Baltimore Jobs : Innovation + Job News

Two-month old cybersecurity company Riskive Inc. is adding to its current staff of seven. Launched Jan.1 and based in the new Federal Hill incubator Betamore, Riskive is hiring between 18 to 27 this year.
 
Riskive is seeking developers, development leaders, director of engineering, vice president of business development, social media manager, marketing manager and salespeople, according to COO Evan Blair, who co-founded the company with CEO James C. Foster.

The company is hiring junior, intermediate and senior level developers and engineers with leadership experience in order to build a technology that is scalable and to run the company more efficiently, Blair says.

Blair says that cyberdefense tends to be reactive. "People wait until an attack, then go into motion to clean, quarantine and block" the threat, he says.
 
Riskive says it takes a different approach. It is a predictive cybersecurity company for government agencies and private companies. Instead of waiting for a cyber attack that shuts down a computer system or a virus that infects a network, Riskive identifies potential attackers and how they can be addressed.
  
Riskive was the first and, at 500-square feet, the largest tenant in Betamore. The privately financed facility opened in December in a renovated 8,000-square foot building in Federal Hill. The facility is a combination incubator, co-working space and classroom. Members can access Betamore's mentor network and attend events and weekly happy hours.

Blair says the company has enough space at Betamore for the new hires. If it grows too big and has to relocate from Betamore, the company is committed to staying in Baltimore.

"It's not an accident that we’re in Baltimore versus Silicon Valley,” says Blair of the proximity to Fort Meade and the US Army Cyber Command.  
 
Using patented technology, Riskive assembles data from a variety of sources and profiles for a client the types of attackers and the types of attack it faces. The client can use the information to install appropriate defenses, whether on its own or by hiring another company to do so.
 
“We think of ourselves as radar, to determine what’s coming at you before it comes," says Blair.
 
Blair says the three most common kinds of attackers are: countries, in particular the Republic of China, North Korea, Iran and Russia; organized crime syndicates, many in former Soviet Union republics (and now independent countries) or former Soviet-bloc countries; and individual hackers or hacker groups.
 
The motives of the three differ, says Blair. Countries are looking for classified information and intellectual property. Crime syndicates are looking for information with monetary value, like credit card numbers and identify theft. Hacker groups are supporting a cause or carrying out personal vendettas.
 
“All the attacks start out similarly but they range in scale, scope and end goals,” says Blair.
 
Riskive is privately funded. Before its official launch, Blair says it held angel financing rounds. 
 
Source: Evan Blair, Riskive Inc.
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore BioWorks Inc., a company that provides on-the-job vocational training, hired its first employee from its minority-focused training and employment program last month.

Located at the University of Maryland BioPark, BioWorks plans to hire a total of 12 people in 2013 to add to its staff of four. The vocational employees get a salary and benefits during the year-long training program for biotechnicians.
 
The company’s training program is intended to be self-sustaining and depends on BioWorks’ sales, says John Powers, vice president of marketing and co-founder with president Louise Dalton. The company manufactures and distributes biomedical products for others and under its own brand. It also offers toxicology testing services. Powers says BioWorks' annual revenue is expected to clip $1 million this year, thanks to two new contracts. 
 
Powers says the company anticipates closing a contract with the University of Maryland Medical System within the next few months to manufacture and distribute latex gloves and other products. Last year, Baltimore Bioworks contracted with the National Institute of Health to manufacture and distribute products, for about $30,000 in sales per month. 
 
Powers says the company has $350,000 in annual revenue as of this month. With both the University of Maryland and National Institute contracts, sales will increase to $80,000 to $100,000 per month.
 
While the company’s training program is open to all qualified candidates, Baltimore BioWorks last year signed an agreement with Baltimore City Community College to write the program’s training material in conjunction with it.
 
“If we follow their format on classroom work, vocational employees will earn BCCC college credit as well as a salary,” says Powers.
 
Powers is in talks with the BioTechnical Institute of Maryland Inc. — a scientific training program for entry-level biotechnicians — for the same arrangement.
 
In the fall, the company leased a 14,000-square foot space at 1100 Wicomico St., for manufacturing and distribution.
 
Powers expects to hear this summer about the company’s application for state certification as a minority business enterprise. If approved as an MBE, Baltimore BioWorks would qualify to bid on state contracts that require a set-aside of up to 25 percent for minority- and women-owned companies.
 
“With MBE status, the potential is to be a $5 million company,” says Powers.
 
