Innovation Philadelphia announced its first two recipients of the Creative Economy Investment Fund on Thursday, May 22 at the Creative Movement Conference. Along with the City of Philadelphia Department of Commerce representative Josh Sevin, Kelly Lee, Executive Vice President of Innovation Philadelphia, and Chris Starr, Creative Economy Investment Fund Committee Member, awarded David Bookspan, co-founder of DreamIt Ventures, and David Brown, founder and CEO of BrownPartners, $100,000 and $50,000 respectively.

DreamIt Ventures
DreamIt Ventures is a start-up organization with the intent of providing pre-seed and seed funding to budding entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia Region. The company aims to help great people with great ideas build great companies. They provide seed funding, experienced mentors and advisors, free legal, accounting and administrative help to form a company and introductions to funding sources. The DreamIt team consists of five groups working together to provide a platform for starting exciting, new companies.  The groups include their founders, business partners, speakers, Gurus (mentors) and funding partners. 

David Bookspan, Michael Levinson and Steve Welch, the founders of DreamIt are three entrepreneurs.  They each founded, built and successfully sold one or more business.  With backgrounds in technology, finance, sales and marketing, and law, they all are currently angel investors and have invested in software/SaaS, chip, pharmaceutical, medical device, and many other startup companies.

Brown Partners
BrownPartners was established in 2002 as a full-service multicultural marketing firm focusing on reaching, influencing and motivating consumers of color. Located in Center City, the small company - with nine people on staff - surpassed $1 million in revenues in 2005 and each year after. BrownPartners conducts business primarily in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but has also served clients in New Jersey and Maryland.

David Brown, President of BrownPartners, has 20 years of public relations and advertising experience. He was recently inducted into the Public Relations Hall of Fame by the Philadelphia Public Relations Association. Mr. Brown is also one of the few communications professionals to have ever served as Chairman of the Philadelphia chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and the Philadelphia Advertising Club.