Nimblelight builds dynamic web presences for businesses, non-profits, and artists. Their work includes web design and development, web consulting, web application development, paid search and search engine optimization, site analytics and user response optimization, social networking and relationship marketing, and online reputation management.

Nimblelight was founded in 2007 and has already established successful web presences for clients as distinguished as CarSense, Postgreen Homes, Auto Lenders, the City of Philadelphia, The Delaware Children’s Museum, and the seaside vacation town of Mystic, Connecticut.

Start Philly caught up with Nimblelight’s Brian Melton (Partner), who graciously answered our probing questions so that you, our treasured readers, would be thoroughly enlightened and informed about Philly’s companies on the rise.

Read on to get the inside scoop on the joys and pains of starting up, how failure can be valuable, and Brian Melton’s secret code name…

Read the rest of this entry »

In talking with people in technical fields, day-to-day verbiage can sometimes come across to the layman as robotic jargon. That’s when the interpreter comes into play.

When SemperCon’s CEO described his work as “cloud-based,” it took some dissecting to understand his reference to the Internet.

SemperCon first appeared on StartPhilly at the beginning of the year, with a contribution by President and CEO, Rick O’Brien.

O’Brien started this software development enterprise for young startups or already established companies. SemperCon works closely with its clients to build web-based and mobile Internet applications that leverage its motto of “always connected,” “cloud computing” capabilities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine never having to ask for separate checks at a restaurant, or splitting the bill, four ways, with credit.

An innovative pair thought of it first.

Iqram Magdon-Ismail and his partner, Andrew Kortina, found a way to quickly and easily transfer money, amongst friends, co-workers and whomever, without handling cash or IOU’s (I owe yous).

Venmo, (a combination of the words “vendor” and “mobile”) is a website dedicated to helping people transfer money in a method that is quick, easy and paperless.

“We built it because we had a problem,” said Ismail.

“We had no way of exchanging money with each other, except for cash and checks.”

Read the rest of this entry »

(This guest post was written by Rick O’Brien, serial entrepreneur and President of SemperCon):

As co-founder and CEO of early wireless internet application company Airput, I learned the hard way that it’s important to be as capital efficient as possible with your limited development funds.  Airput successfully raised money from several local VCs based on the initial success of our mobile applications and we then hired aggressively to expedite application development to meet critical market windows.  The problem was that the large overhead of our development team could not be supported by current sales.  When the internet bubble burst, we had spent our initial funding and found it impossible to raise additional capital to sustain operations.

Later while running the Product Development Group at iBiquity Digital, I started using a blend of in-house and outside development resources which allowed me to stretch my budget and also gave me the flexibility necessary to ramp development to hit critical deadlines.  The success I found using this cost-effective mix of development resources was the impetus for me to launch SemperCon and try to help other companies better leverage their precious development dollars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Meinzer needed to learn Japanese fast. He loved Rosetta Stone’s approach, but like many students he had no money…nor discipline to stay seated more than 5 minutes at a time.

“I wanted to learn Japanese in the many sporadic idle minutes of my day, one word at a time, one minute at a time,” says Meinzer, “…and I didn’t have the $300 for those attractive yellow Rosetta Stone boxes.”

Two years later, and two years more proficient in Japanese, Meinzer now runs his own language learning software company, PlaySay.com, which has served over 10 million digital vocabulary flashcard files to over 4,000 users worldwide. The online business currently offers products to learn Japanese, learn Chinese, and to learn Spanish, with many more languages to come. Many language departments of major universities across the United States are rapidly integrating the products into their curriculums for students. With the ability to trash their paper flashcards, students are raving about PlaySay.com. The Tokyo Metropolis and The Philadelphia Inquirer also seem to enjoy spreading the news of this cool new competitor of Rosetta Stone.

Read the rest of this entry »

(This guest post was written by Muhammad At-Tauhidi, corporate lawyer and entrepreneur):

I created Runt.ly as an easy way to share ad-hoc content over Twitter and other micro-blogs.  Runt.ly was designed as a “mini-blog” — for you when you have more to say then you can fit on a micro-blog but not so much that you would be inclined to create a traditional blog post for it.  Runt.ly makes it really easy to create multimedia posts that contain WYSIWYG text, photos and video that can be shared with a single short URL.  Although Runt.ly is similar to other “light-blogging” tools like Posterous or Tumblr, the focus is less on giving users their own personal homepage and more on making it easier for users to share individual pieces of content.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Astringer and his team of consultants are here to help small businesses get on their feet. For many start-ups, challenges early-on include tasks of hiring, organizing and developing a market base. Herein lies a solution to many of these initial road blocks facing many small businesses across the U.S.

Astringer founded Human Capital Consultants in 2005, with 16 years of experience serving clients within the realm of the Internet, computer software, consulting, telecommunications, marketing, casino gaming, health care and more.

“Start-ups need to hire,” said Astringer.

Read the rest of this entry »