Week in Review: Job Creation, Microsoft Partnerships, and Electronic Eyeglasses

Posted by | September 9, 2011

This week, we announced details for our Investor Day 2011, scheduled for Tuesday, October, 4 at The Yale Club of New York City. It’s a great chance for investors to get an in-depth look at Safeguard Scientifics and some of our life sciences and technology partner companies. For more information and to RSVP, visit www.safeguard.com/investorday2011.

Recent media coverage of Safeguard includes a feature in the Philadelphia Daily Local News profiling Safeguard and our CEO, Peter J. Boni. The article highlights Safeguard’s history, some of our successful capital deployments, and an explanation of the five strategic themes that we look for in partner companies: maturity, migration, convergence, compliance, and cost containment.

In addition, Safeguard’s CFO Stephen T. Zarrilli was recently featured in the Exclusive Industry Insights Newsletter, a weekly publication that is sent to 10,000+ subscribers, targeting CFOs across the country. The publisher of the newsletter is SageWorks, which provides financial analysis of privately-held companies. In addition to the newsletter, the Sageworks blog (www.sageworksinc.com/blog) gets approximately 2,500 unique visitors each month. In this feature, Steve discussed some of the characteristics that drive Safeguard’s success; he also shared some advice for other CFOs.

In partner company news:

  • Microsoft is unveiling tools and partnerships with MediaMath this month, as they ramp up to challenge Google in the display-ad market. Bloomberg covered the story, reporting Microsoft’s plans to tailor ads and measure impact through the MediaMath platform.
  • As attention focuses on job growth and our economic climate, Beyond.com released its first Employment Data Report, a timely assessment of key challenges and positive trends in the employment world. In spite of obvious setbacks, the report notes that some industries have actually experienced fairly strong hiring activity in the second quarter of 2011.
  • PixelOptics emPower! electronic eyeglasses were featured in articles by CBS6 Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Business Journal. Both articles had high praise for the innovative bifocals, which can turn the reading portion of the glasses on and off with a single touch. Philadelphia optometrists got a sneak peek of the eyeglasses last week—and gave them a rousing ovation. These glasses should hit area retail stores in November.

Additionally, ABC6 Philadelphia spotlighted NFTE Philadelphia in a segment honoring Bianca Nieves’ winning business plan. The coverage can be found on ABC’s website.

And, in other news from NFTE, both finalists of the NFTE Philadelphia Business Plan Competition have been entered into an elevator pitch contest sponsored by E*TRADE. You can see (and vote for!) these videos from our student entrepreneurs here: Benita’s Sofrito from Bianca Nieves and Vito Lawns from Viktor Vabishevich.

Check back in the coming weeks for more in this series, showcasing developments at Safeguard, partner companies, trending topics, and breaking news. To read more of our Week in Review series, please use the following feed: www.safeguard.com/weekinreview.  Have a nice weekend!

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