March 31st, 2009 
the Chubby Team 
In anticipation of our participation at Wharton’s Venture Capital Symposium last week, we decided to mine the ChubbyBrain platform and database to do a deeper dive of Pennsylvania and its startup, venture capital, angel investment and university entrepreneurship community. The numbers and figures you’ll see presented below examine only the composition of live startups and their backers (VCs, angels as well as university programs).
Pennsylvania Startups – Sector & Industry Composition
Pennsylvania’s startup mix is dominated by startups in the healthcare and technology arena, 30% and 37% respectively, of the startup population. The sector composition of Pennsylvania’s startups is shown below.
Within the healthcare arena, the majority of startups, 59%, fall into the biopharmaceutical industry. The technology sector is dominated by startups in the application software and internet areas, 37% and 35% of technology startups respectively. A deeper dive of Pennsylvania’s healthcare and technology sectors is given below.
Pennsylvania Healthcare Startups by Industry
Pennsylvania Technology Startups by Industry
Pennsylvania Startups – Geographic Breakdown
As might be suspected, Pennsylvania’s startups are largely centered around the state’s major urban centers, e.g., Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as the maps below illustrate. The middle of the state, as might be suspected, has fewer startups but State College where Penn State is located as well as Harrisburg and Lancaster do show some amounts of activity and the state does seem to have incentives in place to encourage investment in the middle of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Startups – Specific Startups and Investors
Pennsylvania startups which have been reviewed and rated by ChubbyBrain members have generally rated quite highly in aggregate. Additionally, healthcare and technology startups have also rated quite well based on feedback from our community.
Some of the most highly rated Pennsylvania startups on ChubbyBrain which are dominated by startups in the healthcare arena include: (company widgets included at the end of this post allow you to learn more about each company)
- Avid Radiopharmaceuticals
- SEEGRID
- BioNanomatrix
- NuPathe
- iCeutica
- Knopp Neurosciences
- RealWinWin
- Solixia
- Trevena
In terms of fundraising, several Pennsylvania startups raised significant angel or venture-capital funding. Top investment getters include:
- ECORE International
- InfaCare Pharmaceutical
- Knopp Neurosciences
- MyYearbook
- Aria Systems
- NanoPack
- Niiki Pharma
- BioNanomatrix
- Onconova Therapeutics
- Versify
And finally, the most popular Pennsylvania startups as measured by the number of times their profiles have been viewed include:
- BioNanomatrix
- Avid Radiopharmaceuticals
- MyYearbook
- NuPathe
- iCeutica
- Brightside Academy
- Infrascan
- SEEGRID
- Knopp Neurosciences
From an investor perspective, the state has numerous investors who are quite active. Amongst the most active investors in Pennsylvania are: (investor widgets included at the end of this post will allow you to learn more about each investor as well)
- Innovation Works
- Novitas Capital
- Ben Franklin Technology Partners
- Edison Venture Fund
- Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds
- BlueTree Allie Angels
- Bessemer Venture Partners
- MentorTech
- Wharton Venture Initiation Program (VIP)
- Weiss Tech House
The composition of these active investors as you can see is primarily venture capitalist (7 of 10), one angel investment group (BlueTree) and the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton VIP and Weiss Tech are both initiatives housed under the University). With its significant research and academic presence in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the states’ universities are proving to be formidable creators of entrepreneurship. In this case, Wharton VIP and Weiss Tech House do not take equity stakes in student startups but as they do provide a variety of services (office space, advisory help, other in-kind services, etc), we consider them as seed investors. As mentioned earlier, Penn State in State College, PA also is seeing increased entrepreneurial activity as students and professors embark on their own startup efforts.
Please note that this analysis is using data as of March 25, 2009. The ChubbyBrain platform continues to grow and so this analysis will be refreshed over time for Pennsylvania.
We look forward to comments by those involved in the Pennsylvania entrepreneurship/startup and/or investment communities and otherwise. Additionally, for those interested in Pennsylvania startups, the following blogs may be useful/interesting as they cover exclusively or in-part the startup activity, investment communities or economic activity in the state. If you know of other blogs, please leave them in the comments.
- Burgh Diaspora
- Colemaniac
- PGH Tech
- Philadelphia Startups
- Pittsburgh Future
- PSU Startups
- Philly Startup Leaders
- PhillyPreneurs
- Pittsblog
- Startup Pittsburgh
- TechBurgher
- Technically Philly
- Young Philly Politicos
Pennsylvania Startup, Venture Capital and Angel Investment Community, Trends and Statistics – ChubbyBrain Deep Dive
Most Active Investors in Pennsylvania Startups – Widgets
Most Highly Rated, Visited or Large Fundraisings in Pennsylvania – Company Widgets
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[...] analysis of some of the recent companies added at a later date (similar to our recent review of Pennsylvania’s startup, angel investor and venture capital landscape) but many of the newly added companies received angel investment from prominent US angels or [...]
[...] our recent analysis of Pennsylvania’s startup, venture capital and angel investor landscape, you may have noticed one of the most most active ‘investors’ in the state was the [...]
Great post and presentation. As someone who’s been doing tech startups in PA for over a decade, I can confirm this is a good high-level overview of funding opportunities in the state. Here’s a few additional details you might find interesting though:
1. New y-combinator-like micro-funding tech-incubators in both Pittsburgh (http://www.alphalab.org) and Philadelphia (http://www.dreamitventures.com)
2. Pittsburgh has exponential growth in gaming technology startups, mainly due to CMU’s ETC (http://www.etc.cmu.edu)
3. New Pittsburgh Ventures blog (http://www.pittsburghventures.com). You can tell they’re real VCs because the info is good, but the visual design is terrible
Jia- Thanks for the kind words and for the information. We have DreamIt Ventures and their portfolio on our platform (http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/dreamitventures) and will be sure to get Pittsburgh Ventures and AlphaLab onto the platform as well. It’s great to see this ecosystem of investors emerging and encouraging/supporting entrepreneurs in the Pittsburgh area.
Thanks again.