Novotorium Archives - Serious Startups

Philly’s Novotorium Announces New Seed Funding Program

Philadelphia’s Novotorium continues to support health, wellness, and nutrition startups across the Philadelphia region. We’ve covered Novotorium quite a bit over the last 18 months and their progress has been fun to watch.

The team backing the startup support organization wants to get in with companies in their wheelhouse as early as possible, sometimes backing companies as early as a business plan stage or during the development of a companies minimum viable product (MVP). More often than not, companies at that early a stage are turned away and can’t develop without funding, especially in health and wellness sectors.

Novotorium has announced a week’s worth of programming geared towards the earliest stage companies. The program runs the week of September 16-20 and at the end of the week those that participated will be part of a business plan competition on September 23rd. The competition will have a $2500 prize, but Novotorium will consider all participants for possible future investments ranging from $5,000 to $250,000.

“Our goal with this program is to work with companies in the early stages of developing a business plan and creating the first iteration of their business. We are looking forward to helping them build out their plans and create their minimum viable products. We anticipate that we will be able to offer seed funding to several companies,” Novotorium Managing Director Stuart Segal said in a statement.

Novotorium’s Marketing and Business Director, Chuck Hall, summarized the program on their blog:

During each day of the week-long program — September 16 through 20 — Novotorium partners will be on hand at Novotorium in Langhorne to offer classes and hold office hours on key parts of creating and launching a business — finance, law, marketing, sales, operations, lean startup, agile development, technology, health care products and markets and more. This is a completely free week of sessions, with the goal of helping entrepreneurs accepted into this program move forward with their business plans and business implementation efforts.

On Friday, September 20, business plans and business development efforts will be vetted, with approved startups slotted into presentation times for Monday, September 23. Entrepreneurs will be asked to present to a Novotorium panel that will then determine the winner of the competition. The winner will receive the top prize of $2,500 in cash and $3,000 in services at Novotorium over a 30-day period.

Companies wishing to participate in the program must apply on the Novotorium website using the ordinary application form. Applicants should note “TBD” in any part of the application that is yet to be determined. Applicants should also note “Applying for September Program” in the “What Else?” section of the application.

Interested? Hit the application link above

Novotorium & SeedPhilly Call Lights Out For Summer Camp

We received some disheartening news this morning from our friends at technicallyphilly.com . Apparently Entrepreneur Summer Camp, a joint venture between Novotorium and Seedaphilly has been cancelled due to lack of Internet.

We’ve been big supporters of both Novotorium, SeedPhilly and the Philly tech scene, especially because our co-founder Cameron is based in Philly.

We are members of the Phily listserve and we’ve seen a mixed bag of talk about Philly’s startup community. There are those like Novotorium Mike Krupit who are big advocates of growing startups right in the city of brotherly love.

On the flip side the are those who wallow suggesting that there’s not enough funding available in Philly. Some of these folks actually commute to New York in hopes of having a more successful launch in the big apple.

As for Entrepreneur Summer Camp, both Novotorium and SeedPhilly along with others in the Philadelphia startup ecosystem put together a great bunch of programming that was to occur over the summer, with nominal fees for space, food and drink and overall costs.

After the first event though Kuprit found that there just wasn’t enough traction and interest from entrepreneurs, Startups and the tech community. We found from our analytics that all of the stories we’ve used to promote this series of events had a good deal of interest. Whats wrong with you people, support your local tech ecosystem if you want it to grow.

Kuprit is still feeling positive about this weeks “not a hackathon” 36 hour event. Rather than using the 54 hour hackathon style model, this event is for Startups a little further along to get mentor ship and help around the clock. Think of it as 36 straight hours of office hours.

Kuprit beefed up the prize money and this event is still on. You can find out more about the sleepover event here

As for summer camp Kuprit told technicallyphilly “Philly takes the summer off,” he said, comparing our scene to New York’s and California’s. “We need to raise the bar.”

Philly’s entrepreneur summer camp isn’t the only signature event on the east coast this summer to get cancelled. Earlier this month we reported that the Startup BeachHouse event was cancelled when the group putting it on we’re repeatedly denied beach house rentals because ignorant beach house owners thought the event would be like the show The Jersey Shore.

Linkage:

Source: technicallyphilly

Check out Novotorium here

Check out SeedPhilly here

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else”

Philly’s Novotorium Hosting “Not A Hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover June 27 & 28th

Mike Krupit and the crew at Novotorium are holding a really cool event June 27th and 28th in Philadelphia. The event, that they’re calling the “Not a hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover. The event is not a “build a startup in 48 hours” type event. Rather it’s more like a weekend worth of valuable office hours to refine your startup, develop your product, work on your marketing and pick the brains of Krupit, and other great mentors.

