From Silicon Valley: Expat CEO puts Philly's small tech scene in context

Paul Melchiorre, the SAP veteran turned tech start-up CEO (iPipeline of Exton, and now business-planning software maker Anaplan of San Francisco), sat down over eggs and coffee at 1818 Marathon this morning to put his industry and Philly tech in perspective:

How's business? Everyone (business software start-ups and suppliers) is up against IBM, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft. For 20 years all the big corporations are either getting legacy IBM updates, or they've gone to SAP or Oracle and bought those big systems and those expensive upgrades.

Is there enough capital to sustain start-up tech firms here? We have plenty of money here. But ask NewSpring, MissionOG, Josh Kopelman's FirstRound Capital, LLR, why they put their money in New York, Atlanta, Boston.

Josh Kopelman (FirstRound founder, and the new chairman of the board that controls the Inquirer and philly.com) has a lot of smart people he works with in Silicon Valley and in Israel. His group has money.

But we just don't have enough deal flow in Philly to keep that money close to home.

And that's why you're out in California now. For me it's an opportunity to take another run at something big, with Anaplan.

I had to leave the city I love, because there is just not the scale (of software investment) you have in San Francisco or Boston, or Austin, or New York City, or Atlanta, or even Utah.

I'll be back.