Source: John Powers, Baltimore BioWorks Inc.
Writer: Barbara Pash

Educational technology startup 1sqbox LLC says it expects to wrap up its second round of angel financing of $5 million by the middle of this year and is tripling its staff of five. The downtown Baltimore company is hiring seven salespeople, three support staff and a chief financial officer.

In its first round of angel financing last year, 1sqbox raised $330,000, to get the company off the ground, CEO Granville Templeton III says. After its second round of angel financing, 1sqbox will seek venture capital.

The company sells Android-based tablets to school systems for kindergarten through 12th grades. The tablets have proprietary software geared for administrators and for teachers and students. Templeton bills the company as a “one-stop shop” for educators. 

“We use the school system’s and/or other companies’ educational content. We are the platform” for the content,  says Templeton, who cofounded the company with chairman and CTO Alexis Coates in 2011.
 
The same tablet is used for all grades. Every student in a class gets a tablet. Via his or her tablet, the teacher inputs lesson plans and other material like textbooks, quizzes, homework assignments and comments.
 
“It’s an intuitive management system that allows teachers to use technology for their classrooms,” says Templeton.
 
School principals can monitor teachers via the tablet. A software platform allows them to view teachers’ lesson plans, assignments and other information.

Templeton says 1sqbox is in the process of refining its software for easier use. It is also adapting its platform  for district-wide use. “Now, each school can monitor itself. We are adapting it so each school in a district can be monitored,” he says.
 
Last year, 1sqbox launched a pilot program in City Springs Middle School, a charter school in East Baltimore. The Abell Foundation funded the purchase of 100 tablets. Templeton says the tablets average $349 each, depending on amount ordered.
 
Dr. Walter Amprey, former superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools, this year became associated with 1sqbox, “to introduce the company to school systems around the country,” says Templeton.
 
The company sells directly to school districts, which then distribute the tablets to users. The marketing focus so far has been Baltimore City and Maryland along with nearby states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. 
 
Templeton says 1sqbox has contracts with six schools, among them four in Baltimore City and two in Tennessee. The Baltimore schools are City Springs Middle School, Heritage High School, Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women and Rosemont Elementary and Middle School. The tablets stay at the school, and do not go home with the students.
 
Source: Granville Templeton, III, 1sqbox LLC
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Baltimore nonprofit Institutes for Behavior Resources will open a new clinic this summer to provide primary health care services to substance abusers and their families, with $1.4 million in funding from state and foundation grants. 

It is part of the state’s efforts to have services in place by the time the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is fully implemented in 2014. 

The nonprofit is using the grants to renovate the institute’s 1920s era, six-story building at 2104 Maryland Ave. in Charles Village and to open the clinic on the currently vacant fourth floor. The institute's COO Reid Blank says he expects the clinic renovation to be finished by next month with an official opening in July. Blank says it is looking to hire eight to 10 employees for the health care clinic, including nurses, counselors, receptionist and part-time physicians to add to its staff of 40. 

The nonprofit will provide clinic patients and their families with screenings, tests and medical treatment as drug addicts may not have primary care physicians or get regular medical treatment.  The clinic will serve as a model for other states in preventive health care, a key tenet in Obamacare. In addition, the clinic will be available to patients at other substance abuse programs in Baltimore, such as Man Alive Inc.

"The grants enable us to expand services to patients and their families. Our patients have other health problems that are not always addressed, and that delays progress in treating their addiction," Blank says. 
 
The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene contributed $898,000 to the project. Other funders are the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, $270,000; The Abell Foundation, $200,000; and France Merrick Foundation, $50,000. The institute is paying the remainder of the total $1.5 million project.
 
Besides its REACH program for substance abusers, the 51-year-old institute works with government agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Railroad Administration and Department of Defense as well as commercial airlines, railroads, transit and trucking companies on the issue of fatigue.

Source: Reid Blank, Institutes for Behavior Resources
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

A local startup backed by serial tech entrepreneur Clarence Wooten will help investors in crowdfunding projects hedge their bets.

Founded last month, Asurvest provides investment insurance for private and professional investors in Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms, CEO Luke Cooper says. The company will open an office in Baltimore over the next few months, hiring three to five analysts and marketing specialists.

Cooper says Asurvest is looking to partner with established crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter.com, Fundable.com and Gofunding.com.

