Small Business
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Center City social gaming developer Ryzing L.L.C. has been acquired by a California game developer called RockYou Inc.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
A statement released by one of Ryzing's investors indicated that Ryzing's team, headed by Manu Gambhir, will join RockYou, which intends to maintain and grow the Philadelphia office.
Wayne Kimmel, a partner in the Artists & Instigators venture fund, said Ryzing currently has 10 full-time equivalent employees, including six in Philadelphia. Kimmel will join the board of directors of RockYou, the company behind the Zoo World line of games on Facebook.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
GoodCompany Group, which runs a free business incubator/boot camp, has announced the latest group of start-ups who will participate in its fourth summer program.
Here are the 13 firms:
- Counterflow RO, which is developing a new reverse-osmosis membrane that can be used in the semiconductor, pharmaceuticals, food processing and municipal drinking water sectors.
- Desmo, of Sweden, which has developed an online donations widget to make sure that nonprofit organizations receive all that is promised.
- Edibikes, which was started by two engineering graduates of Northwestern who have developed a line of commuter bicycles.
- High Hopes, which is a spin-off of Clarifi, the nonprofit financial literacy group formerly known as Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley, that will use online technology to help high school students plan for a postsecondary education with the least amount of debt.
- NovaThermal Energy, which is developing a geothermal technology for landlords that is designed to save 30 percent to 60 percent in building heating and cooling costs.
- PaperWool, which is developing a line of “eco-home furnishings.”
- PhilanTech, of Washington, D.C., which is trying to reducing the transaction costs of grants administration, which consumes 13 percent of every dollar, or $6 billion annually.
- pledge4good, the People’s Choice Award winner in the Wharton Business Plan Competittion in 2011 which has built an online platform that aims to make donating casual, recurring and social. (Read a Q&A by Fast Company with the co-founder here.)
- psGive, which uses game strategies to encourage consumers to support brands that consequently support charities.
- Regalii, which has built a free platform to replace remittances used by migrant workers with gift cards for the supermarkets and other stores in Latin America where their families shop.
- StartSomeGood, also from Washington, D.C., which is developing a platform to help social entrepreneurs raise start-up funds, like Kickstarter does for the arts.
- TuvaLabs, which intends to help teachers offer interactive math learning units for their students.
- Wash Cycle Laundry, which provides commercial linen rental and personal laundry service in Center City and University City and makes its deliveries using bicycles. (See a story by The Inquirer's Diane Mastrull on the firm here.)
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Two more Philadelphia-area banks have gotten funding through the U.S. Treasury Department's Small Business Lending Fund.
DNB Financial Corp., of Downingtown, received $13 million, while Valley Green Bank, of Philadelphia, got $5 million.
They were two of 37 banks that recently obtained a total of $418 million through the federal program, which is intended to encourage community banks to increase lending to small firms. Only banks with less than $10 billion in assets can apply for the funding.
DNB and Valley Green join Doylestown-based Monument Bank, which got $3 million in July, as the only local banks that have participated in the program created as part of the recent Small Business Jobs Act.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Here are the student-run winners of Drexel University's 2011 Baiada Center Incubator Competition:
First place: Passionfly, a social advertising platform that was formerly known as Campus Sponsorship when it participated in DreamIt Ventures' 2010 bootcamp program. Passionfly's aim is to turn consumers in the 18- to 24-year-old age group into "brand ambassadors" for advertisers over social networks in exchange for rewards, such as donations to groups those consumers care about, according to Rob Falcone, a co-founder of the company.
Second place: CarTech, a start-up seeking to provide a hardware and software system to allow car enthusiasts to measure the performance of their cars. (For another award-winning car team, read my colleague Scott Sturgis' column on the West Philly Hybrid X team here.)
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
It seems odd for the U.S. Small Business Administration to hand out awards to big businesses just because they play well with small business.
But if it wasn’t for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Award for Excellence, the Philadelphia area wouldn’t have any winners among the national awards issued during last week’s National Small Business Week.
