Startup Roundup: Where’s the talent?

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’sRSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.
MUST READS
Where’s the talent? The Inky’s Joe DiStefano asks a question we’ve been hearing a lot lately from the startup community: if you’re able to nab an investment or come up with a sensible solution to bootstrap, are there enough talented engineers in Philadelphia to keep the enterprise afloat? Monetate‘s CEO David Brussin says coders “are not looking for jobs, they have jobs.” First Round‘s Josh Kopelman calls it Philadelphia’s biggest challenge. And on that note: JoeD says Monetate hopes to grow from 50 to 100 employees a year from now.
All this is even after Monetate announced that RxShortages, a mobile application that helps customers find out if prescription medication is available locally, has won its $5,000 Open Source Prize. The contest was clearly an attempt to try to identify some of that talent. We’ll be following-up to see if any of those leads were solid.
It’s not helping that a report issued from the ISTE education technology conference currently at the Pennsylvania Convention Center says that a survey of 1,000 high school students, faculty and IT staff indicates that 39% don’t think that technology expectations are being met in the classroom.
Even if it’s a tough climb, all we ask is that you, dear founder, is that you don’t give up.

GIVE A GLANCE
As we noted yesterday, Penn’s CourseKit has raised $1 million in funding to continue developing their Blackboard competitor. DiStefano has more here.
DreamIt Ventures grad Notehall was acquired by online textbook retailer Chegg for an undisclosed amount, TechCrunch reports.
MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME
The Baltimore Sun has a thougtful report on startup accelerators and their pull from cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia for New York and the Valley.
ProtonMedia was awarded a Microsoft 2011 Life Sciences Award for its virtual collaborative workspace, which Microsoft says is part of a group of nominees that are helping to prove a sustainable impact on the industry, according to a press release.
Exton’s ThingWorx has acquired Palantiri Systems to bolster its integrated real-world tracking system.
Langhorne’s eGames announced that it acquired Heyday Games, another social game company.
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