AlphaLab News

At the turn of the twentieth century, Pittsburgh really was held in the same regard that Silicon Valley is today. Entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Mellon, George Westinghouse, and John Baptiste Ford & John Pitcairn, Jr were creating companies around entirely new industries. While the companies they started remain today, those industries are certainly not as high-growth as they were more than a hundred years ago. However, the entrepreneurs have left a number of great assets behind in Pittsburgh that the city continues to capitalize on to this day.

Jeremy Herrman's T-shirt is the epitome of nerd humor, featuring a cartoon of a CTRL key donning a police hat, brandishing a baton and chasing an ESC key.

It's also particularly appropriate given the tech startup he and two partners, Alex Moore and Jim Keener, launched last year.

Chogger (www.chogger.com) is a Web site that allows users to view, draw and share their own comics. Though the concept might conjure images of costumed heroes or Sunday newspapers, the trio believes comics have the potential to be much more.

Most conceptions that are wedding-related are born nine months later.

But the baby that came from Will Smith and Barb Katora-Jarosinski's Dec. 2007 wedding was conceived by her nephew, Spike Katora, and was born in April, 15 months later.

The baby was Vivo, a new company that allows people to broadcast their events live over the Internet.

The problem that needed to be solved for the wedding was that Mr. Smith's parents, who were celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary at their home in Winnsboro, La., were elderly and unable to be on hand for the nuptials in Pittsburgh. Even though they couldn't be here, they wanted to witness the ceremony.

Innovation Works’ welcomed its third wave of AlphaLab  startups this month,  a powerhouse group that has raised the bar and attracted entrepreneurs from across the country.

“We are very excited about the potential of this new AlphaLab class,” says Jim Jen, director. “Many of them have already made significant progress on developing their products and they have hit the ground running to build their businesses. The high quality of this group demonstrates the continued momentum of the AlphaLab program.”

Jason Wilburn had two start-ups on his resume last year. But his interactions with Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial scene had been minimal.

He and partner Michael Cham’s half-year in Innovation Works’ business incubator, however, gave them a BlackBerry full of contacts critical to building BlenderHouse, their seed-stage applied learning software company.

“Everyone we’re involved with now, we met through AlphaLab,” Wilburn said, adding the company is close to securing its first round of funding. Their time in the lab also has given their East Liberty company a “stamp of credibility” as they court investors, Cham said.

Rebecca Gaynier was getting ready to go on.

In the next 15 minutes she would be running through her slides, her charts and even a short video to persuade someone in the room to invest $250,000 to $500,000 in the Internet company she started to cater to girls between the ages of 8 and 14.

"I feel like I'm on 'American Idol,'" she said as she put on her wireless microphone.

Those 15 minutes capped a 20-week program with Innovation Works' AlphaLab that gave Ms. Gaynier's new company and five others a shot at getting off the ground using the expertise of others who have started companies before them.

Today Pittsburgh-based startup incubator AlphaLab is holding their demo day where each of the companies present their products and/or services. AlphaLab runs a 20-week program which includes office space, mentoring and strategy development. Here’s a brief overview of each of the companies. Let me know in the comments if you would like me to get interviews or more information on any of the startups.

Don Charlton was ahead of the game when he went into AlphaLab five months ago and started his Web site -- TheResumator.com.

Generally, the Innovation Works incubator program for Internet entrepreneurs deals with companies that haven't gotten off the ground. But the 31-year-old McCandless resident had been tinkering for a while with a plan for a site to do the work typically handled by clerks in human resources departments and was ready to plunge in.

In the first years following its founding as one of four centers in Pennsylvania’s Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Innnovation Works concentrated on providing seed financing to tech start-ups, with perhaps the occasional follow-on investment. While IW still focuses on start-ups, their range of services and support has expanded exponentially.

Such as: It now offers grants to assist local universities in commercializing promising new technologies and provides funding to support the formation of angel investor networks. A human resources professional on staff helps portfolio companies identify and hire key staff. And IW has recently launched AlphaLab, a discrete South Side facility that provides emerging software and IT companies with capital, space, mentoring, networking opportunities and links to other investors.

Six new startups have joined AlphaLab, a software incubator on the South Side that fosters the growth of software, Internet and entertainment technology companies in the region.

Created by Innovation Works, the most active investor in seed-stage companies in Pittsburgh, AlphaLab companies participate in an intensive, 20-week program and receive a $25,000 investment, office space and business mentoring from a team of industry experts.

A tech business incubator has "hatched" its inaugural group of six companies. The startups spent 20 weeks at AlphaLab, which is based on Pittsburgh's South Side. AlphaLab Director Jim Jen says the goal during that time was for the businesses to come up with a test version of their product so that they could get feedback, and begin to attract potential investors. Jen says he thinks the six businesses were largely successful in meeting that goal.

AlphaLab has launched six companies as a part of its 20 week summer and fall program.