“These groups are highly visible. They attract investors. They have strong business models,” Cooper says, although exactly how the partnership would work has yet to be determined. “We are in an incremental improvement mode,” he says of Asurvest.
 
Cooper, Co-founder Sudhir Shandilya and Wooten have all invested an undisclosed sum in the company. Cooper's Baltimore investment firm Performant Capital Partners also backs the company. Cooper declined to say how much funding they have raised to date.

Wooten is a Baltimore native who is founder and chairman of social networking firm Groupsite.com. He's known best for co-founding ImageCafe.com during the dot-com boom and selling it to Network Solutions/Verisign for $23 million. An advisor to Asurvest, he now resides in Silicon Valley and will launch a new company, Progressly Inc., in the middle of this year. 

Crowdfunding is in its infancy, but growing rapidly. Recent federal legislation makes it permissible for private individuals to invest in crowdfunding platforms.
 
With that, however, comes a tremendous need for assurance that even small investors who spend $1,500 or $2,000 feel comfortable. "We seek to fill that need and to protect them from risk,” says Cooper.
 
Based on its proprietary statistical and risk management models, Asurvest says that it can accurately quantify certain kinds of business risks. It will provide default risk insurance at premiums that range from two to 20 percent of the initial investment. The founders haven't decided yet whether Asurvest would underwrite or broker the insurance policies.

Cooper says the company is still working out how it would operate for an investor. "There will be a cost for the investor, depending on the investment profile," he says.
 
Despite the federal legislation, states have their own regulations and Asurvest has to be licensed in each. Cooper is currently working with the state of Maine to draft legislation. He says the founders chose Maine as the starting state because it has a business-oriented regulatory environment.
 
He expects to get approval from Maine within the next few months. He will then turn his attention to Maryland, working with the Maryland Insurance Administration on the appropriate applications.
 
After Maryland, he says Asurvest “will look at where investors are coming from, what parts of the country, and pursue licensing in those states.”
 

Source: Luke Cooper, Asurvest
Writer: Barbara Pash

Ahead Research, a life sciences startup founded by two Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine students, is launching its second product, Medassure, this year.

Craig Monsen and David Do launched the health information company in Fells Point in 2012 along with its first product, Symcat. 

Symcat allows users access to medical information and to assess the state of their health. Available on the web or as an application on a mobile device, the program asks users to enter their medical symptoms, then provides information from the federal Centers for Disease Control's database on the most likely diagnosis. Symcat is available as a free download on any smart phone, both iPhones and Android devices.

Medassure takes Symcat a step futher by providing information on medications to take for the diagnosis and analyzing possible interactions with the users' other medications. The founders say they plan to merge the two products together and market under the single name of Symcat.

Tolu Babalola, the company's head of growth, says Ahead Research launched Symcat with little fanfare but plans to market it aggressively this year. “We did some marketing and advertising of Symcat but this year we are spending money on a marketing campaign,” he says. 
 
Monsen and Do, now in their final year at Johns Hopkins medical school, developed Ahead Research in a health technology incubator, Blueprint Health. The company's funding comes from a $30,000 award from the Cigna Health Innovation Challenge and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant for $100,000.

In December, Ahead Research signed a memorandum of understanding with nonprofit BioHealth Innovation to accelerate the commercialization of Symcat. With offices in Rockville and Baltimore, BioHealth may launch a healthcare accelerator this year. 
 
Ahead Research has a full-time staff of three. The company expects to hire an undetermined number of software engineers in the next 12 to 18 months. It is also starting an internship program for college undergraduates in the local area.
 
Source: Tolu Babalola, Ahead Research
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore Region for Randstad Technologies is the new name for Technisource, a long-time IT staffing company in Baltimore that is expanding its services and hiring new employees early this year.
 
Randstad, an international staffing company, acquired Technisource in 2011. However, because of the change in systems and processes, Technisource wasn’t renamed until this week. The newly rebranded company will continue to occupy its office in downtown Baltimore.
 
Technisource had specialized in providing IT staffing, on either a permanent, contractual or temporary basis, for data centers and project management. Anthony Petrelli, managing director of Baltimore Region for Randstad Technologies, says the Randstad acquistion allows Technisource to expand its services to the integration of talent and application development.
 
Petrelli says there will be no layoffs because of the rebranding. The newly named company is hiring an additional three to four staffers, including account executives, IT recruiters and sales people. The company recently moved into expanded office space that accommodates 22, for existing employees and future hires. Last year, Technisource added three people to its staff of 10. 
 
