View Tops Estimates (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
QlikTech earnings press release.

Safeguard Scientifics Announces First Quarter 2012 Financial Results
Steady Partner Company Growth Validates Safeguard's Strategic Focus (Business Wire)

InterDigital Announces First Quarter 2012 Financial Results
Company Signs Five New or Expanded License Agreements Year-to-Date, all Covering LTE Technologies (Business Wire)

SAP's cloud business won't profit in 2012: report (MarketWatch)

AMETEK to Acquire Dunkermotoren (PR Newswire)

AMETEK Announces Record Results (PR Newswire)
Increases earnings guidance for year.

TE Connectivity profit tops Wall Street forecast (Reuters)

Could DuckDuckGo Be The Biggest Long-Term Threat To Google? (Search Engine Land)

SnipSnap Wins Tech Trifecta (Philadelphia Daily
News)

Providence Said Selling Hulu Stake at $2 Billion Value (Bloomberg)
Comcast, an existing (though hands-off) investor, reported to be acquiring part of stake.

Comcast opens state's first Xfinity retail store in Middletown (phillyBurbs.com)

SpectrumCo to FCC: T-Mobile Can't Have It Both Ways
MSOs Ask Agency to Dismiss T-Mobile's Opposition to Proposed Sale of Spectrum to Verizon (Multichannel News)

Time Warner Cable Profit Climbs 18% As Broadband Grows (Dow Jones Newswires via Fox Business)


New York Times R&D Group Launches First Commercial Product (and It's for Brands) (Ad Age)
SAP is first advertiser to use it.

NetSuite Q1 Edges Estimates; But Shares Sag In Late Trading (Forbes)




permalink

Daily Links 4/25/2012: ShopRunner acquires PickUpZone to compete with Amazon's Lockers

SAP Sees ‘Very Solid Pipeline’ as Quarterly Profit Rises (Bloomberg)

SAP Backs 2012 Targets After Profit Rise (CNBC)

Bricks Vs. Clicks: ShopRunner Takes Aim at Amazon’s Lockers With PickUpZone Acquisition (All Things D)
ShopRunner, based in Conshohocken, is part of GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin's Kynetic LLC.

InterDigital Rallies On Report It Resumes Shopping Patents (Forbes)

InterDigital Shopping 'Modest Portion' Of Patent Portfolio (Forbes)

Salesforce Moves into the Government Cloud and Social (New York Times: Bits)
To be announced today at CloudForce in DC.

Is Netflix Doomed? (The New Yorker)

Comcast to open first Phila.-area Xfinity store (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Amazon Supply Launches -- New Competition for Industrial Distributors, Ariba, SciQuest and Others (Spend Matters)
Amazon tries to take on the B to B world.

Quality Systems, Inc. Acquires Matrix Management Solutions
Acquisition Brings NextGen(TM) Practice Solutions Additional Resources and Expertise for Addressing Increased Market Demand for Revenue Cycle Services (Business Wire)
Quality Systems' NextGen Healthcare is based in Horsham.

A Look at Bentley’s New Release of ProjectWise, Focused on 3D Image Processing (Directions Magazine)

T-Mobile Loads Up LTE Spectrum Ammo (Light Reading Mobile)

GPS III Endures Bad Press (GPS World)
Article says Lockheed overrun problems not as severe as some reports have suggested.

IBM Acquires Pittsburgh-based Enterprise Search Software Company Vivisimo To Boost Big Data Analytics (TechCrunch)

Development Team Expansion and New Technology Partnership Poises RES Software for Accelerated Growth
New development center and strategic partnership signal RES Software commitment to product innovation, quality and faster time to market (Business Wire)



permalink

Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (4/16/2012 to 4/22/2012)

I wrote about how Comcast is entering Alteva's Unified Communications market, Alteva's expansion plans in Philadelphia, and its new advertising campaign.

Cherry Hill-based icueTV, which has been focused on building a platform for Interative TV Apps, branched out in a somewhat different direction by launching DropWallet, a mobile app platform for online eCommerce aimed at publishers. Real Simple magazine is its first user.

Uber, the San Francisco-based mobile service for locating and ordering private cars originally backed by First Round Capital, indicated last week it is planning to launch in Philadelphia, though it wasn't ready to offer specifics yet.

A University of the Arts professor's startup filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming it infringed its patent on touch screen technology.