Novotorium promises 36 straight hours of “eye popping, brain swelling, undulterated business progress”

There is a $20 participation charge which of course will cover things like fuel (food and red bull) along with other considerations. But not only that, there will be a $2,000 prize. Krupit told Nibletz.com the companies won’t do “pitches” but their progress throughout the weekend will be judged by the Novotorium and SeedPhilly team. Both Novotorium and SeedPhilly will meet with each startup individually.

The best part of the entire process is that everyone will be on hand all 36 hours, so if you’re knee deep into problem solving at 3am you’ll be able to get a mentor to help you solve your problem.

Krupit responded to criticism on the Phily Startup Leaders List Serv saying:

“We know that there are entrepreneurs are reluctant to attend hackathons or startup weekends because they don’t own what the community helps them produce. That’s why we called this a “Not-a” hackathon – to demonstrate its approach from another perspective. We added the cash prize as an incentive to those who maybe weren’t purely in it for the community, learning, and fun.

The $20 registration is a token to basically ensure that people show up. It’s even lower than other similar events.

This model isn’t for everyone – and we never intended for it to be. There are already a number of registrants, so I’m assuming some find it interesting. For those that do, we’ll build some good business models and product, build more community, and have a good time.”

We totally get it here at nibletz, as we said the best way to describe it is 36 straight hours of office hours type access to some of the best mentors in the Philadelphia area to help any startup who registers, work on their business.

Linkage:

Find out more about this event here

Find out more about Novotorium here and Seed Philly here

This is part of Philly’s Entrepreneur Summer Camp, more here

Nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else” could use your support, check this out

Philly’s Novotorium And Seed Philly Announce Entrepreneur Summercamp

Philly’s startup scene is becoming hotter and hotter everyday. With incubators and accelerators like DreamIt Ventures, Novotorium and Seed Philly, it seems that nothing is holding back the city of brotherly love.

We reported on Novotorium back in April when they were bringing their second startup, Inhabi under their umbrella.

Now, both Novotorium and Seed Philly are teaming up to make it a summer to remember for startups in the Philly area. The two incubators are partnering to kick off the summer with an event called “The Infonautics Team and a Generation of Startups”. This event is getting a lot of play in the philly startup listserv and it looks like the whole city is behind it.

According to Mike Krupit of Novotorium, “The Infonautics Team and a Generation of Startups” will show how a dynamic entrepreneurial culture at one startup helped generate a stream of successful startups, ventures and careers.

“We’ve seen tremendous collaboration, innovation and camaraderie through the years by the people who were part of Infonautics,” Krupit said. “We are now experiencing a resurgence of the entrepreneurial community in Philadelphia, so the timing is excellent to help a new wave of entrepreneurs learn from pioneers and see how and how much we have already achieved in our region, and the possibilities for the future.”

Seed Philly founder; Brad Denenberg added: “There are so many great things happening in the entrepreneurial community throughout the Philadelphia region that we don’t always take time to look back, understand how we got here, and appreciate it,” Denenberg said. “By collaborating, Novotorium, Seed Philly and numerous successful entrepreneurs are aiming to bring focus to the power of entrepreneurship in Philadelphia and help build the overall community.”

More after the break
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Philadelphia Phocus: Incubator Novotorium adds second company inhabi

Inhabi is a service which matches landlords and prospective renters with each other. Using proprietary system to find the perfect match. The Philadelphia region is home to a relatively new incubator (or accelerator) Novotorium. They say that “Novatorium is a new concept and unlike most of the incubators and accelerators that you may already know.” Instead of finding companies who are looking to sell to another company for a big payout Novotorium focuses on companies who are aiming for “organic growth, profitability and sustainability” and are in it for the long haul.

Back on March 15, 2012 Technically Philly announced that Novotorium was looking for a second company to join their incubator program. On March 29th it was announced that inhabi would be joining Novotorium. Philadelphia currently has a number of incubators DreamIt Ventures, Project Liberty, Seed Philly, Good Company, and others. Over the course of the next few weeks we hope to be meeting with a number of these incubators/accelerators as well as planning to bring you coverage from Philadelphia Tech Week

The above list comes from an article on TechnicallyPhilly Desks for Startups: Infrastructure for entrepreneurs or budding startup bubble?