Randstad is publicly traded on the European stock exchange and is headquartered in The Netherlands. Founded in 1960, it is a market leader in offering human resources services in administration-clerical, accounting and finance, IT, pharma, life sciences, industrial and engineering industries.
 
Randstad has offices throughout the US. Its US headquarters is in Atlanta, Ga. The company’s Baltimore region covers Delaware and the Baltimore metropolitan area. There is also a Randstad Washington, D.C., office that covers the Bethesda and Rockville area.
 
 
Source: Anthony Petrelli, Baltimore Region for Randstad Technologies
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

Noxilizer Inc. expects to more than double its manufacturing capacity of its proprietary sterlization units for medical devices, thanks to its recent move to a larger production facility.
 
Maura Kahn, vice president business development and marketing, says Noxilizer’s relocation from the incubator at University of Maryland, Baltimore County to the University of Maryland, BioPark in downtown Baltimore allows the company to manufacture five to six units, rather than one to two, per year. Kahn says customers include medical device manufacturers, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, such as the Catheter Research Center in Indianapolis.
 
“We have roughly the same amount of office space but double the laboratory space. Moving to a larger lab facility allows us to expand our microbiology operations and to build our sterilization units,” Kahn says.
 
Noxilizer’s manufactures its RTS 360 Sterilization Unit on premise, with subcontractors in Maryland completing the assembly. The first units went on sale in 2011. The units employ a gas-based, room temperature process that allows them to be used for new medical devices that can’t be sterilized by the traditional method.
 
Noxilizer’s sterilization units cost $250,000 each. The company offers a three-year service contract for $40,000.  To run the unit, customers purchase sterilants from Noxilizer at a typical cost of $2000 to $2500 per month.
 
Noxilizer, a privately-held company, was founded in 2004. It originally had offices in both Bethesda and Baltimore. In 2010, the two offices were combined into one and moved into the incubator bwtech@UMBC.
 
The company employs 19 full-time and two part-time workers. Last year, it added six new employees and is currently looking to hire a director of quality. The company also employs four-to-six paid interns per year, usually from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and Stevenson University, who are often hired as full-time employees after graduation.
 
Noxilizer recently raised $3.5 million in a financing round via the Maryland Biotechnology Investment Tax Credit program. It also received $500,000 from The Abell Foundation. Last year, the company was named Maryland Incubator Company of the Year in the life sciences category.
 
Source: Maura Kahn, Noxilizer Inc.
Writer: Barbara Pash

In an effort to find ways to lessen the United States’ dependence on foreign oil, the US Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory has awarded a $150,000 research grant to Pixelligent Technologies to further develop its technology to make industrial and automotive lubricants more efficient. With the prospect of commercializing a product from the research, the Baltimore nanocrystal additive manufacturer is planning to relocate to a larger facility this year although details were not yet available.

The energy department’s Small Business Innovation Research Grant was awarded less than a month after it signed a two-year, $500,000 Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Baltimore company for the Argonne Laboratory to analyze and test its proprietary nanocrystal technology. Pixelligent and Argonne will split the cost of the research project.
 
The Cooperative Research and Development Agreements are intended to speed commercialization of private sector technology. Craig Bandes, president and CEO, says that both grants are helping the company to reach its goal of commercializing a product, possibly a low-friction oil, out of nanocrystal additives this year.
 
Bandes says Pixelligent is one of several different technologies the government is looking at, including companies that use other types of additives and biofuels.
 
“We are not the only technology in the area, but we have attracted a high level of interest from the energy department,” says Bandes.
 
In preliminary testing with Argonne, results indicate that by dispersing nanocrystals into oil, there is a significant reduction in engine and equipment friction. Doing so prolongs the life of both, improves the efficiency of both and reduces fuel consumption.

“It’s not just that the oil is improved and gas mileage goes up,” says Bandes, “the department of energy is looking for next generation technology.”

Pixelligent was founded in 2000 in the College Park area. The company moved to an 11,000-square foot building in Baltimore in 2011 that allowed it to develop laboratory and manufacturing facilities. The company manufactures specific nanocrystal additives and polymer nanocomposites for the electronics, semiconductor and industrial markets.
 
Bandes expects to grow the current staff of 26 to 40 to 50 staffers this year. He is currently recruiting for five positions in manufacturing, engineering and business development.
 
Besides the energy department funding, Pixelligent has received $12 million from the US Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation, and $8.5 million in angel investments.
 