Amec Earth & Environmental Inc., of Plymouth Meeting, received the Eisenhower award in the services category. That office is part of Amec P.L.C., a London-based engineering and project-management company that had 2010 revenue of 2.95 billion pounds, or $4.5 billion.
So we’re not dealing with a small business, but Joseph Farrell, small-business liaison officer with Amec, said his company uses lots of subcontractors that certainly do qualify as small firms. In fact, up to 50 percent of the dollars it spends on subcontractors on the federal contracts it receives goes to small business, he said.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Know a minority entrepreneur with a great idea for a new business?
Thanks to some financial and mentoring support from Comcast Corp.'s venture capital arm, the fall "business accelerator" program of Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures Inc. will make sure five of the 15 companies chosen will be minority-led start-ups.
DreamIt will start its three-month program (which will be its fourth third in Philadelphia) in space at the University City Science Center in West Philadelphia Sept. 9. Interested businesses need to submit their applications online here by July 8.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
It’s great to see Azavea Inc. and Stroll L.L.C., both of Philadelphia, make the Inner City 100 list again.
That’s an annual ranking by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City of the fastest-growing companies in urban cores where the unemployment and poverty rates are higher than the surrounding region.
Stroll, an online direct-response retailer of personal-development audio books with offices at 1600 John F. Kennedy Blvd., ranked No. 25. Azavea, a Web software developer at 340 N. 12th St., placed No. 48. Both appeared on the 2010 list; Azavea made the cut in 2009, too, when it was known as Avencia.
Companies were ranked by revenue growth between 2005 and 2009. Stroll, which had 2009 revenue of $16.7 million, had revenue growth of 52 percent over that four-year period. With 2009 revenue of $2.2 million, Azavea produced revenue growth of 32 percent.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
I don’t like to wring my hands too much over one set of economic data.
The $15 trillion U.S. economy is far too complex to fixate on only one aspect of it. The direction of employment, or rather unemployment, gets and deserves a lot of attention, but it’s not the only thing that matters when it comes to economic health.
While I’m inclined to view Friday’s announcement that the economy created more than 200,000 jobs for the third straight month as very positive, it wasn’t the blowout statistic that I think forecasters have been rooting for.
The economic recovery may be 22 months old, but I’m impatient for the business mood to switch to risk-taking from risk-forsaking. Sure, mergers-and-acquisitions activity seems to have picked up at the Fortune 500 level. That’s cold comfort to small businesses that are simply looking for their sales to pick up.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
While every week is small-business week here in The Inquirer’s Business section on Mondays, the real thing will be held May 16 to 20.
That’s when the U.S. Small Business Administration will hold several events in Washington to acknowledge the diversity and importance of the nation’s 27.2 million small businesses. (I don’t think they’re all invited to attend.)
The week culminates with the naming of the national Small Business Person of the Year. But no need to hold your breath: The winner won’t be a Philadelphia-area company for the umpteenth year in a row.
The state winners for Pennsylvania and New Jersey are Joseph Santelli, president of Santelli Tempered Glass Inc. in the Western Pennsylvania town of Monessen, and Jose Rodriguez, president of Merit Investigative Services Inc., of Newark.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Let me confess up front that the 13th Wharton Business Plan Competition had me squirming at times as the business students gave their pitches.
Flipables wants to sell low-cost, disposable flip-flops to gyms to help reduce the chances of picking up foot fungus, athlete’s foot, or worse from the shower floor.
Cyrano Nasal Sciences L.L.C. views shots of botulinum toxin in a patient’s nasal passages as a once-a-season treatment for allergies.
And Boss Medical has designed a medical device for surgeons to better “harvest” bone graft material from a patient’s pelvis for use in spinal-fusion surgery.
Mentioned: Penn Presbyterian Medical Center
Mike Armstrong blogs about Philadelphia corporations and business-related topics. Contact him at 215-854-2980.
Reach Mike at marmstrong@phillynews.com.
