This post originally ran on Technically Philly. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a previously announced partnership.

Josh Kopelman is angry.

When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.

“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”

After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.

Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.

First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.

“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”

Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.

We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.

Read the rest here on Technically Philly.

While Philadelphia may be lagging behind in entrepreneurship, apparently it’s not such a bad environment to launch your startup.  CNN Money and (once again) the Kauffman foundation teamed up to “find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America” and Philadelphia made the cut.

It seems a few of the reasons were that there is an above average amount of young college graduates and an extremely large number of small businesses in the area (presumably to work with).  Taxes were factored in, and apparently overall, despite our business tax, we were still somewhere in the top 30 or so it seems.  There’s some more information also on how they came to their conclusions.

The Kauffman Foundation in their recent summary on entrepreneurship for 2008, highlighted both Pennsylvania and Philadelphia briefly, in a not so positive light.

The states with the lowest entrepreneurial activity rates were Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Iowa and Ohio.

Among the United States’ fifteen largest metropolitan statistical areas, Atlanta had the highest entrepreneurial rate (0.74 percent) in 2008. Philadelphia had the lowest rate (0.16 percent).

There has been a lot of speculation over reasons for this amongst various groups in the area.  Everything from the Philadelphia business tax situation to the historic industry of this area has been suggested as potential reasons for us lagging behind, but the report itself perhaps details some possible reasons.

U.S. entrepreneurship rates increased for the lowest-income-potential and middle-income-potential types of businesses from 2007 to 2008; it decreased for the highest-income-potential types of businesses.

Perhaps we’re just in the highest-income-potential category.  I know optimism and perseverance  in the area and on the street couldn’t be stronger.