Capography, Palmling, and GameOnz demo at Philly Tech Meetup

Tinny Latin music crackled out of Ryan Frankel‘s iPhone.

Frankel, an MBA candidate at Wharton, along with Kunal Sarda, a Wharton graduate, were demoing their translation phone service Palmling to a packed room of Philly Tech Meetup spectators and they were hoping one of their paid-per-minute translators would pick up the phone.

The suspense was palpable. A translator answered the phone while Frankel and Sandha breathed a sigh of relief. This was their second attempt to show the crowd at the year’s second Philly Tech Meetup that if they were ever traveling overseas and unable to bridge the language barrier, Palmling could come to their rescue. Such is the risk of live demos, exemplified by a service that was otherwise well-received by the more than 100 in attendance.

The second Philly Tech Meetup of the year packed the Quorum space at the University City Science Center, with representatives from across the Philly tech spectrum including a few potential investors. Capography and PalmLing both executed live demos, along with a pitch by new software shop GroupAppz. The night was rounded out by what will likely be the last PTM happy hour at Mid-Atlantic, since the bar is reportedly scheduled to close in a couple weeks, according to PTM organizer Rohan Mehta.

After the jump, we have recaps of each company: Capography, PalmLing, and GameOnz

Capography

PalmLing’s minor demo snafu was not the only drama of the night.

Capography creator Tim Raybould, the CFO at ticketing shop TicketLeap, launched the entrepreneur-oriented cap table management service in real time as the crowd applauded a “finance guy” who could code. As Technically Philly reported earlier this week, Raybould built Capography to help startups manage, share and learn from their cap tables, which help entrepreneurs track equity takes in their companies.

Raybould demonstrated the various reports and calculations Capography can generate to track of investors and predict the financial outcome of investment terms. The service, which is now available, costs $199 per year per company.

PalmLing

Despite a failed first attempt at demonstrating PalmLing, a phone-based service that connects travelers with live translators, cofounders Frankel and Sardha tried again. With Frankel pretending to be a confused traveler in Spain, he asked for help telling a Spanish cab driver to take him to a soccer stadium. The translator, unaware that she was participating in a demo, performed as promised it seemed, asking to speak to the cab driver and explaining Frankel’s needs in Spanish.

Frankel then came clean and told the translator she was speaking to one of the PalmLing founders and introduced her to the rapt PTM crowd.

Frankel and Sundha explained that in a real customer situation, if a translator failed to answer the phone as in their first demo attempt, the system would automatically push the call to another potential translator.

Once a customer signs up, Palmling, which runs on the VoIP service Tropo, can be used on any phone, not just a smartphone.

[Full Disclosure: Tropo is a Philly Tech Week sponsor]

“Many people buy a local phone when they land at the airport. You just simply use your unique ID code and you’re all set,” said Frankel. “You call into the platform and you’re instantaneously connected to one of our translators.”

PalmLing currently retains translators who speak Hindi, Spanish, and Mandarin, but plans to expand as demand grows.

See the second successful demo in action below:

GameOnz

Two cofounders of GroupAppz, Steve Layne and Joseph Cellucci, showed off a PowerPoint presentation of their first product, GameOnz, a web and mobile app designed to allow athletes, coaches, parents and fans to manage and share the athletic schedules they care about, whether its travel soccer or the Philadelphia Flyers.

Although the app — which Layne said intentionally looks like a cross between Google+ and Facebook — appears to have the modern sports parent centrally in mind, Layne emphasized that the product also facilitates the hyperlocal engagement the media world, leagues, and potential branding partners are interested in cultivating.

GameOnz expects about 75 percent of revenue to come from mobile use, once they choose the right business model, said Layne, a self-styled serial entrepreneur and angel investor.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4az8fxd66sU]