Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners invests $1.4M in nine local startups [Startup Roundup]

Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup parses 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 a weekly email newsletter by clicking here and selecting the Startup Roundup button or follow Startup Roundup’s RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

WHO’S GETTING FUNDED

Safeguard Scientifics invested $1.33 million in Sotera Wireless, a San Diego-based medical device company, according to a release. Sotera Wireless raised $14.8 million overall.

Governor Tom Corbett‘s proposed budget calls for maintaining Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners‘ $14.5 million in funding, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The state-backed investment fund announced a $1.4 million investment in nine Philly-region startups, according to a release, including the three companies that participated in the Project Liberty Digital Incubator’s second class: Rumble, tapCLIQ, Zaahah. Read more about the rest of the investments here.

Wayne-based biotech company AFCell Medical raised $1.2 million, according to an SEC filing. Just last December, the company raised $1 million. AFCell Medical’s work focuses on amniotic tissue, according to its website.

Read more about DreamIt Ventures‘ DreamIt Health accelerator in this Medgadget interview with Venturef0rth cofounder and program co-leader Elliot Menschik. The application process closed late last week.

First Round Capital participated in a $3 million round for New York City-based ecommerce platform Nomi, according to AllThingsD. Speaking of First Round, at the investment firm’s Annual CTO Summit, Etsy CTO Kellan Elliott-McCrea gave a talk on how the startup grew their number of female engineers by almost 500 percent in one year. The buzzy talk has been making the rounds in publications like The Atlantic and Forbes.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ

Callowhill-based local discovery startup Locally.fm gets featured on BetaKit.

Callowhill-based couponing app SnipSnap has found a fan in one of the Real Housewives of Minnesota, the startup’s blog reported.

AND A FEW PARTING WORDS

“If you were a bad VC before and you didn’t deliver value, how would someone know that? Right now, if I’m a jerk to an entrepreneur at a meeting, he or she can tweet it out.”

– Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital managing partner, in a PandoDaily interview on building a venture capital’s firm brand.