 
Source: Craig Bandes, Pixelligent Technologies
Writer: Barbara Pash

Vircity LLC, the Baltimore back office resource center, will launch a startup crash course and is expanding into event planning next year. It plans to hire up to half a dozen workers to spearhead these projects. 

Janine DiPaula Stevens, founder and president, says she is hiring up to three people to organize a "startup program" launching in the second quarter of 2013. 

The program will provide a template, tools and workshops for people who are starting a business. “You can take courses but some people don’t want to do that,” says Stevens, who is considering what workshops to include in the program and how much it will cost.

Stevens says she will hire people with graphic design and event planning experience or recent college graduates to handle future events. She says that in working with nonprofit organizations and entrepreneurs, she noticed that they needed help coordinating and completing their events.
 
Stevens says one staffer had been doing event planning before. The expansion allows her to bring in larger events that require more staffers and more detail. She is expecting event-planning contracts to come in within the next two months..
 
Stevens founded Vircity in 2005 and moved to its location in Canton in 2006. The business is located on the ground floor at 2400 Boston Street, a retail storefront at the Can Company that gets thousands of walk-in customers per year.
 
Vircity provides a variety of back-office services for customers, including administration, bookkeeping, graphic design, digital and offset printing, high-speed scanning, packing and shipping.  Customers may also use Vircity’s address as their corporate address. Post Office boxes do not accept packages, Stevens explains, but Vircity’s mailbox does.
 
Stevens says fees depends on services. Customers can pay an hourly rate or per project. The annual fee for mailbox and faxing service is $300 per year; basic administrative support runs $40 per hour. For example, a nonprofit with minimal staff may hire Vircity to print, merge and post “thank you” letters to donors, at $40 per hour.
 
The privately financed Vircity is a Baltimore City-certified woman-owned business. Stevens was director of marketing at the Center Club before founding Vircity.
 
Source: Janine DiPaula Stevens, Vircity LLC
Writer: Barbara Pash
 

InstantLabs Medical Diagnostics Corp. is entering the animal health/veterinary medicine field next year, with plans to develop a variety of tests for the detection and diagnosis of dangerous pathogens in animals.
 
CEO Steven Guterman says the tests will be based on its general purpose molecular diagnostic test kits, which can be refined for different markets. Located at the University of Maryland BioPark, InstantLabs commercialized its first test kit this year for the food safety market and currently is developing a test kit for the human health/hospital market.
 
“Our goal is to change the way people do food testing," Guterman says. "We spent a lot of time building a device with the power of molecular testing that is small, affordable and easy to use.”
 
Food companies typically send samples to an outside laboratory for testing, a process that can take three to five days for results. InstantLab’s test, for both extraction and identification, can be done on-site, with test results within 12 to 24 hours.
 
Customers include poultry processors, fish farmers and nutritional companies that use the kits to detect different and dangerous bacteria like salmonella, listeria and e-coli.
 
The food safety kits were first sold commercially in spring of 2012. So far, more than a dozen have been sold, half in the US and half overseas. By early 2013, the company will also have a test for the bacteria Vibrio.
 
In human health/hospitals, InstantLab is developing a test kit for MSRA, an antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus infection. It received a $100,000 award from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships to develop a test kit for the detection of MSRA.
 
The company is working with Jennifer Johnson, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, on the test. It should be ready by the end of 2013, after which the company will begin human trials and seek US Food and Drug Administration approval.
 
InstantLabs was formed in 2008. In 2010, it moved to the University of Maryland BioPark in order to grow internally and have its own laboratory. In 2011, it moved to a larger space in the BioPark, doubling the size of its office.
 
The company has five employees in Maryland. Guterman says it is looking to hire a senior molecular biologist in 2013 for its entry into the veterinary field.
 
Source: Steven Guterman, InstantLabs Medical Diagnostics Corp.
Writer: Barbara Pash

A National Partnership For Women & Families survey has found that Maryland women earn anywhere from 1 percent to 24 percent less than their male counterparts in every congressional district.

Around the state, full-time working women are paid on average 14 percent less than men. In District 7 and District 3, Baltimore City's two major districts, the numbers are 15 percent and 14 percent respectively, according to the Washington, D.C., nonprofit.
 
Nationally, there is a 23 percent gender wage gap, with congressional districts in Louisiana, Utah and Illinois showing the greatest disparity.

