PhillyDeals: Apps a Phila. growth industry
Amid the slow U.S. economy, writing software applications for iPhone and Android smartphones is a rare growth industry. Companies are spending big to follow their workers and customers into mobile apps, backed by remote ("cloud") computer servers, just as they moved online by adding pioneer websites 20 years ago.
Amid the slow U.S. economy, writing software applications for iPhone and Android smartphones is a rare growth industry.
Companies are spending big to follow their workers and customers into mobile apps, backed by remote ("cloud") computer servers, just as they moved online by adding pioneer websites 20 years ago.
Here are a few examples of Philadelphia software developers getting paid to go mobile:
Philly-built
John Guillaume moved his family to Philadelphia from Denver after Comcast Corp. bought New Global Telecom, where he was an executive, in 2010.
New Global was one of a group of companies - Center City-based Alteva Inc. is another - building "universal" phone-smartphone-Internet systems for small businesses. Comcast bought it to boost its small-business services.
Its new Comcast Business VoiceEdge apps, which tens of thousands of Comcast users have been downloading free in the last two months, were designed by New Global veterans - and built mostly by Comcast software developers in Philadelphia, who "did the coding and built the back-end connectivity into the network," Guillaume told me.
"In this world, apps are pervasive. We're all attached to our smartphones now," he added.
"There are quite a few providers helping businesses connect to smartphones and tablets. What makes Comcast different is that they built this," says Diane Myers, principal analyst at California-based Infonetics Research. "They could have used an off-the-shelf product. But they have a lot invested in making their own user interface. That's who they are."
Philly-tested
From his new office in Old City, Bob Moul's Artisan Mobile keeps 25 software developers and business people busy building mobile applications and market-testing systems for clients.
This summer he raised $5.5 million from investors led by New York's FirstMark Capital, which also backed the last software company he ran, Berwyn-based Boomi, before Moul and founder Rick Nucci sold it to Dell Computer three years ago.
There's room in Artisan's new digs to double in size, and Moul expects to need it, he says, as colleague Dan Koch, a 2006 Penn engineering grad who moved here from a job in Minneapolis, prepared a laptop demonstration of Artisan's Optimize testing and tweaking system.
Philadelphia factory chains used to build and supply railroads. "We also have this network aspect of software companies working together," says Moul, who also heads the group Philly Startup Leaders.
Philly-funded
You become a venture capitalist by raising capital to venture. George Krautzel and his partner sold their pioneering "online community" software firm, ITtoolbox, in 2007 for $58 million. Now, with other founders-grown-rich, he helps run Center City-based MissionOG, which invests in new firms in the mobile-apps space, among others.
One recent MissionOG pick is Cloudmine, a Center City firm that has built a system for creating low-cost new mobile apps. Another, Cloudamize, helps companies measure costs and benefits for cloud and mobile applications. It was founded by Kushboo Shah, a software security expert on maternity leave when she drafted the business plan for Philadelphia-based start-up-backer DreamIt Ventures.
Internet entrepreneurs used to carp that Philadelphia lacked tech investors. But the city's mobile-apps and cloud-era software sector, as in other East Coast cities, is "a great place to invest," says Krautzel.
"There's talent here, with all the schools. Company valuations are much cheaper," he said, compared with inflated Silicon Valley prices.
Add all the potential of those big East Coast corporate customers, and "good tech entrepreneurs have no reason to leave," Krautzel said.
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