Vuzit Gets Funding

One of our DreamIt companies, Vuzit, recently shared that the company received funding from a mix of angel investors and economic development organizations, including Robin Hood Ventures, Innovation Philadelphia and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Vuzit, located at the Science Center in Philadelphia, was part of our DreamIt Ventures program. Their flagship technology is an online document viewer and SaaS-based security application designed to provide a more secure method to share and store sensitive documents that today are often distributed by e-mail. Vuzit won the "Most Innovative Product or Service" from the Ben Franklin Emerging Business Awards competition earlier in the year. Coley Brown, President of CTB Consulting said, "We've been following the progress of Vuzit for some time and have chosen to be an investor with Innovation Philadelphia and Ben Franklin. Vuzit has shown amazing promise with over 5,000 trial users and a steep viral marketing curve. With Vuzit’s plans of a future document control system supporting Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA privacy requirements, Vuzit is primed to extend their current success into a whole new market." Coley is a member of Robin Hood Ventures and is mentoring Vuzit as a board member and temporary Vice President of Sales. Brett Matzelle, CEO of Vuzit, added, "It is satisfying to receive support from investors in the Philadelphia community like Robin Hood, Innovation Philadelphia and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. This was a natural next step for us after an intense summer with DreamIt Ventures where we were able to quickly transition from working prototype to a live application with paying customers. This money and related support will allow us to continue to drive the business forward, capitalizing on our positive momentum." The company will use the investment capital to enhance its sales and marketing efforts as well as to patent their proprietary document technology. To learn more about Vuzit and their new technology, please visit the website at http://vuzit.com/.

Meetup with Steve Barsh at TechAviv NY

Can't make it to Israel to hear Steve Barsh deliver his presentation on De-Risking Your Startup on December 30th? Never fear, Steve will be the "Hot Seat" presenter at TechAviv's New York Meetup on January 7th. To register for the event, visit the Meetup page.

SnackFeed Gets Crunched

SnackFeed is the latest of the 2008 alumni to get reCrunched. TechCrunch provided an update on SnackFeed last Friday, highlighting the growth the site has seen in the last three months. In November alone, SnackFeed generated more than 150,000 unique visitors; solid results for any b'alpha site. While Jason and CC Laan (SnackFeed's Founders) initially focused on developing tools to create personalized viewing channels, users provided important feedback-- they were primarily interested in watching the most talked about videos on the web. SnackFeed now focuses on this first and then provides its own recommendations. They must be on to something-- the 1,000 invite codes provided to TechCrunch users were quickly snatched up for free trials. To read the full article, click here.