The Partnership called its analysis of latest US Census wage data by congressional district  “unprecedented” and “the first such study,” says Beccah Golubock Watson, the Partnership's policy counsel, noting that of the country's 435 districts, 423, or 97 percent, have wage gender gaps.
 
The survey did not compare gender wage differences by industry. However, numerous other studies have compared women and men in the same industries and came up with gender wage gaps as well, says Watson. She cited a nationwide study of the financial industry that found women are paid 68 cents for every $1 paid to men.
 
Maryland's Congressional District 3 covers parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard and Montgomery counties and part of Baltimore City on the northern and southern edges. Maryland's 7^th District encompasess most of Baltimore City's neighborhoods, including downtown, midtown cultural district, Mt.Vernon, Charles Village, Belair-Edison, Coldspring, Pimlico, Sandtown, Montebello and Remington, as well as parts of Baltimore and Howard counties. In the 7th District, the wage gender gap means that women are paid $8,102 less per year than men. Given the city's 40 percent poverty rate and the fact that over 40 percent of households are headed by women, that represents a significant loss in earnings, Watson says.
 
Maureen O'Connor, spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, says that the department conducts employer surveys for wage data by occupation, but not for wage demographics.
 
Likewise, Janine DiPaula Stevens, president of the Baltimore Regional Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, says its organization does not have gender wage data. Stevens is also CEO of Baltimore back-office resource center Vircity.
 
The survey's release is timed to coincide with Congress' possible consideration of the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill would  protect against retaliation for discussing salaries with colleagues and removing obstacles for employees to participate in class action lawsuits.  
 
“The wage gap is taking a toll on women in nearly every corner of the country,” says Watson. “Unfortunately, Baltimore is not immune to this devastating issue.”

District 4, which includes parts of Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties, showed the least diparity with women earning 1 percent less than men. District 1, which includes Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne's, Caroline, Talbot, Dorchester, Wicomico, Worcester, Somerset and parts of Harford, Baltimore and Carroll counties, showed the greatest gap, with women earning  24 percent less. 
 
Sources: Beccah Golubock Watson, National Partnership for Women & Families; Maureen O'Connor, Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation; Janine DiPaula Stevens, Baltimore Regional Chapter, National Association of Women Business Owners
Writer: Barbara Pash

Mitt Romney lost the presidential election but the Canton company that created the Romney shop on the Republican Party candidate’s website says it emerged a winner.

Digital agency Groove Commerce implemented and ran Romney’s e-commerce site, which they say attracted thousands of orders per day and is still operational.The campaign job has given the company a boost in the e-commerce world. "It's helped our visibility and reputation," says Groove Commerce CEO Ethan Giffin.

The company has 22 employees and is currently hiring four to six additional staffers, in particular skilled PHP developers, front-end developers, online marketers and an executive assistant.

Giffin emphasizes that Groove Commerce is not a politically focused organization. Rather, the company saw the offer to build a scalable website for a presidential candidate, a first for them, as a challenge.The Romney campaign set the prices for items in the store, from T-shirts for $30 to bumper stickers for $5. Also for sale are hats, posters, lawn signs, iPhone cases, water bottles and lapel pins.
 
Giffin does not know when the campaign website will be shut down. He can’t disclose sales information, which were donations to the campaign. He can say that at certain points in the campaign – such as when Congressman Paul Ryan was announced as the vice presidential candidate and during the Republican National Convention – the shop got thousands of orders per day.

The Romney campaign approached the Emerging Technology Center company because of its partnership with Magento, an e-commerce software firm headquartered in California. The campaign was interested in using Magento, an open source platform that has lots of services and add-ons that can be integrated and is highly scalable.

"It's very popular in e-commerce circles," he says of Magento. "It was a perfect fit in scale"  for the campaign shop. “It was a very cool project,” he says.
 
Groove Commerce began working on the website shop last spring. It officially launched a few days before July 4^th weekend with an offer on Facebook for a discounted Romney T-shirt. More than 20,000 T-shirts were sold.
 
Giffin says the company brought a new approach to the campaign online store. “Most political online stores are very basic and bland. Their focus is the political space but they don’t know the tactics the average retailer uses to sell more products,” he says. “We wanted it to be more of a retailer-shopping experience.”
 
The privately funded Groove Commerce was founded in 2007. It moved to a 2,000-square foot space in the Emerging Technology Center in 2010; it now occupies 4,500 square feet.
 
