Here’s what Philly Startup Leaders will focus on in 2014

Rick Nucci is back at it.

Last spring, he left Dell Boomi, the Berwyn-based cloud computing company he cofounded that Dell bought in 2010 for an undisclosed amount. After a short vacation (“Summer of Rick,” he quipped), he’s back on the scene with an Old City startup (still in stealth mode, the company has already raised $1.8 million) and a new title: Philly Startup Leaders president. Nucci, 37, replaced Bob Moul, former CEO of Boomi and now CEO of Old City mobile startup Artisan.

PSL, the six-year-old volunteer-run group, is the kind of organization that wasn’t around when he was building Boomi in Conshohocken in the early 2000s, he said. He praised the way PSL has created “an informal environment where cofounders can be transparent about their challenges.”

We sat down with the Wynnewood resident to hear his priorities for his two-year term.

1. University outreach. Nucci said that everyone he’s spoken with has said that the tech scene needs to do a better job of reaching college students. We predict programming and partnerships with organizations like nonprofit Campus Philly and student-run startup crew nvigor.
2. Mentorship. PSL is piloting its PSL Accelerator, a three-month mentorship program that kicked off last night The program is starting small, with 11 mentor pairs, to test it before opening it up to the public. It’ll tackle the ubiquitous problem of raising capital, with mentors helping mentees with their investor pitches, among other things.
3. Marketing. Nucci wants to work on publicizing local startups’ successes and getting the word out overall.

He’s also rethinking the PSL listserv, as well as overseeing a project to make its archives searchable.

Would Nucci ever consider moving the group to a paid model? Membership dues? Hired staff? No, he said, because it’s important that PSL has no other agenda than supporting entrepreneurs.

“It gets harder when there’s a revenue expectation,” he said.