Entrepeneur Resources

Edible Investment: Whole Foods Market-Local Producer Loan Program

posted September 9, 2008 by Alexis S.  |  Comments (3)

When it comes to local produce, Whole Foods Market is truly bringing a lot to the table. Local Producer Loan Program (LPLP) was created by Whole Foods Market to provide “$10 million in low-interest loans to small, local producers.” Programs of this nature are incredibly important for our community, as they support small businesses and a healthy lifestyle for those consuming their delicious products. A win – win situation.

LPLP is a truly valuable program, since it simplifies the loan process so that the small business can focus on creating/harvesting a fabulous product instead of paperwork. In fact, LPLP “minimizes the fees, interest rates and paperwork that can often get in the way of a small local farm or business taking the next step to expand its operations.” The loans that range from $1,000 to $10,000, help local farmers and producers with “purchasing more animals, investing in new equipment or converting to organic production.”

Whole Foods Market only loans money to those that meet their qualifications:

  • Be a local producer of agricultural crops, value-added food products, or other all-natural grocery       items
  • Meet Whole Foods Market’s Quality Standards
  • Use funds for expansion, not operating expenses
  • Meet our Animal Compassion Standards, if meat or dairy producer
  • Have a viable business plan and adequate cash flow to service debt

From adding acres to a fruit and vegetable garden, to supporting a childhood dream of a sorbet company in Brooklyn, to turning up the heat for a bakery with new ovens, these loans are truly making a difference. Local loans are a fabulous way to invest in the community, as they not only create better products but strengthened relationships as well.  

 

alexis-s Alexis Siemons is a freelance writer and creative business consultant living in Philadelphia. She has a passion for language and explores it in her blog, The Lexicon . When not using both hands to feverishly type, she balances a teacup in one while working on her tea blog.
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Leaving The Nest: Funding Day at DreamIt

posted September 4, 2008 by David Speers  |  Comments (1)

Today marks DreamIt Ventures’ first Funding Day, during which the new startup incubator will introduce a dozen new companies to a collection of founders and venture capitalists. DreamIt is a program in the same vein as Y Combinator and TechStars, offering startups seed funding, guidance, and connections in exchange for equity. We’ve written brief introductions to each of the startups  -  TechCrunch

Read about all 11 Start-Ups that are pitching today at the DreamIt offices at the Science Center in University City today as the culmination of a 3 month ‘Start Up Boot Camp’.

(just heard that not all the companies are actually pitching today).

david Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
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Core Essence Orthopaedics has 5 million reasons to celebrate

posted August 28, 2008 by David Speers  |  Comments (0)

Robin Hood Ventures has completed its funding as part of the $5 Million Series A equity investment in Core Essence Orthopaedics, Inc., a medical device company based in Yardley, PA, focusing on soft tissue and skeletal repair. NewSpring Capital is leading the round through its dedicated healthcare fund, NewSpring Health Capital.

Core Essence Orthopaedics, Inc. (CE Ortho) is a privately held orthopaedic device company focused on the development, manufacture and commercialization of solutions for minimally invasive soft tissue and arthroscopic musculoskeletal repair for the extremity market. CE Ortho’s intuitive and innovative technologies are driven by increasing demands for alternatives to complicated surgical procedures. CE Ortho devices enable surgeons to build on classic and familiar surgical techniques with novel instruments and implants that simplify procedures and can be mastered quickly. The company’s proprietary technologies provide solutions to the growing volume of tendon and ligament repairs required by the active lifestyles of patients of all ages.

Website: http://www.CEOrtho.com

Robin Hood focuses on investing in early stage companies located in the Mid-Atlantic region. Portfolio companies include Aklero Process Solutions, Inc., Protez Pharmaceuticals, Bioconnect Systems, Intellifit, Paradigm Spine, Glucolight, Patria, Athleague, GlobalPrint, Power Medical Interventions (PMII), Compoze (acquired by BEA), and Etech Solutions, Inc., (Acquired by Perficient - PRFT) . As of August 2008, Robin Hood has invested in 21 companies.

Website: http://www.robinhoodventures.com

david Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
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Get Schooled in Business: Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs

posted August 21, 2008 by Alexis S.  |  Comments (0)


Philadelphia offers numerous resources for entrepreneurs; however, some outshine others, such as The Wharton School. Not only does Wharton train their students to enter the business world with the knowledge and skills necessary to run a successful company, but they also reach out to existing small businesses and support their endeavors. Wharton has created the Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs, which

“supports and seeds innovation and entrepreneurship globally through teaching, research and outreach to a range of organizations through its many programs, initiatives and research centers. At the same time, Wharton students and alumni are helping to build entrepreneurial enterprises around the world and impacting virtually every industry.”

