Today, Baltimore's Millennial Media, which started up in 2006, announced it raised $16 million in new financing from some venture capital firms, including New Enterprise Associates. (Check out my story here.)

Last week's news that Google was buying mobile advertiser AdMob for $750 million probably didn't cause venture capitalists to throw money at Millennial (such deals usually take more than a week to put together), but it also probably didn't hurt the growing little firm.

The conventional wisdom now is that Google's purchase of AdMob "validates" the nascent mobile advertising industry. When a big company like Google drops a ton of dough on a small company in a still-emerging market, you know that will attract many more serious investors and players to the industry.

According to eMarketer stats via the Interactive Advertising Bureau, here's what the mobile ad market looks like:  

I'm gonna bet that the Google-AdMob acquisition, though the first big one in the mobile ad space, won't be the last. My guess is we may be a few months, perhaps even weeks, away from similar acquisitions of smaller mobile ad firms by big Google-esque-like competitors. What do you think?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Media, Online Advertising, Smartphones, Startups, Wireless
        

You may have heard about the big TED conferences that are organized around the world every year around the slogan: "Ideas Worth Spreading." At these events, hyper-smart people give talks on cutting edge -- or sometimes obscure but interesting -- topics, and the audience members are given lots of time to talk and network amongs themselves. The talks are video recorded and made available for free on TED's Website.

That basic format is coming to Baltimore's Maryland Institute College of Art, and it's called TEDxMidAtlantic. I wrote a story today that talks about how more than 100 enthusiastic volunteers came together to organize the free all-day event. The photo depicts several organizers, including Dave Troy in the middle, whose idea it was to bring the event to Baltimore.

It's gonna be a packed house. Stop and say hi if you see me!

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, East Coast, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Events (Baltimore area), Events (DC/No. Va. area), Geeks, Social Media
        

Yesterday afternoon, Mike Curreri, the CEO of Baltimore-based AVIcode, made good on a promise to employees to shave his head if the staff reached 100 percent of their sales goals in the third quarter.

You can see a "before" photo here.

Below you'll find the "after" photo, taken yesterday afternoon! Awesome!

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers
        

In a recent survey released by CNN Money, Baltimore ranked 10th in the nation for being one of the best large regions to launch a new business. The city's Emerging Technology Center, our own incubator, got a shout-out in the ranking.

So what city was number 1? Oklahoma City.

Interestingly, there were no West Coast cities that cracked the list. The editors, in their survey methodology, explained that they placed a premium in their rankings on the foreclosure rate -- and the West Coast has been hit hard with foreclosures.

What do you think about Baltimore's ranking? Fair? Deserved? Just right?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: East Coast, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers
        

Dave Troy here with Kris Appel, our guest blogger for today. Kris is the founder of Encore Path, a medical technology start-up in Baltimore.

As a first-time entrepreneur, raising the money to launch launch a medical device was a significant undertaking.

I am not only a first-time entrepreneur, but I chose to start a company in an unfamiliar field. I have a background in linguistics, but my company develops medical technology for stroke rehabilitation.

So I started this endeavor with two strikes against me. This month, I will close my Series A round, and my first product was launched this summer, a rehabilitation device that improves arm function in survivors of stroke and other brain injury. Here is how I was able to attract investment:

Continue reading "How to raise money for your tech startup" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Guest blogger week here at BaltTech may be winding down, but Mike Subelsky still has a few Q&As to share with us. Here's his latest.

Continuing on with my series of interviews with local entrepreneurs, here's Gabriel Weisz (pictured at right), co-founder of Salar, Inc, a medical software company, whom I met through the Greater Baltimore Technology Council.

Continue reading "Five Questions with Gabriel Weisz" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Startups
        

Guest blogger Mike Subelsky shares with us his non-scientific findings on who's doing a lot of novel work with open source. Feel free to nominate your own "open source heroes" in the comments section of this blog entry.

