April 14 is an evening not to be missed. Good Company Ventures is hosting its Philly launch event about social entrepreneurship and mission-driven investment. Then the party moves to Ladder 15 for the Philly Startup Leaders happy hour. It's going to be a heckuva night. Here are the where and when for both events... Good Company Ventures Philadelphia Launch April 14 @ 5:30pm Blank Rome Conference Center One Logan Square - 130 North 18th Street, Phila, PA 19103 Philly Startup Leaders Happy Hour April 14 @ 7:30pm Ladder 15 - 1528 Sansom Street, Philadelphia (215) 964-9755 http://www.ladder15philly.com Can't wait to see you at both events!

April 14 is an evening not to be missed. Good Company Ventures is hosting its Philly launch event about social entrepreneurship and mission-driven investment. Then the party moves to Ladder 15 for the Philly Startup Leaders happy hour. It's going to be a heckuva night. Here are the where and when for both events... Good Company Ventures Philadelphia Launch April 14 @ 5:30pm Blank Rome Conference Center One Logan Square - 130 North 18th Street, Phila, PA 19103 Philly Startup Leaders Happy Hour April 14 @ 7:30pm Ladder 15 - 1528 Sansom Street, Philadelphia (215) 964-9755 http://www.ladder15philly.com Can't wait to see you at both events!

THE GIGABIT GENIUS GRANT More than $10,000 for one extraordinary gigabit project Gigabit connectivity will change the world. Think of it like the jump from dialup modems to current broadband speeds repeated all over again, with today’s connections feeling like dialup modems before the end of this decade. So what new technologies will ultra-high speed connectivity enable? And how will that technology revolutionize our lives? That’s what the world is waiting on you to figure out. The Gigabit Genius Grant is a competition designed to spark a worldwide conversation about practical applications for ultra-high bandwidth technologies. It was inspired by Google’s fiber for communities project and funded by tech, business and civic leaders in the City of Philadelphia – people who love technology and believe deeply in its potential to change the world. We are giving at least $10,000 to the most promising gigabit project. These ideas must be submitted on Gigabit Philly but can come from anyone, anywhere in the world. How the Gigabit Genius Grant works Here's how we're organizing the Gigabit Genius Grant: People like you submit project ideas to Gigabit Philly Users choose the finalists by voting on their favorite projects A panel of technology experts, civic leaders, entrepreneurs and investors evaluate the finalists for social impact, viability and community excitement The winning project receives the $10,000+ Gigabit Genius Grant for use in bringing their project to life We will also award a $1,000 Popular Genius Grant to the project with the most votes, regardless of panel opinion or use of funds. The deadline for project submissions is April 30, 2010. Note that our deadline is after Google’s deadline for their fiber for communities submissions. That’s because we see Google’s project as the beginning rather than the end of the movement to accelerate gigabit adoption worldwide. Submit your projects early and often You can submit as many ideas as you like, and we encourage you to submit them early and often. That way your ideas have more time to earn votes. So if you have an idea, now is the best time to get started. Get started - Visit Gigabit Philly now

Philly Startup Leaders present: The Second Annual Entrepreneur Expo. Website: http://expo.phillystartupleaders.org Want to attend as a guest/attendee? Click here: Get Tickets Want to be an exhibitor? Click here: Exhibitors Apply Here April 13, 2010 from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, at Solmossen Court, Hamilton Hall, University of the Arts, 320 South Broad Street, Philadelphia. Get excited about the future. Get excited about the entrepreneurial spirit of Philadelphia. Come to the Entrepreneur Expo. Come and see tomorrow, today. Over 40 entrepreneurs will display their dreams, ideas and hard work in a trade-show like setting, with a select number giving a brief presentation of their work.

