Philadelphia Archives - Serious Startups

Startup Beach House beaten up by Jersey Shore’s Reputation – Cancelled for 2012

<sarcasm font> Thanks MTV for ruining the beach </sarcasm font>

Back in May we covered the Startup Beach House – “The basic concept was to bring about 5 startup teams to the beach house for a week to see what they could build. We would then film it to document the week and what came of it.”

Originally they had leased a house in Avalon New Jersey but in their words:

In March, we secured a house in Avalon, which was perfect. After a news story ran dubbing the Startup Beach House the “Jersey Shore for geeks” (or something of that nature), which the owners of the house saw, they immediately cancelled the lease in fears of all things “Jersey Shore.”

So in April they managed to find a house in Stone Harbor, NJ. but again ran into issues because of the Jersey Shore “reality” show. Again, Startup Beach House explains,

Another news story came out, again making an association to the reality show “Jersey Shore.” The realtors of the initial house saw the story and sent it to the realtors of the Stone Harbor house saying something along the lines of “we wanted to make sure you are aware of what these guys are doing.” This caused alarm for the new realtor and the owners of the Stone Harbor house, they wanted to immediately cancel the lease over concerns of the type of people at the house and any filming that would take place. After explaining in detail what we were planning to do, they hesitantly agreed to rent us the house with added stipulations, however, we did not want to work in such a non-supporting environment.

They have chosen to shutter the plan for Startup Beach House 2012 because it became nearly impossible to find an appropriate unit and speaking from personal experience in South Jersey Shore vacation homes – even if they could locate a house the price would be significantly higher. Their post explaining all of what transpired ends with:

We sincerely want to thank the hundreds of entrepreneurs and the startup community in general who have supported and promoted this effort. Also we are looking for a beach house owner or sponsor who is willing to work with us to further our goals of promoting the entrepreneurial spirit in the Philadelphia area.

We also want to thank those who have applied to be part of the inaugural Startup Beach House and encourage them to work on their ideas, even without the Startup Beach House. When we launch in 2013 we hope to have you all on board!

So there you have it. Jersey Shore, a “reality” show that personally I feel describes (to a T) the failures of American “pop” culture, has indirectly ruined another American culture, albeit in an incredibly small physical area. It is disheartening that 10-15 entrepreneurs and the three men behind Startup Beach House are left to deal with consequences of the actions of morons who are getting rich by dumbing down America. I’ll leave you with this thought.

“I know he’s a nice guy … he’s gotta be clean.” – Snooki, on her friend Keith

Linkage:

Startup Beach House

Indiegogo: We’re going back on the road to spread the word about startups Everywhere Else. We’ve got a $2 perk = Ramen or a $10 perk – Shower at a Truck Stop (Gotta be clean like Keith) – We could use your support. If you can’t afford $2 sharing the Indiegogo campaign is still free. :)

background layer of image courtesy of this site

Philadelphia’s appRenaissance Raises $1.5 Million In Seed Funding

appRenaissance a Philadelphia based mobile app developer and mobile infrastructure company has received $1.5 million in seed funding from Firstmark Capital and other Philadelphia angel investors.

The company private labels apps for other businesses. Some of their clients include; Ticketfly, BizEquity, AllFranz, Radian and Interact a Geo-social startup. appRenaissance also has a mobile application development platform called “Unifeed” that speeds up and simplifies development time and integration with enterprise services.

appRenaissance was founded by Scott Wasserman and CEO Bob Maul. The company has announced that they plan on using the funding to make a number of key hires and accelerate development of their Unifeed platform.

This isn’t the first time that Firstmark has teamed up with Maul. Firstmark was also in an investor in Maul’s company called Boomi a company that specializes in on demand integration technology. Like appRenaissance Boomi also has a proprietary platform. Theirs is called AtomSphere and connects providers and consumers of SaaS (Software as a service) applications via a pure SaaS integration platform.

“Backing a successful repeat entrepreneur like Bob is an easy decision,” said Amish Jani, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital. “Mobile computing is the next great wave of technology innovation and we look forward to working with Bob and founder Scott Wasserman to build a major player in the mobile apps and infrastructure space.”

“It’s great to be working with Amish and the guys from FirstMark Capital again as they were a major factor in our success with Boomi,” said Moul. “The mobile space is massive, it is still early, and ripe for innovation. And Philadelphia is the perfect home for the venture given the extensive mobile talent and thought leadership in the region.”

appRenaissance is located in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood and was founded in 2010.

Technically Philly Expanding To Cover Baltimore

One thing that Cameron and I have noticed on the road covering startups “Everywhere Else” is that there are some really great locally focused websites out there (and some really horrible ones). Sites like inthecapital.com (covering Washington DC’s thriving tech scene), Builtinchicago (covering Chicago’s Tech Scene), Silicon Prairie, TechCocktail and Technically Philly do a great job of keeping the tech community in their target areas in focus.

Technically Philly is expanding this summer. They let their readers know in this blog post that they plan on soft launching Technically Baltimore.com later this summer with the help of Baltimore entrepreneur and startup evangelist Mike Brenner. Brenner maintains the startupbaltimore.org site and will be instrumental in Technically Baltimore’d launch. They plan on having a more formal launch in the fall.

Technically Philly has a revenue model that consists of an annual event called “Philly Tech Week” which is just about a week away, along with other shoulder events, and some underwriting. They plan on continuing a similar model with the Baltimore site, so while reporting on the Baltimore tech scene will be priority number one, companies in Charm City will also get the chance to showcase themselves in an event similar to Philly Tech Week (we hope).

More after the break
Read More…

Philly Entrepreneurs Unveil The Startup Beach House

Now before we get too far into the story we are well aware that there are no “beaches” in Philadelphia however that’s not stopping Greg Berry (founder of Municibid), Mike Bianchini (Municibid CMO) and Dave Drager (Razorserver’s VP of Technology) from hosting the first ever Startup Beach House. Like most Philadelphians, the Startup beach house will be on the Jersey Shore.

The group is taking applicants now and plans to host five startups in a 6 bedroom 18 bed beach house in Avalon, NJ. The Startup Beach House will take place from August 11th to 18th and is open to anyone, not just those in Philadelphia.

“We’re more concerned with the quality of teammates than the idea,” Berry told technicallyphilly.com. “Mostly looking for people who share the same passion for entrepreneurship that we have.”

Will it be hard to focus on building a startup when you’re surrounded by miles of open beach and an awesome beach mansion? Maybe, but Berry is hoping that the next Instagram could come out of this experience.

If you’ve got what it takes to work in the startup beach house applications are being taken through May 31st Here. Good Luck.

Source: TechnicallyPhilly

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?