First Round Capital will see 3,500+ pitches this year [VC Roundup]

Welcome to the VC Roundup, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

MUST READS

The Washington Post has a great video featuring First Round Capital managing partner Howard Morgan about the changing ecosystem of startups and how investments are made. This year, the firm will likely see more than 3,500 pitches, up 30 percent from last year, Morgan says.

West Chester-based Hoopla Software closed a $2.8 million Series A round led by Safeguard Scientifics, the company announced last week.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Edison Ventures led a $10 million Series B round for advertising platform Magnetic that also included IA Capital Partners, NYC Seed, NYC Investment Fund and more, according to a press release.

As we reported earlier this month, Comcast Ventures has decided to fund two more cycles of DreamIt Access, the minority startup accelerator program.

BusinessInsider writes about Jordan Elpern-Waxman, former Genacast Ventures investor and Wharton grad who recently left the firm for a startup company to be “on the right side of the market.”

GIVE A GLANCE

Don’t miss our in-depth coverage of the Project Liberty incubator’s first class, which ran Monday. In related news, DreamIt Ventures Venture Partner Arie Abecassis writes for ReadWriteWeb about how to evaluate startup accelerators.

A report from Preqin Research shows that First Round Capital has invested $82.4 million in social networking companies, peHUB reports. In the aggregate, the firm’s dealmaking was part of 800 VC deals and $8.3 billion that have been invested in social networking companies since 2010, the report shows.

Last week, MightyText, which is hoping to provide a free SMS platform available on multiple devices, launched with the backing of a $640,000 round from First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures and angels, as BusinessInsider reported.

First Round was part of a recent $5 million investment in MemSQL, which improves the speed of technology platforms working with Big Data.

The firm also participated in a $7 million investment in Bitasa, as the San Francisco Business Times reported. The company provides infinite cloud storage to consumers.