PHILLY STARTUP LEADERS GOES ALL-IN FOR GOOGLE GIGABIT City government hasn't taken the gamble we need. So we will. We're wagering every dollar we have -- all $5,000 of it. We have been saying for years now that Philadelphia has the best grassroots tech and creative community in the world. Now it’s time to make that obvious to everyone else. Google has created a national competition among cities for the opportunity to have ultra-high bandwidth gigabit connectivity installed in portions of the winning city. This is part of a massive social and technological experiment designed to accelerate worldwide broadband adoption. The Google Gigabit competition ends in just eight days, on March 26, 2010. Philly’s grassroots communities have thrown our hat in the ring with Gigabit Philly, a website spearheaded by Alex Hillman and Branimir Vasilic and built by members of Philly Startup Leaders, Indy Hall and a band of dedicated individuals. Among those individuals are City Councilman Bill Green and City Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. But that’s not enough. Not nearly. Google will never choose a city where the government and the broader community doesn’t do something dramatic. We need to show that all of us can work together and dedicate ourselves to making this experiment an over-the-top success for Google. Because as vague as Google has been with their selection criteria, we know this much: they want the winning city to use gigabit in a way that becomes the envy of the world. They want an example city that inspires other cities and towns to drastically accelerate ultra-high bandwidth adoption. What has the city of Philadelphia done so far? Essentially nothing. Let's not be too surprised. Government in these cases can do little. The imagination and energy is going to have to come from the grassroots. It's time for us to take the lead. That's why we’re taking matters into our own hands. Philly Startup Leaders is investing every last dollar that’s not allocated to our upcoming Entrepreneur Expo event to seed a massive community-funded prize for the best ultra-high bandwidth idea submitted to Gigabit Philly. That’s $5,000. We’re all-in. This money is everything we have saved in our organization’s piggybank for the last two and a half years. Yes, we know that the city has been dealing with an awful budget crisis. Yes, we know that most of the major businesses, NGOs and non-profits have been suffering too. And yes, we know that many of our startups are running on empty. But that doesn't make us helpless. Remember, we are a do-it-yourself city. Philly Startup Leaders is only the spark. Our money is intended to jolt the great people of Philadelphia into action. We are counting on our friends in the grassroots community and the Philadelphia establishment to pour their money on top of ours, dwarfing our $5,000 contribution. Together, will make the prize fund so broad-based and substantial that people will hear about it all over the world. We are counting on more than money. We are counting on the power of the community to generate hundreds if not thousands of great ideas that demonstrate that this city has the ingenuity and determination to lead the world into a new gigabit era. Eight days is a challenge for sure. We'll need to work at gigabit speed ourselves to collect both the prize money and the ideas that can stun and surprise us all. Just to show that Philly truly is the city of brotherly love, anyone in the world can win the prize. Even from a competitive city. Innovation is not about one city versus another. It's about making progress together, and so when we judge the submissions, we will be impartial. We promise. That said, all ideas must be submitted to Gigabit Philly. We won't review submissions anywhere else. Movements don’t go anywhere without the courage of the first followers. Thanks so much to Neil Kleinman for commiting $1,000 from the University of the Arts' Corzo Center for the Creative Economy, and also to City Councilman Bill Green and City CTO Allan Frank for each committing $500 of their own money. That’s $7,000 already. Now let’s add some zeros to that. We can do this together, one donation at a time. To contribute to the prize, make a written commitment in the comments section below this post, including the dollar amount. Also be sure to email us your contact information to info@phillystartupleaders.com so we can reach you (please include your phone number). Because time is short, we will formalize this commitment process in the coming days with the help of the broader Philadelphia community. We will also nail down the selection criteria. Now for the other critical call to action: Make some noise. If you care about the future of Philadelphia, or about the future of broadband technology more broadly, share your enthusiasm with the world. Use every medium at your disposal and all the creativity you can muster. On Twitter, use #GigabitPhilly. We can do this Philadelphia. We will do this.

We have a special Fishbowl event coming up on March 17th, with Allan Frank, CTO of The City of Philadelphia. He'll be presenting a vision for digital Philadelphia and an economic development model for the tech ecosystem. He's leading on some initiatives that will certainly be of interest to the tech startup community. The event is free, but requires registration. UArts Terra Building (211 S. Broad) Connelly Auditorium, Room 806, at 7:00 PM.