Big Money Investment Targets Two State College Businesses

Starting a small business is risky business – but two State College companies now have help navigating the choppy waters of a recovering economy.

KCF Technologies and Flip Learning have both received a $100,000 investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners is a Penn State-affiliated organization that provides investments and business advice to small businesses and start-ups.

Liz Wilson of Ben Franklin says there’s “more art than science” to determining what startups to invest in, but Flip Learning and KCF Technologies – despite their vastly different products – both had that special something to warrant the organization’s help.

Jeremy Frank, president and co-founder of KCF Technologies, has had a successful run of 14 years in the technology industry, but says the Ben Franklin organization has played a key role in his success.

“One of the numbers that’s on my mind frequently is that any small start-up has a 10 percent chance of failing every year,” Frank says. “You would think that might go down over time, but it doesn’t decrease.”

A Ben Franklin investment of $400,000, over several years in the company’s early days, helped it find commercial applications for an underwater GPS system after the Navy program that was funding KCF was shut down, Frank says. Though they successfully made the leap into the private market, Ben Franklin advised KFC that its product had a very limited audience.

Today Frank’s company is working on “using technology to give machines a voice” – potentially a $2.5 trillion market to tap into. Industrial machinery invariably wears out and breaks down, so Frank’s company has developed wireless sensors that can monitor a machine’s health, preempting expensive failures.

Ben Franklin Regional Director John Johnston says after KCF’s past business success, he was excited to help the company once again. The new $100,000 investment will help Frank expand his marketing and advertising into industries like oil and gas and paper manufacturing, which use heavy-duty machines that can benefit from wireless sensors. 

Given the success Frank has already had installing these sensors at power plants and other machinery at Penn State and other universities, he’s hopeful for a “rapid acceleration” to ultimately push them into the global marketplace.

Chris Spielvogel, founder of Flip Learning, has goals that are less global than Frank’s, but no less important. At a time when Penn State president Eric Barron has called for a culture of entrepreneurship, Spielvogel – himself a Penn State graduate and State College native – is rising to the challenge.

“I wish to contribute to the economic, social, and intellectual vibrancy of State College by developing a long-term, stand-alone company that can provide meaningful jobs and supportive resources to my local community,” Spielvogel says.

He aims to do this with his company’s new digital learning platform designed to “reinvent the textbook” from a static object to an interactive, multimedia tool.

Whereas e-textbooks have been limited by print traditions, Spielvogel says Flip Learning’s new platform aims to engage students through multi-user challenges with classmates, interactivity and built-in lessons and activities.

Johnston says that the company, founded in 2011, already has a speech and a history textbook completed and a department-wide contract with Bowling Green State University in Ohio. With the help of Ben Franklin’s $100,000 investment, he hopes to expand into at least ten more colleges by next summer.

“Investing in innovation and technology is so important,” Wilson says. “All the new job creators over last 20 years have come from small business.”