The company, which acts as a catalyst for launching next generation software in entertainment technology and Internet-related companies, will be providing funding hands-on business assistance, access to advisors and free office space to all of the companies within its program, most of which are related to, or based on, the use of user-generated content.

On Tuesday, October 28th, I had the privilege of attending the final presentations for the first six “graduates” of AlphaLab.

Quick perspective – AlphaLab is an offshoot of Innovation Works, a quasi public/private endeavor dedicated to the formation of start-up businesses in western Pennsylvania. These companies typically are high-tech in nature and AlphaLab is basically looking for the next FORE Systems.

AlphaLab, a catalyst for launching next generation software, entertainment technology and Internet-based startups, recently opened its doors to investors and other members of Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial community to come in and check out its first group of six companies. Founded by active seed-stage investor, Innovation Works, the AlphaLab program gave this group of entrepreneurs funding, access to a network of expert advisors, and free office space as part of an intensive 20-week program located on Pittsburgh’s South Side. All six of the companies in the first round have created some really cool technology and have bright futures as entrepreneurs.

They had 20 weeks and an initial $25,000 investment of seed capital to transform talking-point concepts into technology-driven startups.  Then Tuesday morning the first class of technology entrepreneurs from AlphaLab, a new project of Innovation Works to accelerate the formation of software, Internet, and entertainment technology companies in southwestern Pennsylvania, presented their companies.

Pittsburgh has some resources for people that want to start businesses, especially technology businesses.  I have attended some of the work shops at the Tech Council, definitely worth a few hours of your time.

I just wanted to highlight AlphaLab (they have a blog here).  I mentioned AlphaLab recently because they have a really great office on Carson St. and were kind enough to host the reception for this years PodCamp Pittsburgh.

I am at AlphaLab’s very first Demo Day, when each of the six companies that have been incubated over the last six months presents what their company is all about.  There is a great crowd here - I would guess close to 150 people crowded in their Southside location on Carson Street - STANDING ROOM ONLY.

There’s been a bit of back and forth on what the best place to start a technology company is these days. The conventional wisdom these days is that the place to start and run a technology company is Silicon Valley. The key reasons put forth to justify this is money, talent, and expertise. If you’re initially choosing where to move and start a company, Silicon Valley seems to be the right choice based on the confluence of these factors – but I would argue that in some cases these advantages are not that strong and there are just as good reasons to start it elsewhere.

Add one more asset to the region’s growing cache of entrepreneurial resources. Earlier this month, Pittsburgh’s largest and most-active seed-stage investor, Innovation Works (IW), officially opened the doors of its AlphaLab program on East Carson Street in the South Side. With the launch of AlphaLab, IW selected six promising teams of entrepreneurs to participate in an intensive, five-month-long program that will provide all of the essentials for rapid product development and entrepreneurial success out of the gate.

When Felix Lloyd's wife, Jordan Bookey, was hired by Google as programs manager for global diversity and talent inclusion, the couple were put off by the price of living in Google's hometown of San Francisco. On learning the search giant had a facility in Pittsburgh, they came for a visit and decided that the city on the Point suited them better than the city by the bay.

The first six companies that will receive funding and mentoring at a Pittsburgh incubator for Web and software-related firms were identified Wednesday.

Six new startups are among the first class of software companies accepted into the AlphaLab program at its new state-of-the-art incubator on the South Side.

A new and interesting product development accelerator has been launched in Pittsburgh:

Innovation Works announces the launch of AlphaLab, a catalyst for the next generation of software, interactive game design and Internet-related companies.  Innovation Works created AlphaLab to help companies rapidly develop their technology, gain user feedback from early alpha or beta releases and move toward successful commercial launch.  

It's not a revolution, but progress in Pittsburgh does proceed, one node at a time. It's not political progress, but -- here and there -- economic development progress.

Last Friday, Innovation Works (IW) announced the creation of AlphaLab, a rapid-product development accelerator for software, game development and internet-related startups. As mentioned in these articles in the Pittsburgh Business Times and Tribune-Review, we are hopeful that AlphaLab will serve as a focal point for software developers in the Pittsburgh region, and can help launch some of the next wave of software, gaming and web-related companies.

You don’t have to spend too much time getting to know me before you learn that I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Pittsburgh. Then, Pittsburgh was a gritty mill town. My favorite field trip was to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which I remember as a stately black stone building. In recent years, the building was sandblasted to its original creamy white. Makes me wonder how much soot went through our lungs in those days.

f you were looking for something to get excited about in the Pittsburgh start-up economy, here’s someting for you. InnovationWorks has just launched their new software/internet/games start-up incubator, AlphaLab.

Have an idea for a software or internet product that you think you could launch in six months with a little investment and hard work? Submit an application

AlphaLab in Pittsburgh has now joined yCombinator and TechStars as a startup launch program. AlphaLab’s deal is a bit more enticing since you receive $25,000 for only 3% equity in the company. TechStars takes 5% equity in your company for $15,000 and yCombinator gives you $15,000 for about 6% if you have 2 founders.