"We're providing these companies free rent, free office equipment, and the infrastructure to operate their business, day-to-day, for a six-month period, while they agree to develop a media product for consideration" by The Inquirer, the Daily News, Philadelphia SportsWeek, and Philly.com, spokesman Mark Block said.
"This will be a great fit," ElectNext's Dannenbaum said. "People who are accustomed to getting their political information online are a natural fit for us. It's a great opportunity to work with The Inquirer in our first publisher relationship."
The incubator is funded by a $250,000 Knight Foundation grant and aided by Drexel University, which supplies interns to the firms, and DreamIt Ventures, which helped all three firms build their business models.
Do it again
Bob Moul, the serial CEO who sold Berwyn-based Boomi to Dell Computer in 2010 (a decade after his previous firm, SCT, was bought by SunGard), has left the company. "[Dell] would have loved for me to stay. But I'm a start-up guy. I want to do it again," Moul said.
He's working on a couple of possibilities. Meantime he's honing his local connections by stepping up as president of Philly Start-Up Leaders and joining the board of PACT, the local tech lobby group.
Philadelphia as a tech start-up center has trailed far behind Silicon Valley and the Boston area. But Moul says the latest generation isn't as tied to the old venture capital centers.
He cites the rapid rise of local co-working spaces and tech incubators - Independents Hall in Old City, Greenhouse Business Incubator and Seed Philly at 1650 Arch, Elliot Menschik's Venturef0rth on Eighth Street, Novitorium in Langhorne, the coIN Loft in Wilmington, the Port Business Incubator at University City Science Center, and the nascent Project Liberty Digital Incubator here at The Inquirer, for example.