Philly-based discount retailer Five Below filed for an IPO, saying it planned to raise up to $150 million. In another retailing move, Fanatics, a part of GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin's Kynetic LLC, announce plans to acquire competitor Dreams Inc. for $183 million including the assumption of debt.

In the aftermath of SAP North America CEO Robert Courteau's departure following a disappointing quarter for sales in the region, someone identified as "an SAP insider" complained to Silicon Alley Insider about the intense pressure at the company to achieve sales targets (like that's never happened before). Meanwhile, SAP's newly launched advertising campaign aims to appeal to a broader base of potential users. And up and coming SAP/Oracle cloud-based competitor Workday hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead its IPO. In a stunning move, the General Services Administration nixed Oracle's entire blanket contract with the Federal government; they probably need more funds for their party budget.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings took to Facebook to complain about Comcast exempting its own streaming service (Streampix) from its monthly download limit, and apparently the FCC is paying attention. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke both took compensation cuts last year, Burke's reduction being much larger.

Verizon says it plans to stop selling DSL it markets where it has Fiber to the Home (FTTH) service, and will try to transition DSL customers to FiOS. A Verizon executive also said "we're going to have several price-ups in our FiOS packages" over the next two quarter. Meanwhile, Philadelphia City Council voted to hold hearings on alleged Verizon foot dragging in rolling out FiOS in the city.

First Round Capital is raising its fourth fund totaling at least $135 million, slightly larger than reported earlier this year. The firm is sticking to its strategy of keeping its funds fairly small.

King of Prussia-based InterDigtal may move or add up to 74 employees in a new Delaware office, mostly related to its Intellectual Property (legal) practice.

Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to Philly Tech News Weekly Highlights by Email



permalink

appRenaissance acquires UXFLIP

Tom Paine

appRenaissance, the Old City Philadelphia-based mobile app development startup, made an important step towards building out its own platform by acquiring West Chester-based UXFLIP, the company will announce this morning.

UXFLIP was founded in 2011 by Michael Raber, a longtime area resident who spent several years with Nokia Navteq/Traffic.com in Malvern. It won best in show at last month's Phorum Cloud Computing Conference at World Cafe Live. appRenaissance said in statement that UXFLIP's UX/UI creation, deployment and management capabilities will be merged with the company’s mobile middleware platform, Unifeed. UXFLIP's strength is on the front end, helping users to dynamically build, deploy and manage user interfaces for native mobile apps from the Cloud.

UXFLIP was a DreamIt Ventures company (Philadelphia 2011), where appRenaissance CEO Bob Moul became familiar with the startup while serving as an advisor.

appRenaissance announced earlier this month it had raised a $1.5 million seed round led by FirstMark Capital. It was founded in 2010 by CTO Scott Wasserman and Moul joined at the beginning of the year after leaving Dell Boomi.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though it wouldn't be surprising (my guess) if it included a combination of cash and equity. Raber will continue to be responsible for the development and roadmap of UXFLIP at appRenaissance. A beta version is expected to be released this summer.

UXFLIP is the second startup I know of from the Phorum Demo Pit to be acquired. ReadySetWork was acquired by West Chester-based PrimePay in March.



permalink

Daily Links 4/24/2012: Unisys sees revenue growth, profit

Comcast’s biography, now available to employees (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Comcast to FCC: Bloomberg Claim of Channel Relocations Is Wrong (Broadcasting & Cable)

EchoStar Backs Out of Cable Set-top Biz (Light Reading Cable)

Unisys Corp. swings to a profit (MarketWatch)
Revenue actually increased, which has been rare for Unisys in recent years.
Unisys Press Release.

Fairfax County suspends work on last leg of $43 million computer overhaul (Washington Post)
County blames SAP for project problems.

Infor next steps, an unsurprising IPO (Dennis Howlett/ZDNet Blogs)

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Roadmap: Unveiled and Inspected (ASUG News)

Yammer to upgrade mobile apps, groups and search for enterprise social software (Computerworld)

USAT: More drama at card-portal maker (Philly.com: Philly Deals)

IMS Health Buys DecisionView For Programs to Speed Clinical Trials (Xconomy)

Thomson Reuters Launches New Mobile Oncology Decision Support Solution for R&D Pharmaceutical Leaders (PR Newswire)



permalink

A few interesting area events this week not on Philly Tech Week's Calendar

Princeton Tech Meetup Tonight (April 23) at 7pm at the Princeton Public Library. Four spots open right now, according to its Meetup page.