I did a quick survey over Twitter of people in Maryland who are involved in open source software and was amazed at who came out of the woodwork. Here is a quick and certainly non-inclusive list of open source contributors in our state, in no particular order:

• Jim Jagielski: Contributor to Apache, the most popular web server on the planet, and many other projects; also chairman and cofounder of the Apache Software Foundation

• John Trupiano: author of TimeCop, a really cool Ruby gem that helps developers test code that makes time comparisons and computations

• Shea Frederick: Core developer of the ExtJS framework for building rich Internet apps

• Dave Troy: A fellow guest contributor to this blog, creator of Astmanproxy (VoIP), votereport, and other projects

• Scott Paley: Has contributed marketing and documentation and donated staff hours to work on core components of the Plone CMS

• Robert Treat: Contributor to the PostgreSQL database

• Alan Viars: His OMHE (Open Mobile Health Exchange) project is getting picked up by microsyntax.org

• Jason Dixon: Core team member of the OpenBSD operating system

• Avdi Grimm: Author of the Ruby NullDB testing gem (Avdi's a Maryland native who lives in York, PA but frequents our tech scene all the time)

• Mark Harrison: Creator of helpmeict helpdesk system

• Theo Schlossnagle: Contributor to/creator of various Perl modules, Wackamole, Mungo, and other projects

Could this be a more instructive metric of Maryland technical vitality than statistical measures such as number postgraduate degree holders?

Posted by Liz Hacken at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers
        

What are you up to Wednesday night? Guest blogger Mike Subelsky wants you to check out Innovate Baltimore.

There's a promising new event debuting on Wednesday October 7th at the Gin Mill in Canton: Innovate Baltimore, described by its organizers as "an evening of fun mingling with other Baltimore area business leaders, entrepreneurs, creative and digital technology enthusiasts". It runs from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. Attendance is free but the organizers say you need to RSVP ahead of time.

Even if you're a habitué of Outlet Baltimore, Refresh, or TechNite, here's why you should check it out: it's organized by two people with a background in the games industry: Benjamin Walsh, a producer at Bethesda Softworks, and Tina Tyndal, a game marketing and brand consultant who writes the blog Girls Who Game. We haven't seen much gamer involvement in Baltimore's tech scene, so I'm betting Innovate will attract some new folks.

I'm totally on board with their mission: "...providing individuals with networking and educational opportunities which will allow them to generate new ideas, foster entrepreneurship and strengthen the professional community in the region. Our meetings spotlight local businesses, talent, emergent technology and trends, all while sharing a drink (or two) with friends."

Posted by Liz Hacken at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Events (Baltimore area), Geeks, Startups
        

Guest poster Mike Subelsky is back with the first of a few interviews with local technologists

I interviewed a few of Maryland's most interesting technologists to find out more about their successes, failures, and lessons learned; the interviews are lightly edited and condensed by me for the blogging format. My first interview is with Clarence Wooten, a great role model in the Maryland tech scene. He is a serial entrepreneur whose latest venture is Groupsite.com. I think his story illustrates a kind of success that is within the grasp of more people in our area than realize it.

Continue reading "Five questions with Clarence Wooten" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Our guest blogger for today is Mike Subelsky, an organizer with Ignite (which David Troy just wrote about in a BaltTech guest post) and co-founder of OtherInbox.com. Chime in with your ideas on what the Baltimore tech scene needs to thrive.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that Baltimore has a vital and thriving technology culture. We have many good companies, events and organizations in town in various stages of growth, and it's a very creative time for starting new things. The activation energy for a new tech culture project is getting lower all the time!

This is my attempt to add fuel to the fire: a list of things our tech culture would use. I don't claim ownership or authorship of any of these ideas, and I really hope someone will see one of these and get it going. If you do you'll find a great deal of support and encouragement from the whole scene!

Continue reading "What does our local tech culture need?" »

Posted by Liz Hacken at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Geeks, Research, Startups
        

By now, you may have heard about WhoGlue Inc., a tiny Baltimore tech firm, launching a lawsuit this week against Facebook for infringing on a key patent that essentially covers social networking and privacy features. (Here's my original story from yesterday.)

The patent at issue is titled "Distributed personal reationship information management system and methods," and was first filed in 2001 -- three years before Facebook was founded. It's worth noting that Facebook doesn't hold any patents currently.

In my interview with WhoGlue's founder, Jason D. Hardebeck, he made the point that much of what social networks now provide in terms of online privacy controls was something that his patent and technology has covered since 2001. The U.S. Patent Office issued the patent, after a lengthy review, in mid-2007.

So who is Hardebeck? At 44, he's a serial entrepreneur, meaning he's been involved with starting up a bunch of companies in his life. He was Maryland's first "entrepreneur in residence" in the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. And he's executive director of the Maryland Business Council.

His company, WhoGlue, has a big minority stakeholder: Siemens, the tech giant.

Hardebeck did his undergrad at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he was trained as a nuclear engineer. He later received a graduate business degree from Johns Hopkins. He's worked for Black & Decker in the past. In addition to running WhoGlue, which builds membership sites for associations and nonprofits, he's run market development for a Boston-based startup company called Ze-Gen.