Wharton truly understands that it is not only important to teach students to be business savvy, but to also nurture the community that they will be entering upon graduating. That being said, one of the many resources that they offer is the Wharton Small Business Development Center, that has

“assisted more than 20,000 small businesses in the greater Philadelphia area as part of its dual mission to provide one-on-one management consulting and affordable business training to entrepreneurs. Most of the Center’s business consultants are recruited from Wharton’s MBA and undergraduate programs. Business training comes in the form of more than 65 courses each year taught by staff and industry experts, many of whom are entrepreneurs themselves.”

I strongly recommended that you take a look at their classes, online resources and one-on-one consulting opportunities. For example, Wharton offers a two session program for “early stage entrepreneurs” that is lead by instructors for only $25 (an invaluable investment). This program offers entrepreneurs the ability to ask questions relating to their business, customized packets of research, assistance in creation of a business plan, review and assessment of the plan, etc. For more information about this program and a calendar of sessions, visit http://whartonsbdc.wharton.upenn.edu/coursedetails.asp?course_id=1

Thanks to Wharton, Philadelphia may soon be known as The City of Business Love.

alexis-s Alexis Siemons is a freelance writer and creative business consultant living in Philadelphia. She has a passion for language and explores it in her blog, The Lexicon . When not using both hands to feverishly type, she balances a teacup in one while working on her tea blog.
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Startups in one spot

posted August 14, 2008 by Alexis S.  |  Comments (1)


Who knew that an idea to gather celebrity gossip sites would turn into a tool that aggregates and displays useful information for countless, varying topics? This tool that I am speaking of is Alltop.com (all the top stories), which according to the creators,

“helps you explore your passions by collecting stories about ‘all the topics’ on the web… At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs. You can think of an Alltop site as a ‘digital magazine rack’ of the Internet.”

One of the aggregated topics that is obviously pertinent to Phillypreneurs is “startups.” Sites that have valuable information about “startups” are featured on this Alltop page, and range from The Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine to individual blogs. Alltop’s creators take the time seek out worthy sites through research on google, visiting the sites, recommendations via social networking sites, such as twitter, etc. Alltop subtopic pages reveal the site name and the five most recent stories, which is incredibly important for the “startups” page, as new ventures are being created at a rapid pace. Most important, they offer “diamond in the rough” sites, which is very valuable to me as I seek out unique content about entrepreneurs (I highly recommend that you visit WorkHappy.net “killer resources for entrepreneurs”).

I would like to thank the creators of Alltop, Guy Kawasaki, Kathryn Henkens and Will Mayall, for creating this useful tool that offers relevant and timely headlines (especially about startups) in an approachable site. They truly mean it when they say, “we’ve got startups covered.” Consider it a virtual library for the resources you’ll need to be a successful entrepreneur. That being said, I hope they consider adding Phillypreneurs to the “startups” page (cough, cough). But seriously, we would be truly honored. Make sure to visit Alltop’s startup page, and who knows, one day you might scroll over Phillypreneurs while you’re getting the latest update on the best entrepreneurial resources.

alexis-s Alexis Siemons is a freelance writer and creative business consultant living in Philadelphia. She has a passion for language and explores it in her blog, The Lexicon . When not using both hands to feverishly type, she balances a teacup in one while working on her tea blog.
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Describing the world in 30 or less: Phrazit launches

posted August 14, 2008 by David Speers  |  Comments (2)

Being brief has always been a skill in communication, a skill that’s never been more important than in our current info-saturated world. We’re a cliff notes culture, and while that might have a slacker connotation, its become a necessity of modern life.

Take movie reviews, for example. Every news paper in the country has a Film Critic who writes between a paragraph and a page of cinematic prose, way too much for me. Considering how insane my life is, I truly need the thumbnail version, Rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates the most descriptive two lines from the best critics in the country and presents them in an easy-to-read format. It’s simple, it’s insightful, it’s awesome! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everything in life had a summation tool like Rotten Tomatoes?

Enter Phrazit: Phrazit is a way to browse and share condensed reviews on anything! It is one of DreamIt ventures’ most recent projects here in Philly. Phrazit has an ambitious and frankly massive goal of describing everything within 30 characters or less. Not sentence, not words, but characters. That makes Twitter look like a Wikipedia article.

Phrazit has just launched today and they’ve already scored the holy grail of PR for their online app, a Tech Crunch shout out. I spoke with one of the founders, David Kosslyn, about the launch and how their servers were handling the attention:

“This morning Phrazit began a full-scale launch with an article about us on TechCrunch. The past couple couple days have been full of last minute coding, advice and writing. The anxious anticipation of the launch made for a few sleepless nights, but we were relieved to see that the article didn’t tear us apart, and that our servers have been handling the load. We’ve also been receiving some brutally honest comments and feedback, which have been incredibly helpful in giving us a sense of where to go.”

