Join us for the March happy hour!

Happy Hour March 10
6:30-9:30 PM
Ladder 15 Bar & Restaurant
1528 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA  19102
(215) 964-9755

Entrepreneurs Unplugged is back, with Ed Sullivan leading a group through the intricacies of selling to huge corporations and leveraging small successes to climb the startup ecosystem.

Register today to reserve a FREE seat for Entrepreneurs Unplugged v. VI

Entrepreneurs Unplugged Series continues on Wed, February 17th at 7 pm.
Featured Entrepreneur: Ed Sullivan, Founder of Aria Systems & Laserlink.Net
Location: Hamilton Hall 320 South Broad Street  (map -  http://tr.im/hHpj )
Cosponsored by the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at The University of the Arts.

Join us for Volume 6 of Entrepreneurs Unplugged, the series that brings successful local entrepreneurs on stage to educate, entertain and inspire the startup community. The format for the evening will be a 30 minute presentation followed by audience participation – so come out for a night of fun and information, and most importantly to have your startup questions answered. Ed Sullivan, founder of Aria Systems will be outlining an insightful and somewhat top-secret strategy for business success.

Presentation Topic: Leveraging Small Successes and Selling to Huge Corporations.

Ed’s experience selling to companies such as Gateway, IBM, SONY has left him with insights that he had to learn the hard way. Join us to hear first hand how he grew his company and raised $14M from Silicon Valley VCs, and learn to leverage small successes to climb the startup ecosystem and avoid the mistakes that he made. This is a must-see event for any company with a sales model. For those companies with no sales model, please contact Blake Jennelle and request a fishbowl session.

Bio:

Ed Sullivan, Aria Systems’ Founder, has been the CEO since the company’s inception in 2003. As CEO, Ed offers his vision, innovative ideas and valuable insight to the needs of the marketplace to bear on Aria’s strategic direction. Under his leadership, Aria has been established as the market leader in on-demand billing and customer lifecycle solutions and currently supports over 1 million customer accounts in 236 countries.

Ed’s entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas have led him to build several successful companies. Prior to Aria, he was the Founder and President of LaserLink.net, the World’s first and largest Virtual Internet Service Provider. LaserLink provided billing and Internet services to over one million end users and operated the Internet Services for several ISP’s including American Express, Compaq, Gateway, Amway and IBM. LaserLink was acquired by Covad Communications in March 2000.

Ed serves as a Director of NetQOS, an Austin Texas based IT company which offers end to end network management solutions. NetQOS was recently ranked the number one fastest growing technology company in Texas by Deloitte and Touche. He also serves on the advisory board of Covad Communications (DVW) a publicly traded provider of voice and data services. Ed has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University.

Register today to reserve your free seat!

Thanks to our friends at the Corzo Center of the University of Arts for providing such an extraordinary venue to showcase our local talent.  Tickets are free thanks to TicketLeap.

Ring in the startup new year with the January Philly Startup Leaders happy hour!

Happy Hour January 13
6:30-9:30 PM
MidAtlantic Restaurant and Bar
3711 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA
(215) 386-3711

http://www.midatlanticrestaurant.com/

January 20th, 7pm
Host: Frank Koehl – Fwd:Vault
Location: Terra Building, Room 1107
Address: 211 South Broad St.
Contact: Nicolas Warren

To welcome everyone to a new year with Philly Startup Leaders, come out and put on your marketing-caps for Frank Koehl and the newest and slickest company of 2010. Frank’s new company, Fwd:Vault, allows users to backup and recover their files using their email and web browser. Without any software to install or hardware to configure, Fwd:Vault aims to make data backups available to everyone regardless of skill or situation.  Come learn from the brilliant Philadelphia marketers or assert yourself as the go-to-market genius you are.

Frank Koehl is your all around go-to geek, with over 15 years of experience across the IT and web development sectors. He became a full-time entrepreneur in November 2008, when his employer went belly-up.

In development for the past year and open beta for the past 5 months, Fwd:Vault will launch around the new year, at which time Frank is refocusing to marketing and advertising. “And that’s an area with which I have little direct experience,” he admits. His goal at the PSL Fishbowl is to present his initial marketing game plan, and solicit the community for feedback.

Frank has thus far built Fwd:Vault without employees or outside capital, making this Fishbowl particularly useful to other “solo-preneurs.”  The University of the Arts gives us an outstanding location in which to hold the Fishbowls and there is always valuable networking with each event.  Grab your tickets before the room fills up

You can read more about Frank’s background on his blog here:

(http://frankkoehl.com/about-me)

and you can check out Fwd:Vault by visiting his site (http://fwdvault.com).