"I pretty much keep my fingers in a lot of different pies," Hardebeck told me. 

On patents:

I spoke with Max Oppenheimer, a law professor and patent expert at the University of Baltimore, about the world of patents.  We talked about how sometimes, a technology becomes so widely used and accepted that it's hard to think that somebody may have a patent claim on it from years before. That's the case here with WhoGlue v. Facebook.

A patent filing can take 2-3 years to make its way through the system, and WhoGlue's seems to have been more complicated because it took 6 years. So, by the time the company was awarded the patent, the process and method that it had patented was being used by others.

"If the (patent) examiner looks at your application and thinks you have something new and nonobvious, then they're supposed to issue the patent to you," Oppenheimer told me. "By the time it comes out, it may be something commonplace."

Pretty messy, huh?

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers
        

If you haven't read it yet, then run -- don't walk -- to Jay Hancock's latest, most excellent column where he talks with Yash Gupta, dean of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. In it, Gupta (left) talks about the difference in the innovation economies and cultures of Baltimore and Southern California's Silicon Valley.

He makes some interesting points. And, it seems there's a call to action somewhere in there for our business and political leaders to wake up and smell the Old Bay right under their noses.

I may be oversimplifying it, but Gupta seems to say that entrepreneurs are overly dependent around these parts on the federal government as a cash cow for contracts. Such dependence can be both financially and professionally rewarding, but stultifying -- partly because the government market is a different animal than the consumer and business market.

It was also refreshing for Gupta to point out that California has high taxes and a tough regulatory environment, and yet its Silicon Valley is still synonymous with business innovation -- so the excuse that Maryland isn't tax-friendly to businesses may be just that: an excuse.

Yet, the other side is hard to ignore, when billions of federal dollars are staring your local/regional economy in the face.

In an interview I did awhile back with Christian Johansson, the state's secretary of the Department of Business and Economic Development, he essentially noted that the federal government is the big gorilla in the room that businesses around here can't ignore.

If the Maryland companies don't take advantage of the steady spigot of contracts that are made available each year, than other companies in other states most certainly will.

What do you think?

(photo credit: JHU)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Big Ideas, East Coast, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Government Tech, West Coast
        

Alright all you techies, entrepreneurs and risk-takers here in Maryland...Now is the time to vote your peace. Do you think Maryland has the right climate for nurturing startups?

Vote here, and tell us why you voted the way you did in the comments below.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: East Coast, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Startups
        

My story today about people launching "hire me" Websites was sparked by "retweets" last month about Matt Bivons, who launched an online drive to get a job at Blue Sky Factory, a Baltimore-based email marketing firm. He calls it BSFShouldHire.me.

Who was this guy? Why was he doing this? Will we all eventually have our own "hire me" Websites? I spoke to Matt early on, and then ruminated on the phenomenon for a few weeks, poking around here and there and trying to see if anyone else was doing this. I started finding more and more sites like Matt's when I simply Googled "shouldhireme.com" or "hireme.com." (Here's a short list of some I perused.)

Quickly, I learned that Jamie Varon, a 24-year-old from California who launched TwitterShouldHireMe.com, may have been among the first -- if not the first -- to do something like this (at least since Twitter and Facebook have been around.)

Two people I interviewed who didn't make it into my print story were Susan Lewis and Eric Barker. But it wasn't because their efforts and ideas weren't remarkable. On the contrary:

Susan, 39, a marketing pro from Dallas, launched SusanHiresABoss.com, which turns the typical job hunt on its ear. If you're a boss, you can't hire Susan. She's gonna hire you. She graduated from Seth Godin's informal MBA program in New York this year (a six-month boot camp for smart, social-media-savvy people) and launched her site.

Susan told me about 30 companies expressed interest in her (30!), and she's narrowed the field down to about three potential employers. "Some (opportunities) could be project work," Lewis said. "There's one I might end up making an offer to."

Eric Barker, 36, of Los Angeles, told me how he's been running inexpensive ads on Facebook to target employers he wants to work for. The way it works is he puts up an ad that he targets to employees of a particular company who happen to be on Facebook. When you buy an ad on Facebook, the site offers you granular tools to target your ad to people, say, who claim they work for a certain company. The ads get him noticed and he gets calls from recruiters.

Barker, a former Hollywood screenwriter with an MBA, said his Facebook campaign has cost him little more than $100. He's targeted ads to Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Youtube and IDEO -- basically companies that are in media. He's gotten contacts and interviews, ironically, with other companies who were impressed by the ad.

