More details on the $1.5m appRenaissance seed investment [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.

Startup Roundup has had some technical difficulties for the past couple weeks, so we’re playing catch-up this morning. Consider things officially back on track.

MUST READS

FirstMark Capital managing director Amish Jani writes on BusinessInsider why the investment firm decided to back Bob Moul a second time with a $1.5 million seed round in appRenaissance. It’s a great look behind-the-scenes at why proven entrepreneurs get money.

Our own Yael Borofsky writes about a very public courting of Airtime’s Dan Shipper by San Francisco startup 42Floors. Shipper declined. In related news, Airtime now features seamless Outlook integration. We particularly enjoyed this comment: “The early history of Silicon Valley has already been written. But the early days of the Philly startup community are being written right now.”

GIVE A GLANCE

TicketLeap announced a first-in-industry reserved seating system, which allows event organizers to create maps of their venues and sell seats accordingly.

Monetate, which is growing at an incredibly rapid pace, has been detailing its hiring escapades on its online blog. Potential developers are asked to do some on-the-spot (if not fun) coding. In related news, the company recently signed on Brooks Brothers as a client.

Only five months after launching there, TrapCall has pulled support for its service with Canadian carriers. Maybe it was the cold, our words. Or, in the company’s words: “We’re also sorry that you don’t have a more competitive, innovative and embracing, wireless market.” Ouch.

ElectNext gets love on Mashable, as well as, at press time, 123 Facebook likes, 826 tweets, 8 Google+ shares, 125 LinkedIn shares, 4 Pinterest, uhm, pins, and 202 stumbles. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

The Daily News’s Jonathan Takiff covers Philly Tech Week’s Entrepreneur Expo, focusing on startups Lokalty, Startup Weekend, PalmLing, ManCaveKingdom and others.

Though the company has since split for New York, Coursekit, the higher education-focused social networking education tool has rebranded as Lore, in case you’re following along. The company also announced that Peter Thiel has invested in the company, Betabeat reports.

Startup Weekend Health, set to take place June 1, is offering early-bird tickets with Technically Philly, a media sponsor [See our coverage here]. Technically Philly readers can enter “technicallyphilly” to receive $40 off Early Bird tickets, which are only on sale until May 11.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.