The company focuses on web design and development and on inbound marketing. Giffin describes the latter as using aspects of search engine optimization, content creation and blogging, email marketing and paperclick advertising – “getting people to take action once they come to the website,” he says.
 
Groove Commerce has 50 clients, ranging from Lax World, lacrosse retailers, to Corsair Memory, a builder of computer memory, and the state’s Habitat for Humanity chapter.
 
 
Source: Ethan Giffin, Groove Commerce
Writer: Barbara Pash

Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith makes his debut this month as a spokesman for PointClickSwitch.com, a website that offers one-stop comparison shopping for residential and commercial electricity consumers.  

The Baltimore startup, a division of state licensed electricity broker Maryland Energy Advisors, is using the football player to promote its Nov. 13 launch in Maryland and four other states.
 
Phil Croskey, founder and CEO of PointClickSwitch.com, says the company approached the National Football League winning-team member because it was looking for someone with name recognition in the Maryland market.
 
“He’s a class act, a high-character individual and we appreciate that,” Croskey says.
 
PointClickSwitch.com operates in two states, Maryland and Illinois. It is currently going through the licensing process in three additional jurisdictions – New York State, Ohio and Washington, D.C. Croskey expects it to be operational in all three jurisdictions by mid-2013.
 
PointClickSwitch.com provides a listing of energy suppliers and their current rates per kilowatt hour, the standard measure of electricity. There is no fee for consumers to use the website or to change suppliers. The suppliers pay the company a marketing fee per customer but the rate to consumers is the same whether through PointClickSwitch.com or directly from them.
 
Suppliers on the website include familiar names like Constellation Energy, Con Edison, Castle Bridge Energy and Pepco, along with a lesser known company like Cool Currents, which offers electricity from renewable energy sources. Maryland residents can sign up for any supplier on the list, depending on the supplier’s regional arrangements.
 
“We serve everything from studio apartments to heavy industrial users, although large commercial projects need a more customized approach, which we also do,” says Croskey, who notes that customers can save up to 20 percent on their electricity bill by comparison shopping.

“We have suppliers charging 9.1 cents versus 7.69 cents per kilowatt hour,” he says.

Croskey, former director of economic development for the Baltimore Development Corp., founded PointClickSwitch.com in 2010. It is a portfolio company of Wasabi Ventures Accelerator at Loyola University of Maryland, and operates out of an office in downtown Baltimore.

As the company expands into new markets, Croskey expects to hire three to five employees to add to its current staff of three. He is looking for employees to focus on the new markets, although they can work from Baltimore to do so. He is also looking for an IT person to manage the company’s social media.
 
The company is privately funded although Croskey does not rule out a financing round as it expands.
 
Source: Phil Croskey, PointClickSwitch.com
Writer: Barbara Pash

Sales and marketing firm DoublePositive is hiring as many as 20 within the next six to nine months to work in its Baltimore and Tempe, Ariz., offices.

It seeks expertise in business and marketing analysis, senior network engineering and software development to add to its 60-person staff.

The Canton online marketing firm opened a new sales leads division in August, helping online colleges and universities find new students. The division helps the institutions find students for their certificates and bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and it adheres to recently-enacted federal regulations with regard to new student recruitment. The regulations are aimed at keeping the recruitment process transparent and assuring that the programs are legitimate, according to Jodi Swartz, DoublePositive's director of corporate marketing.
 
The leads division follows on the heels of another new division DoublePositive opened in December. The mobile division focuses on mobile pay per call that links consumers to companies via apps. Swartz says the division has grown by more than 1,000 percent in the first three quarters of 2012, its first revenue producing year.
 
Founded in 2004, DoublePositive moved to its present Canton office in 2008. In January, the company relocated to a larger office in the same Canton building. The new office totals 14,000 square feet, double the size of its previous office.  The company maintains an office in Tempe, Ariz., which also recently doubled in size, to a total 7,000 square feet.
 
Besides the two new divisions, DoublePositive specializes in online display and telephone transfers. Its 125 clients include Comcast, The Home Depot, Rosetta Stone, 21^st Century Auto, Kaplan, Sylvan and Education Management Corp. (EDMC).  The company’s mobile division is located in Tempe, home to EDMC.
 
Last month, DoublePositive started an internship program for college students and recent graduates who want experience in online marketing. Interns are paired with senior-level managers for real-world experience. It's accepting up to 10 interns per semester and the program is offered for college credit or for pay.
 
Source: Jodi Swartz, DoublePositive
Writer: Barbara Pash