Today 14 new startups are being announced as part of DreamIt Ventures Demo Days Philadelphia. This invitation-only event showcases the year’s graduating ventures first with a presentation from each individual start-up, followed by an open gallery where attendees can interact with the companies directly. For DreamIt Ventures, one of the top 15 ranked accelerators in the U.S.,…
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Do you know where the presidential candidate you are supporting stands on immigration, healthcare, environmental policy, or other issues that are important to you? Many people vote alongside a political party without really knowing where candidates stand on specific issues. The problem is exacerbated at the state and local level where, according to ElectNext, “candidates are…
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Philadelphia-based startup Chimp Flix is doing a service to movie theater owners and moviegoers alike, helping movie theaters fill their empty seats and offering discounted tickets to consumers. On average, movie theaters only fill 25-30% of their seats per week. Come showtime, every empty seat represents lost potential revenue – until now. Chimp Flix allows…
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Way back in December 2010, we predicted that 2011 would be the year of mobile payment. Boy, were we right! We have already covered 6 different apps/platforms, and I am about to cover a 7th, Venmo, below, an app that has actually been around a while. Tech Cocktail’s co-founder Frank Gruber explained to me that…
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Do you love your business, but find yourself spending much too much time with back-end tasks such as scheduling instead of doing what you love? You aren’t alone. Business owners consistently search for ways to operate more efficiently, because quite frankly, back-end operations often aren’t the sexiest of responsibilities. Enter ReadySetWork, a Philadelphia-based startup that…
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For most students, Facebook is the perfect partner-in-crime if you want to procrastinate during finals week. But new Facebook application Hoot.Me is turning the social network into a collaborative study tool. Hoot.Me allows users to switch their Facebook experience into “study mode,” meaning that students can see what their friends are working on and join…
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“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” – Peter Drucker I get asked from time to time what I believe makes someone an entrepreneur, and invariably I respond by saying that an entrepreneur is someone who sees a problem and says, “I can fix that.” Peoples’ definitions will vary, and…
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Recently I was working out of one of my favorite Philadelphia coffee shops when I had the pleasure of meeting a young woman who works for the Adventures vertical of LivingSocial. This venture, formerly Urban Escapes out of NYC, was acquired by Living Social late last year. This person, who I very much enjoyed meeting…
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Dreamit Ventures, the Philadelphia-based Startup Accelerator that we covered previously, is bringing their startup incubator to NYC. Dreamit Ventures was ranked number nine in our recent USA Startup Accelerator report. The 3-month long programs include mentoring, up to $25,000 in funding, legal, accounting and admin help as well as the opportunity to pitch to VCs…
Read MoreMindSnacks offers a game-driven, mobile platform to learn a language. Currently the platform is offered for the iPhone and is limited to Spanish, but their goal is to soon offer French, Italian and Mandarin – and continue expanding from there. The current Spanish learning app was built in ten weeks and is now available in…
Read MoreWhat happens when social entrepreneurs meet up with a national disaster? From the rubble can emerge a new opportunity such as CitizenGulf, an amazing cause which has been put together by socially conscious members of the social media, non-profit and entrepreneurial communities to aid the Gulf Coast. This April, we watched in devastation as the…
Read MoreLast week we hosted our first Philadelphia TECH cocktail startup mixer event. We appreciate everyone that came out to support the local startup tech community and the 9 local Philly startups that were showcased. The event was in partnership with the Philly Startup Leaders and showcased some of the DreamIt Ventures 2010 startup class.
Read MoreWe are excited to be in Philly this week working with the support of startup incubator DreamIt Ventures, local organization Philly Startup Leaders, and local entrepreneurial co-working space, Indy Hall to present our first TECH cocktail Philly startup mixer. As many of you know we have hosted similar mixers across the country in Chicago, DC,…
Read MoreWe are in Philadelphia this week, the land of independence, where the startup incubator DreamIt Ventures is showcasing fourteen new startups this year. In their third year, the DreamIt Ventures demo day was kicked off by program managing partners Kerry Rupp, Steven Welch, Michael Levenson and David Bookspan.
Read MoreAs we were setting up TECH cocktail Philly, we heard a few people talking about a social ticketing platform startup in the area and set out to connect with them. The first thing we learned is that while somewhat new to us, TicketLeap has been around for several years – they even received funding a…
Read MoreFor anyone trying to reach a specific audience, it can be unclear as to where to find those customers and increasingly, which social networks to advertise within. In some cases you might choose to place an ad on Facebook and in others you might decide to go with LinkedIn or maybe both. Once you start…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More