Register today to reserve a FREE seat for Entrepreneurs Unplugged v. V

Entrepreneurs Unplugged Series continues on Wed, December 16th at 7 pm.
Featured Entrepreneur: Alex Hillman, Co-Founder of IndyHall & Indyhall Labs & Founder at Unstickme.com
Location: Hamilton Hall 320 South Broad Street  (map -  http://tr.im/hHpj )
Cosponsored by the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at The University of the Arts.

Join us for Volume 5 of Entrepreneurs Unplugged, the series that brings successful local entrepreneurs on stage to educate, entertain and inspire the startup community.  The format for the evening will be a 30 minute presentation followed by audience participation – so come out for a night of fun and information, and most importantly to have your startup questions answered.

Presentation Topic: Building Your Team and Cultivating the Conditions of Success

Having co-founded IndyHall and IndyHall Labs, both highly regarded for their ability to empower ad-hoc team creation, Alex has been able to do something that on it’s surface seems contradictory:  cultivate organic team formation.   He will be sharing stories and fielding questions about crossing the bridge from full time employment to owning your own business, focusing on the importance of finding the right partner and recruiting the team you need to succeed while maintaining long term relationships to sustain your business long past your immediate needs.  There are still tickets available, but register now to ensure availability.

Bio:
Alex Hillman is a community architect and social business consultant based in sunny Philadelphia. Alex has led and evangelized the coworking movement in Philly and around the world by co-founding Independents Hall, a collaborative community focused on mixing social interaction with shared office space. Since opening the space, Alex has assisted a number of other similar group leaders in focusing and energizing their efforts. Alex is also a driving force behind multiple social media and technology events and organizations in the city, sharing his infectious enthusiasm with every person that crosses his path (or finds him on Twitter).

Register today to reserve your free seat!

Thanks to our friends at the Corzo Center of the University of Arts for providing such an extraordinary venue to showcase our local talent.  Tickets are free thanks to TicketLeap.

After two months of big events, the regular Philly Startup Leaders happy hour returns on Dec 9 at a new location!

Dec 9 Happy Hour
6:30-9:30 PM
MidAtlantic Restaurant and Bar
3711 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA
(215) 386-3711

http://www.midatlanticrestaurant.com/

Yesterday’s Founder Factory has already generated a flurry of press on top of the active conversations on Twitter yesterday.

Here’s a summary: Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Business Journal Blog, Technically Philly and Twitter #ffactory09.

Technically Philly cites “mixed reactions” so be sure to share your reactions in the comments!

The PSL Startup Breakfast has been designed for the busy entrepreneur who can be in/out in less than an hour.  However, there is no time restriction (hanging out afterward is encouraged).

Coventry deli is self-serve, so you order breakfast at the counter and seat yourself in the basement (cafeteria-style).  They have space available that will fit 100 people, and if you do not see the signs directing you downstairs, then please ask one of the cashiers to direct you to the basement.

When

Tuesday, October 27th, 8:00AM – 9:30AM

Where

Coventry Deli
2000 Market St
Philadelphia, PA 19103-3231

Links

Google Map

Website

Menu

By just about any measure, PSL 2.0 Weekend succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.

Here’s a taste:

• We had over 30 people participate. Many worked for all or most of the weekend.
• We produced some great new content, including a resources page, listserv guidelines and a new About Us page.
• We mocked up a new website (see below) that will showcase our members own content – this includes blogs, video and social streams including twitter and flickr.
• We started to build member profile and directory functionality using the Lovd By Less open source social network.
• We drafted some new logo and brand concepts.
• We kicked off a marketing committee. If you’d like to get involved, e-mail Tracey Welson-Rossman at twr@chariotsolutions.com.
• No one was injured during repeated ambushes with plastic weaponry.
• Improv comedy was a blast at comedysportz. And no one was injured there either.
• Despite my best efforts in building this list, I’m sure I’m leaving things out. It’s overwhelming how much was accomplished.

Be sure to check out all the great photos from the weekend, most taken spontaneously by Aaron McLean.

Tal Raviv and Jameson Detweiler waiting in ambush

Originally, I wanted to give everyone shout-outs individually. But then realized that if I did, this would be an endless e-mail. So many people contributed so much, so let me just say this – thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who pitched in!

We witnessed first hand what a remarkable, talented and hard working community we are. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I grow more confident everyday that we can accomplish anything we take on. Thanks for making a believer out of me!

We’re strongly considering making this a regular thing with one weekend day each month devoted to PSL 2.0. Stay tuned for more info.

And without further ado, here’s our current thinking on the look of the new website, still under development:

Mockup of our new website (still in draft and likely to change)