
DreamIt Incubator Holds Funding Day To Commemorate First Graduating Class - brm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/04/dreamit-incubator-holds-funding-day-to-commemorate-first-graduating-class/
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jaymstr
Okay, I’ll preface this with letting everyone know that I’m a part of the
Philadelphia community, and I know a lot of the guys that were a part of
DreamIt.

I am very familiar with many of these companies. I use Dropcard about a few
times a week. These guys have made it extraordinarily easy to send a digital
business card that you can easily add to any address book. Just try it. It
will take you less than 15 minutes to get set up. I’ll certainly be using it
at TC50 next week.

Vuzit is a great idea backed by great technology. Some people really are
looking for a white label solution for viewing documents and don’t want their
documents hosted at Scribd or Docstoc which have more of a YouTube model.
They’ve also got some features you won’t find elsewhere.

Anthilllz also has some great potential. LinkedIn lets you recommend others,
but this entire site is built upon your recommendations and others’ opinions
of you. Imagine you’re looking for a new web designer. What is more important,
a LinkedIn profile (essentially a resume) or a place that has truly honest
reviews? If Anthillz is successful at building out its network through its
“Trusted Colleagues” feature (which is a great viral feature), then you’ll
find it quickly become a place where people’s reputations live and die.

I can’t really speak to the other companies as I’m not too familiar, and I
think that maybe some of the ideas for some of those companies might be a
little flaky from these summaries, but there are some very promising companies
in the bunch. They may not ever be huge, but they can certainly be successful.

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JoeCotellese
I would have to disagree with the Philly bashing here. If you think all we
have are cheesesteaks you are grossly misinformed.

Philadelphia has a long history of being at the forefront of the technology
curve. It was the birthplace of the first commercial computer in the US. It
was home to Commodore Business Machines. If you owned a PC in the 90s there
was a great chance it had an ENSONIQ sound card in it. If you take out your
iPhone and make a phone call its powered by Interdigital technology. Odds are
your digital TV is using a set top box made by Motorola. And like it or not
your broadband and cable are powered by Comcast.

If you are really interested in seeing what other companies are in the
Philadelphia area check out <http://www.phillytechhq.com>.

The high tech community is alive and well in Philadelphia

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Protophore
Is it just me or are most of those ideas a little boring? I don't see anything
that would make me get excited as an investor.

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davidw
Wow, sleep.fm puts in an appearance.

~~~
marketer
Sleep.fm could be promising, if they ditch the webapp route and made a
hardware device that is configured through the web, similar to picwing.

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ph0rque
One route to do both would be adapting their app to iphone/android/other
smartphones.

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ryanspahn
yep we have a windows mobile app were refining and working on multiple
platforms!

See this video here ... <http://www.vimeo.com/1629637>

An alarm clock that tells you to go back to sleep, saves lives, reminds you,
motivates you, provides greetings/well wishes on special days, allows you to
remain close to those who are far away, provides personal information.... that
is <http://Sleep.FM>!

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redorb
It seems that a requirement for dreamit, was a 2.0 name :( - I hope this fad
soon fades.

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fallentimes
We actually applied to Dreamit but they told us we had to switch our name to
TicketStumblr.

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blakeweb
Interesting to me that their site (dreamitventures.com) is a dotnetnuke portal
(based on the favicon and linking structure). Didn't think that was being put
to use by people positioning themselves on the cutting edge these days.

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abossy
Where is DreamIt located? I can't find it on their website.

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abossy
Oh, nm, I found it deep in their FAQ. Philadelphia? Yikes! (Not saying
anything bad about Philadelphia, but it's not exactly known as a startup hub.
You really do want to minimize the odds against you in a startup situation.)

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cera
I'm a Philly native, and participated in the DreamIt program this summer. --
vuzit.com. In 2005/2006, it seemed that everytime Paul Graham wanted to bash a
city's startup culture Philadelphia got thrown in there. I'm hoping that
perception is changing ... <http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html>
<http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html>

Philly is one of the largest startup hubs in the world for bio-tech and life
sciences. Philly might not be known for its tech scene as much, or very early
stage investing, so DreamIt has been a big step for the ecosystem here.
Philosophy on investing seems different than what I see in Silicon Valley and
NYC.

There is money here: Entrepreneur Magazine's VC 100 in August 2008 listed Ben
Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA as tied for 3rd in the country
as far as #deals done. Josh Kopelman and Chris Fralic from First Round Capital
are here too.

There is community here: Phillystartupleaders.org is a group of 250+ mostly
tech entrepreneurs and VCs that meet monthly for a happy hour event.
Indyhall.org is one of the most successful coworking spaces out there.
IgnitePhilly was a huge success, with another one planned in the next couple
of weeks. phillytechhq.com is a blog aggregator of all the tech companies here
(big + small). The "user group" community is pretty huge too:
<http://phillygroups.org/community/GroupDirectory>

There are alot of universities that provide access to talent: Drexel,
Penn/Wharton, Temple/Fox, etc.

Philly also has an awesome combination of art and American history that make
it a wonderful place to live. I hope this clears up some perceptions about
Philly!

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abossy
Very useful information -- I'll have to look more into it. Thanks!!!

