Startup Roundup: Local angle to Twitter’s Fail Whale; NuPathe sets IPO terms

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

LTL Prints has been racking up partners weekly, according to the deluge of press releases we get, but that’s why not why we’re playing this one. The Old City-based wall graphics company has an interview with Twitter’s Fail Whale creator — and LTL featured artist — Yiying Lu. It’s not about failure at all:”I wanted to create a visual greeting – a visual ‘comfort’ for my friends back home for all the events that I was missing,” Lu says. Check it out if not for the story, for the original sketches.
Conshocken-based biotech firm NuPathe — read our Q&A with the company, which is developing a migraine treatment patch, here — has set the terms for the debut of its initial public offering, at between $14 and $16 per share, hoping to raise $75 million with the offering.
We’re way psyched to see this one come through the pipeline: ZVRS, a company which is taking advantage of iPhone 4’s Facetime to provide translation services for the hearing impaired launched launched at Hard Rock in Center City. Remember that, ahem, social entrepreneurship thing here in Philly we’ve been writing and talking with folks about? Yeah, cough. It’s happening.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

DreamIt Ventures graduate SeatGeek, now based in New York, raised $1 million in funding this week while on the other side of the Technically Philly world — in our Venture Capital Roundup — DreamIt organizers are defending DreamIt’s success, though a a Forbes story last week questioned it.
myYearbook‘s got a few new partners for its real-time Chatter web app, a Twitter clone, that maybe does Twitter a little smarter than Twitter. It’s offering businesses a 100,000 fans guarentee. Anywho, Got Milk, Six Flags and MTV drank the kool aid, according to a press release. And geez, those numbers. Got Milk—that’s right, the one you know and love and thought was gone—generated 30,000 comments and 500,000 new fans in less than two months on the teen social network. That’s where the money is, peoples.
RedLasso has partnered with Daylife, an NYC-based company that creates content tools for media companies and brands. Daylife’s got all the buzz lately one would expect of a $15 million-funded company, and RedLasso is excited to be a part of it, providing its partners with greater reach.
ProtonMedia shows off the goods for the forthcoming version 1.5 of ProtoSphere, its virtual reality meeting software. There’s now proxy features for bypassing company firewalls (yo, don’t tell the myYearbook kids about proxies; they already know about ’em). The software company will also provide the option to bundle the ProtoSphere app on USB drives for mobility. Nice.
Lancaster-based nonprofit fundraising software firm GiftWorks gets featured this morning for its interesting, if not valuable to some, blog platform which offers tips to development leaders on how to raise dollars in the not-for-profit world.

GIVE A GLANCE

Here’s some advice for startups this week, as well. Keep that budget belt tight my friend and take the leap for big growth.
PackLate has announced a partnership with Barefoot Technologies, a browser-based reservation and asset management system, giving the latter real-time booking tech, a direction for PackLate that seems an obvious, if not smart revenue model. We really want to book a trip with PackLate, but damned us if that isn’t a conflict of interest.
As if Venmo needed anymore credibility, now London is all over their mobile payment jawn.
Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.