If you missed IgnitePhilly, it was an incredible event.  Over 300 people crammed into Johnny Brenda’s, and dozens more were turned away at the door.

See what you missed: IgnitePhilly videos.  And here is the video of my presentation.

Apparently it’s no accident that we run PSL the way we do. Check out Alex Hillman’s blog post on civic entrepreneurship – it’s eerie at times on how relevant it is to PSL’s success so far!

Just wanted to thank everyone for a great happy hour last night.  I think I enjoyed this one more than any of the others so far.  We had a great turnout from every part of the ecosystem (except service providers, of course)—startup entrepreneurs, VCs and angels, university reps, economic development orgs, and more.  We also made good progress on our Startup School project.  Thank you to the 25 or so who attended our planning meeting before the happy hour.

In case you missed it, we had a surprise guest in City Councilman Bill Green.  He spent a good 90 minutes getting to know our members.  Little did we know that our own Rick Rasansky had been talking up PSL to him.  Well done Rick!

As Councilman Green showed us last night, he is serious about supporting startups and wants to create a much more robust community of seed-stage angels in Philadelphia.  His attendance sends a strong message about his priorities, and I think I speak for many of us in saying that we were very impressed with him. 

If you haven’t already, please add a recurrence to your calendar for the second Wednesday of every month, the date of our happy hours.  Our next happy hour is June 11.  We have something special in store!

Peter Key from the Philadelphia Business Journal wrote an insightful article about PSL’s leadership role in the grassroots movement that is shaking up Philadelphia’s business community.

As this article points out, we are at the front of a larger innovative movement, side-by-side with Alex Hillman’s Indy Hall and Vanja Buvac’s The Hacktory and MakePhilly. These groups are doing some amazing things. Stay tuned for news about the collaboration we have brewing.

See the complete print version of the article here, thanks to the versatile Vuzit viewer (say that three times fast!).

Congratulations to everyone who made the March happy hour such a success. With 70-80 startup leaders, investors and stakeholders in attendance, I think we may have outgrown Loie.

Stay tuned for a possible new venue for April, and mark your calendars for the next happy hour, April 9 at 7:30PM.

For those of you who missed it, here’s a recap of our special guests.

First-time guests:

• President of University of the Arts, Sean Buffington, and Neil Kleinman, Dean of the College of Media and Communications
• Ben Franklin Technology Partners – Alan Kraus
• Osage Ventures – David Drahms
• Safeguard Scientifics – Mark Mitchell
• Select Greater Philadelphia – Jeanne O’Connor and Phil Hopkins

Returning special guests:

• ETF Venture Fund – Scott Bohrer
• BVB Capital Group – Rob Van Naarden
• Emerald Stage2 Ventures – Saul Richter
• MentorTech Ventures – Brett Topche
  

As part of our mission to connect startups with tech talent, PSL is co-hosting a kickoff party for the Emerging Tech for the Enterprise Conference. This conference will bring developers and technologists from around the country to Philadelphia–in addition to attracting many of Philadelphia’s finest developers.

I encourage all startups in the technology space to check it out. This a great opportunity to meet talent. Sly Fox Brewery will be providing beer samples–in case you needed an excuse!

This event is free and does not require that you register for the conference.

Great job to Tracey Welson-Rossman from Chariot Solutions for organizing the event.

Kickoff Party for Emerging Tech for the Enterprise Conference
March 25th, 5:00 - 7:00pm
Drexel’s Creese Student Center, 32nd and Chestnut Streets

If your startup needs an intern, check out CampusPhilly’s Online Internship Fair. Philly Startup Leaders is a proud partner in this event.

Don’t wait to post your opportunity, do it now. The fair only lasts from Feb 23-29 and interns are already browsing the site.

Anthillz has an internship opportunity posted there, and if you don’t act quickly, I will be sure to snatch up all the best candidates.

Congratulations to Jon Herrman at CampusPhilly for putting this together!

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I couldn’t be prouder to be an entrepreneur in Philadelphia.

At last night’s event, we saw the first hints of something truly remarkable–a thriving startup community, built from the collaboration of entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, and city leaders.

For the 50+ of us in that room, I think we discovered a powerful bond that holds us all together:
We each chose to pursue unlikely dreams in an unlikely city.
And we will be damned if we don’t make those dreams come true.

Our latest batch of new members brings all of us one step closer. Welcome especially to our new investors, policy makers, and city leaders:

• ETF Venture Funds– Wayne Kimmel and Scott Bohrer
• DreamIt Ventures– David Bookspan and Steve Welch
• Golden Seeds – Gloria Rabinowitz and Cristiane Andrade
• Emerald Stage2 Ventures – Saul Richter and Shelby Zitelman
• MentorTech Ventures – Brett Topche
• Delaware Crossing Angel Investor Group – Vanaja Ragavan
• Innovation Philadelphia – Kelly Lee
• City of Philadelphia – Josh Sevin

Great to have you all on board!

More good news in the effort to unite the Philadelphia startup community. Recognizing our shared vision and overlapping membership, the Philadelphia Internet Professionals Meetup group has decided to join Philly Startup Leaders and redirect traffic from its website to PhillyStartupLeaders.org. The Philadelphia Internet Professionals Meetup brings its 49 members into the Philly Startup Leaders community.

Mark Spangler, the founder of the Philadelphia Internet Professionals Meetup and co-founder of Classicwines.com, will continue his leadership in the Philadelphia startup community as an active member of Philly Startup Leaders.

Welcome to the startup leaders from the Philadelphia Internet Professionals Meetup!