Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania (BFTP/SEP) recently approved investments totaling $1,592,500 for eight early-stage Pennsylvania companies with promising technology innovations.

"We are proud to support and invest in these eight early-stage companies, in the midst of our current economic climate," says RoseAnn B. Rosenthal, president and CEO of Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. "By supporting technology entrepreneurs today, we can position the region for new growth when the economy rebounds."

Companies approved for funding:

ClickEquations
Conshohocken, Montgomery County
Approved investment: $250,000
ClickEquations provides a powerful pay-per-click software platform that enables advertisers and agencies to manage large paid search campaigns more effectively and efficiently. ClickEquations combines access to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN campaigns in a single web interface with management, campaign and reporting features. An advanced Excel plug-in, ClickEquations Analyst, provides unprecedented analytics depth and flexibility as well customizable and sharable reports and dashboards.

Founded in 2006 and located outside of Philadelphia, ClickEquations is venture-capital backed and run by a seasoned management team including president and founder Craig Danuloff and CEO Lucinda Holt. Danuloff was previously president and COO of eColony, an early-stage venture fund formed by Internet Capital Group. Holt is a serial entrepreneur in the region who has received funding and support from BFTP/SEP for several companies. Her previous companies include TurnTide and Destiny WebSolutions.

ColdLight Solutions
Wayne, Delaware County
Approved investment: $250,000
ColdLight makes smart software. Its Neuron platform is defining a new breed of SaaS-based intelligent, software applications capable of scouring vast volumes of data, making strategic recommendations and actually learning from success and failure. Neuron automatically learns and prescribes specific, tactical recommendations to help businesses get ahead and stay ahead of the competition. ColdLight delivers prescriptive intelligence to the life sciences, retail, consumer goods, financial services and government intelligence verticals. ColdLight Solutions is based in Wayne, PA, and run by president and CEO Ryan Caplan. BFTP/SEP previously invested $250,000 in the company.

CoreDial
Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County
Approved investment: $100,000
CoreDial makes it easy and cost-effective for businesses to keep their phone systems upgraded and running smoothly. CoreDial is a premier provider of Hosted PBX, VoIP, and data services for emerging growth and medium businesses with offices throughout the United States. CoreDial, through its unique software platform, enables customers to improve productivity and communications while eliminating the cost and complexity of the legacy phone closet. CoreDial makes buying or upgrading a business phone system easy and cost effective, and helps businesses to seamlessly interconnect multiple offices and mobile workers without geographic boundaries. Their experienced management team, unique software, carrier class infrastructure, and national footprint all contribute to their industry leading customer retention metrics and impressive end-user and channel success. Based in Plymouth Meeting, PA, CoreDial is run by CEO Alan Rihm. BFTP/SEP previously invested $250,000 in the company.

Hybrid Integration
Yardley, Bucks County
Approved investment: $225,000
Hybrid Integration develops workflow automation software for the printing, packaging and publishing industries. The company takes a product-centric approach to the diverse requirements of the printing industry. Hybrid builds products that generally require only minimal client customization while still meeting the needs of multiple customers and industry segments by leveraging their own unique middleware application called JMS (Job Management System). JMS provides all necessary functionality to communicate with multiple databases, web portals and services, MIS/ERP systems, and more. Based in Yardley, PA, Hybrid Integration is run by President Michael Rottenbor.

The Neat Company
Philadelphia
Approved Investment: $87,500
The Neat Company develops and retails hardware and software solutions to scan, analyze and organize receipts, bills, business cards and more - then stores everything on a computer for easy reference. Neat's mission: To help small businesses and consumers transform paper into information that works and is easily accessible--and eliminate clutter in the process. Ben Franklin began working closely with the company in 2003, previously investing a total of $600,000 to develop and commercialize the technology, along with streamlining its manufacturing pipeline and locating significant follow-on funding.

Les Spero, the co-founder (along with his son, Rafi) and CEO of Neat Company, had the initial goal of "making it as easy to get information into a computer as it is to print it out." Spero earned a Ph.D. from Harvard Business School, and has co-founded several successful startups.

Sage Technologies
Warminster, Bucks County
Approved investment: $200,000
Sage Technologies, Ltd., is an engineering firm which designs, manufactures and markets low power, portable thermal imaging (infrared) systems for front line military and firefighting personnel. 
Sage developed the first hands-free helmet mounted commercial thermal imaging camera for firefighters, the HelmetVue system, for which the company holds patent rights. Sage has distributors for the firefighting market for the HelmetVue in the US, Canada, Japan, China and Korea. The company is a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin, to provide advanced avionics engineering design services for Marine One, the helicopters of the President of the United States.

Sage is currently developing advanced infrared camera systems and is contract to advancedhelmet-mounted thermal imaging systems for the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Air Force.The company's are also under field test evaluation for acquisition by various groups within the US Army and Navy.  The firm is headquartered in Warminster, PA, and is managed by founder and CEO Julius A. Olita. BFTP/SEP previously invested $250,000 in the company.

Smart Structures, Inc.
Southampton, Bucks County
Approved Investment: $230,000
Smart Structures developed a system that tests and monitors the health of the nation's physical infrastructure such as highways, bridges, tunnels, and large buildings. Based on a miniature wireless sensor designed to be cast directly into wet concrete during construction, the system fundamentally changes the cost-quality equation for building, operating and maintaining large structures. The system also provides state and federal agencies with real-time infrastructure health data, potentially allowing structural deficiencies to be addressed before serious problems occur. Recent events have dramatically demonstrated the critical need for Smart Structures' technology, including the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minnesota in 2007, and the 2005 collapse of I-10 in Louisiana.

Currently in use in more than 40 bridge projects in the southeast U.S., the technology behind Smart Structure's products was developed by Dr. Mike McVay of the University of Florida, an authority in the civil and geotechnical engineering community. Smart Structures was founded by Tom Chiarella and Richard Hecht, and is located in Southampton, PA.

TicketLeap
Philadelphia
Approved Investment: $250,000
TicketLeap is a full-service ticketing software and event management solution used by more than 8,000 venues and event organizers throughout the U.S. It requires no special hardware or software and is free and simple to setup online. When founder and CEO Chris Stanchak started the company, his goal was to make event promotion as easy as possible, so that organizers could focus on other efforts. Stanchak, whose experience includes working in the design and management of large-scale eCommerce operations at global leader GSI Commerce, is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. TicketLeap is based in Philadelphia, PA. BFTP/SEP previously invested $250,000 in the company.