He said he "went nuclear" with the Facebook approach because of the rough job market and he needed to get attention quickly. "My background is in Hollywood," he said. "Nothing in Hollywood gets done effectively through formal channels. Everything is done by friend of a friend and reputation. The real world is not that much different."

His dream job would be something in product marketing and/or development, he told me.

About his Facebook approach, he said: "We're all marketers now, like it or not. Getting access [through the Web and interactive social media tools] is easy. It's now all about marketing and branding yourself."

If you're curious about using Facebook -- and even LinkedIn -- as ways to advertise yourself to a new job, you should check out some tips from Willy Franzen over at the One Day, One Job blog.

Let me know if you have success with your online campaigns to get the job of your dreams (or even just a job your mildly happy about, especially if it involves decent pay and health bennies.)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Big Ideas, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Jobs & Recruiting, Social Media
        

Two local businesses shared their stories with me on how they're making a pretty decent living servicing Apple products to different kinds of customers in the Baltimore area.

One is MacMedics, which has been around for 20 years and is based in Millersville. The other is Chesapeake Systems Inc., which is based in Hampden.

Here's the top of my story, which ran in yesterday's print edition, and is online here:

Dana Stibolt was in his early 20s when he started seriously tinkering with Apple computers at his parents' computer shop in Severna Park. It was the late 1980s and the computer that he taught himself to fix was called the Macintosh Plus.

What's interesting to note is that both of these businesses have done well because they've specialized in some areas of Mac product expertise. MacMedics offers consulting on networking, including integrating Macs and PCs; while Chesapeake has expertise in Apple's video hardware and software offerings, i.e. Final Cut Studio, and building out enterprise systems for companies that do a lot of video work.

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Gadgets
        

Last week here, I wrote about a rush of small Maryland start-up biotech companies to get in line for a generous state tax credit that was available for investors in the nascent industry. ("Maryland biotech companies crazy for tax credits!")

An Italian biotech consultant saw my post and was shocked -- shocked! -- by what we were doing here in Baltimore, Md. She wanted to know more. (She shot me an email. You'll see it below.)

To quickly recap: biotech companies started lining up Friday morning at the University of Maryland's BioPark in Baltimore to wait in line. The tax credits are doled out by the state every year on a first-come/first-served basis. Last I heard yesterday, 17 companies had stationed representatives in line, in an auditorium at the BioPark, to camp out for five days -- just so they could submit their applications for the tax credit this morning at 9 a.m. (I'm still waiting for the final headcount on how many submitted today.)

Several of the company reps I interviewed lauded the state for offering big tax breaks to drive investment in biotech here. One company, Noxilizer, told me how they were able to attract investors who live in other states, because of the tax credit. Few states have anything like this "Biotechnology Investment Incentive Tax Credit" program to kickstart the biotech industry, they told me.

About $36 million has gone into funding biotech startups over the past three years -- with half of it tax-free for investors, according to the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

What's happening in the state's biotech industry will eventually come under more scrutiny in the future (Gov. O'Malley has a Bio202 initiative to build up the industry over the next 10 years), as the public, politicians and business leaders will expect concrete results after all this investment, including new job creation and blockbuster products. (Mary Spiro ponders this future in her post on Maryland biotech's "boom or bust.")

Now, for the email from Valeria Spagnoli, a self-described biotech consultant in Italy who wants some more insight from biotech companies in Maryland on how they're going about getting funding from the state. Who wants to help her with her questions?

Hi,

Thank you so much for your kind reply!
Have a nice day!
Valeria

P.S. to Valeria: As my full story points out, there's only a limited pool of money -- $6 million this year -- so once it runs out, no one can get more funding. Each investor is entitled up to $250,000 in tax credits and no company can claim more than 15 percent of the total tax credit pool of $6 million. That said, there are some other nuances that maybe others closer to the process can jump in and explain for all of us.

(Published June 1, 2009)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: BioTech, Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, Startups, Venture Cap
        

I met an interesting chap last week: Donavon West. He's an independent software developer who works out of his home in North Baltimore. He's also a tinkerer, with a fascination for both new and old tech -- and how to combine the two, at least aesthetically.

I wrote about one of his creations, which he's calling the Home Servidor. Take a look at the video below (BaltTech blog's first video!) for a little tour of it. (Note: no cigar was harmed in the making of this video and I don't condone smoking them. <cough-cough>)

To celebrate the spirit of hackery, anybody else out there doing interesting mashups of new and old tech? Drop a note in the comments. Maybe I'll show up at your front door with a video camera. ;-)

Posted by Gus Sentementes at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Entrepreneurs & Risk Takers, For The Home, Gadgets