Philly FileMaker User Group Tuesday, April 24th, at 6:00 PM. at IT Solutions in Fort Washington. Presentation on the new FileMaker 12.

Cloudforce Social Enterprise Tour Wednesday, April 25, Washington DC. Features keynote from Vivek Kundra, EVP of Emerging Markets at salesforce.com and former CIO of the United States.

State of .NET - The Road to Windows 8 Microsoft Malvern on Thursday, April 26 from 2:00-5:00.

System Center User Group Microsoft Malvern on April 26 from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. Best of Microsoft Management Summit 2012 review and see live demos of next generation Windows Server "8", Hyper-V 3.0, and Windows 8.

PhillyForce April Meeting April 26, 6 to 8 pm, at LiquidHub in Wayne. How MEI (West Chester), maker of electronic bill and coin acceptors, uses the Boomi Platform to Integrate Salesforce and SAP ERP.

Delaware Tech Meetup Thursday, April 26 at 7:00pm at
the The coIN Loft in Wilmington. Focus on EdTech.



permalink

NJ Tech Startups Dominate Awards at NJTC Venture Conference

Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com

The 2012 NJTC Venture Conference, held in late March in Somerset, was dominated by young technology companies, although some life sciences firms were in the room.

New Jersey tech startups took home many honors at the conference, where a number of companies reported they made excellent connections with the venture community. Several angels and VCs told NJTechWeekly.com it was one of the best events at which to find good N.J. companies to fund. The award winners:

• DocView Solutions of Cherry Hill was named best marketing/e-commerce company. The firm's tablet- and smartphone-based system uses predictive modeling and data analysis to notify a clinician proactively when a patient's health baseline is changing, thus preventing many hospital readmissions.


• Newark-based Allweb Technologies was best information technology company. The firm has a cloud-based identity- and password-management system that uses fingerprint matching and two-step user authentication.


• ATC Labs, also of Newark, took home the best communications company award for its technology that can increase bandwidth utilization via compression and processing technology.


• The best advanced materials/nano company was Natcore Technology of Red Bank. The small, publicly traded firm is developing a black silicon solar technology that will increase solar cell output.


• Veracity, a Glen Rock designer and developer of transmission, stage and display products for network video and surveillance applications, won best electronics company.


• Voted both the people's choice and the company most likely to succeed was SpeechTrans (Lyndhurst), the instant translation firm that offers both apps and landline over-the-phone capabilities.


• The best healthcare/IT company was SpectraMD of Princeton, whose intelligent solution aggregates and analyzes data for more cost-effective and better healthcare outcomes.

This year’s program included the usual expo and five-minute pitches along with a luncheon panel discussion, but it added a new twist. Companies were asked to make one-minute elevator pitches in the morning as well as to give longer presentations and answer questions later.

According to one angel we spoke with, the one-minute pitches were an excellent way for the funding community to quickly figure out which companies interested them so they could find them on the floor and devote greater attention to them.

However, some entrepreneurs we spoke to worried such short pitches would discourage people from finding them at the longer presentations. Indeed, at some points the longer presentations were discouragingly sparsely attended, as one presenter noted.


Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of New Jersey Tech Weekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in New Jersey Tech Weekly.


permalink

NJTC Panel Looks at “Strategic” Corporate Venture Investing

Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com

Are entrepreneurs and follow-on investors well served by the investment fund arms of such companies as AOL, Google, Condé Nast, SAP, Time Warner and Home Depot? That’s the question a panel discussion on corporate venture investing, moderated by Raymond Thek, vice president of the Lowenstein Sandler (New York; Roseland, N.J.) Tech Group, attempted to answer at the 2012 NJTC Venture Conference in late March in Somerset.

Introducing the topic, Thek said in the past 15 months he has been on the other side of many deals with such companies, and this trend is a new one. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 20 years,” he noted. While companies in the life sciences used this strategy in the past, it is now widespread across industries.

The panelists thought early-stage investing with so-called “strategic investors” is a good idea for entrepreneurs if the company’s fund objectives and strategic interests align with the entrepreneur’s goals and the value the strategic company adds is very specific. However, deals need to be balanced, with nonstrategic investors also at the table to provide a counterweight to the sometimes more powerful entity. Also, the panelists advised, look for a strategic investor who can offer you something you can’t get elsewhere, like industry contacts.