Read the Tech Crunch article on Phrazit.
More about Phrazit: condensed reviews.
More about DreamIt, the home of Phrazit.

david Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
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Philly FailCamp FTW!

posted July 30, 2008 by David Speers  |  Comments (1)

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.” - J.K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Speech

It’s not something that your typical ego-centric entrepreneur wants to talk about; the fact that she/he has failed at one point or another. The evolutionary reality is that like the progression of life itself, failure is an essential ingredient of individual and organizational success. So this past Saturday a diverse group of innovators ranging from professors to programmers to graphic designers humbled themselves enough to get together to share, and more importantly learn from, one another’s mistakes.

Hosted at Indy Hall by Alex Hillman, Amy Hoy, Thomas Fuchs and Tony Bacigalupo nearly forty people came out to share in a the first Philly ‘fail session’.

Read more about the first FailCamp at IndyHall:

Alex Hillman’s recap
Kevin Lee, of Story Slam fame, gives his take on the unique session

“We took that feedback and, on the fly, spun out a new format to try. We set a 10 minute timer and asked people to share a problem/failure they were experiencing at this current period of time, and then within the same 10 minute window, gave the room an opportunity to speed-coach.” - Alex Hillmen

By the end of FailCamp it became obvious that we had tapped into something fundamentally ignored in the entrepreneur community; the fact that inventors and technology creators are constantly on the edge of failure and need help from their community to keep from going insane.

*FTW = For The Win
Suprisingly, Fail Whale didn\'t make it to FailCamp

david Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
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Philadelphia nanotechnology startup gets new leadership.

posted July 22, 2008 by David Speers  |  Comments (0)

y-carbon nano technology company

Y-Carbon, Inc., a nanotechnology startup developing an innovative method of making and tailoring novel, nanostructured carbon materials with applications in energy storage, medical products, life science research, filtration and purification systems, announced today that Edward L. Erickson has been appointed CEO and a Director.

Mr. Erickson has served as president, CEO or director of a dozen such companies, four of which successfully completed IPOs during his tenure. He has raised more than $500M in equity and debt capital in both the private and public capital markets. Ed will serve Y-Carbon initially on a part-time basis pending completion of certain other entrepreneurial projects.

Y-Carbon, founded in 2004, is a materials science company with an initial focus in energy applications. Y-Carbon has obtained broad and exclusive rights to intellectual property in the field of carbide derived carbon (CDC), which is an innovative “tuneable” nano-porous, high specific surface area material invented by Prof. Gogotsi’s team in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. The company is currently based in the Philadelphia Keystone Innovation Zone (KIZ) and is a spin off from the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute. Y-Carbon is also a portfolio company of the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center and The Nanotechnology Institute of Ben Franklin Technology Partners Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Read more about Erickson’s move to Y-Carbon CEO

david Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
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Gary Busey on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur

posted July 21, 2008 by B. Frank  |  Comments (3)

It’s Monday. We know. We feel it too. Here’s a little Monday morning medicine that will help chase away that weekend hangover: Busey (PS: it’s the strongest stuff we got).

And when you have a chance, check out all 40 Buse-isms. You can justify the time as an investment into your business education ;-)

b-frank Entrepreneur, Statesman, diplomat, educator, inventor, author, printer, philosopher, scientist, shopkeeper, musician, economist, public servant and American hero.
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Why Two Engines Can Be Worse Than One

posted July 17, 2008 by EricH  |  Comments (1)

Chinook \

In response to an alarming number of helicopter crashes, the U.S. Army once built a helicopter with two engines. In theory, this backup engine would reduce the number of crashes. If one engine went out, the pilot could simply turn the other engine on.

In practice, however, the dual-engine choppers actually had more serious accidents than single-engine versions. It turned out that having the option of engaging the second engine was diverting the pilots’ attention from the immediate challenge - landing safely. At the first sign of an engine malfunction, the pilots were taking their focus off flying the aircraft as they attempted to switch between engines. The second engine proved to be a dangerous distraction rather than a helpful option.

Performance Principle: In a crisis, too many options can cause paralysis. When coaching individuals who have an immediate problem, help them to pick one strategy that they will stick to for the short term. This keeps them focused and gets them working toward a solution. Later, the strategy can be modified or even abandoned. But often, people need to work rather than think their way out of trouble.

A question: Do you have people who are paralyzed by too many potential solutions to a pressing problem? If so, how can you help them to choose and stick to one strategy that will get them moving forward?

erich Eric has 18 years of experience in recruiting, coaching, and motivating business people. Previous to founding his firm Clarius, Eric was an executive recruiter, working with Fortune 500 and mid-market companies to identify and recruit CFOs, Controllers and financial staff for their organizations.
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