Young companies should realize many strategic investors may not spend the time to get the right sales director into the right spot at the company and provide other, more hands-on help VCs might offer. Also, if a strategic investor is around at the initial round, “you may not have someone working that hard for you on the follow-on rounds,” said Peg Jackson of Gridley & Co. (New York).

Gil Beyda, founder and managing partner of Genacast Ventures, operates a seed-stage fund that is a Comcast (Philadelphia) offshoot. It’s not technically a “strategic fund,” he said, since companies in which it invests don’t necessarily have to have anything to do with Comcast’s interests.

His view is that more large firms are looking at creating their own venture funds as an integral part of their strategy. Some see this as a road to acquisition, while others view it primarily as a financial-management tool allowing them to diversify their financial stream. Most look at it as a way to identify new sectors, technologies and trends occurring in the industry and be on the cutting edge or bleeding edge.

Jackson added that large companies are getting into venture funding because “technology is having such a big impact on their businesses in so many ways.” Firms are looking at their investment arms as a way to maintain a formalized team and a structure, to know what’s coming down the road in technology. The good news for investors who get involved with them: while it used to be an informal arrangement, strategic companies have now formalized these groups and offer professionally structured term sheets, which they didn’t do before, she said.

Strategic investors are funding small slices of disruptive technologies to be at the top of the curve, before their businesses can be disrupted, Sasank Aleti of LLR Partners (Philadelphia) pointed out. Getting technology to market goes much faster now, so you can see the impact of disruptive technology much sooner, he said.

Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of New Jersey Tech Weekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in New Jersey Tech Weekly.



permalink

Daily Links 4/23/2012: Penn-founded Coursekit rebrands as Lore; Peter Thiel invests

Coursekit (founded at Penn) is Now Lore: Rebrand Reflects Expansion Beyond College Courses, With New Investment from Peter Thiel (PandoDaily)

Rackspace Startup Program Spotlight On CloudMine: Rich And Interactive Apps Made Easy (Official Rackspace Blog)

FCC Wireless Chief Goes to T-Mobile on Verizon Deal With Cable (Bloomberg)

Netflix 1Q Results Top Views But Shares Sink (Fox Business)

Netflix Beats Predictions, But Stock Slips Anyway (Light Reading)


Net Neutrality Suit Players Agree to Briefing Schedule (Multichannel News)


NimbleTV tries to make good on TV Everywhere’s promise (Gigaom)

Every touch-based Apple product targeted by apparent patent troll (Ars Technica)
See my post from Saturday on the local connections.

Company trades SAP systems integrator Capgemini for niche firm (SearchSAP)

PHD Virtual Announces 7th Record Quarter of Growth Driven by New Customer Acquisition
First Quarter Results Driven by New Customer Acquisition and Continued Enhancements in Backup and Monitoring Product Lines (PR Web)
Says Q1 revenue grew 50% over 2011.



permalink

Philly Tech People News 4/22/2012

MediMedia Health Names Phil Deschamps as Company CEO (Business Wire)

Rajant Names Todd Rigby Vice President Business Development - Mining (Business Wire)

Comcast Promotes Melanie Penna to Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Comcast Cable (Business Wire)

Kevin O'Toole, Comcast Business Services (Fierce Telecom)

Cozen O’Connor Continues Growth of IP Litigation Practice with Seven Partners, Two Associates from Duane Morris (Business Wire)

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Receives CEO IT Achievement Award (PR Newswire)

Tim Anderson Joins ISGN as Director of Corporate Technology (National Mortgage Professional)

Brownstein Group Launches B2B Practice
Philadelphia Agency Translates Wealth of Consumer Brand Experience Into Helping Business-to-Business Companies Differentiate Their Image (Globe Newswire)

Stream Companies Adds 10 New Hires (Philly Ad Club News)

Emerald Bullish on Future with Expansion (Business Wire)


TE Connectivity Announces Retirement of Robert A. Scott, Executive Vice President and General Counsel; John S. Jenkins, Jr. Appointed as Successor (PR Newswire)

Checkpoint Systems, Inc. Announces the Resignation of Board Member Robert N. Wildrick (Business Wire)

NFTE Philadelphia Welcomes Philip P. Jaurigue to Advisory Board (Business Wire)

DMTF Welcomes NetApp and SunGard to Board of Directors (HPC in the Cloud)




Subscribe to Philly Tech People News by Email



permalink