Brad denenberg philadelphia

The players will be standing on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a site that offers an unobstructed view of the office building from across the Schuylkill River. Despite the buzz the idea has received since being announced Wednesday, Lee said it took five years to find people willing to make it happen. He eventually met kindred spirits at Brandywine Realty Trust, which owns the Cira Centre, and at the online news site Technically Philly.

Now, what might be the world's largest "Pong" game will be played April 19 and 24 as part of Philly Tech Week, the news website's annual series of events, seminars and workshops spotlighting the city's technology and innovation communities.

Wink estimated about people might play over the two days — most will be chosen by a lottery, but some spots will be reserved for younger students enrolled in science, technology, engineering and math programs. Among those playing will be year-old Brad Denenberg, one of three winners picked at random during a Tech Week preview on Wednesday.

Denenberg, who runs the tech startup incubator Seed Philly, confessed to some trepidation. He said he's actually not a big gamer. In today's gaming era of lifelike graphics — think "Call of Duty" — and colorful characters — think "Angry Birds" — it's hard to imagine how the pixelated "Pong" qualified as revolutionary when it was introduced in The black-and-white arcade game used simple block shapes to simulate two paddles and a ball; the object was for players to hit the ball so their opponents could not return it.

A home version paved the way for the game console industry. At the Cira Centre, the game will be re-created using hundreds of lights already embedded in its north face. The tower stands by day as a gleaming, mirrored edifice in west Philadelphia, but each night it illuminates the skyline with colored, patterned displays. A spokesman could not be reached for comment Thursday. Lee said he was driving by the building one night five years ago when he was suddenly struck with the idea that the lights could be configured to play the shape-fitting game Tetris.

The concept grew from there. Last month, after finally securing the necessary permissions, he and two colleagues successfully tested giant versions of "Pong" as well as the classic games "Snake" and "Space Invaders.

The effort has been satisfying on a technical level, Lee said, describing "Pong" as "a large-scale interactive, light-based art project.

But he noted it was rewarding on an emotional level as well, comparing it with the excitement he felt as a boy when he would put the "Pong" game cartridge into the console. And he hopes it inspires a new generation of innovators. In an unprecedented turn of events, a Minnesota judge re-sentenced […]. Can you count how many snakes are coiled around this pipe? Prince William and Kate Middleton just broke a royal rule during their latest Want proof?

See the star strip down for a celebratory photo. The year-old actress and queen of Found Fitness just showed off her sculpted abs in a teeny tiny bikini with metallic accents.

And she's lookin' fierce! The supermodel and AGT host looked super sculpted as she prepped for date night while in her underwear. She credits long outdoor runs for her rockin' bod.

Teresa took to Instagram to share a peek into her dreamy vacation with her husband-to-be. In the sweet snapshot posted on October 24, the couple can be seen posing alongside each other in front of a sparkling pool. While Luis donned a white bathing suit and a ba. Bill Belichick is a simple man. Into the summer, Walter had run out of reserve cash and was using his personal savings and soon credit card debt for website hosting and other expenses.

He ended the internship but still owed money to the promising young programmer. And then Yuriy vanished. Do the right thing. From fall to early , Yuriy says he was building deal flow for SmartInvest, leveraging his Philly network to bring a new investment firm to town, and it appears he at least did that.

It felt like a watershed moment for the first-time founder. Throughout that period, Yuriy was known to book conference rooms in the Squareknot office, which was a light-filled glass cube subleased from Gabriel Investments , a respected regional venture capital firm whose founder, Richard Vague , had taken a liking to Rappaport.

Like with Walter, Yuriy kept saying there were delays in raising money. The company owed money to a local dev firm and others. Once again, debt piled up waiting on a promise that seemed more distant with each passing day. Rappaport, sweet and prone to forgiveness, still feels burned by Yuriy. He later raised a far smaller amount and is still working on rebuilding momentum. This same months-long period of Yuriy ratcheting up excitement for a new early-stage fund based and focused in Philadelphia caused other problems to inexperienced and cash-starved tech businesses here.

At least two prominent coworking spaces, one in Center City and one in Kensington, altered their strategies, expecting to fill large portions of their offices with portfolio companies Yuriy said he would be hosting. How much and where blame should be focused is nothing anyone much wants to discuss, however. It was a productive event for a room full of mostly young and inexperienced tech founders alongside real investors from serious places, like Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Safeguard Scientifics.

Looking back, between the serious crowd and my brushing aside the teasing, the message was clear: Yuriy was a serious convener. It was all very chummy. Clockwise, top to bottom: Yuriy with friends, at home during Christmas and his yearbook photo from St.

He remains active in various groups and camps that make up a rather cohesive Eastern European cohort in Philadelphia. Yuriy grew up in East Oak Lane, not far from where famed linguist Noam Chomsky was raised a generation before.

Yuriy was raised with his older sister Andrea Zharovsky in a brick twin rowhome on 12th Street near 69th Avenue. For years, she taught French at St. She now works for the Bucks County schools, Yuriy said. She was a concert-grade pianist and studied archeology for a time at the Sorbonne when Yuriy was still a small child, taking him to Paris. She speaks fluently or in part nearly a dozen languages.

Yuriy has implied he had a violent childhood, but he deflects and obscures, as also is his way. Helen was the focus of the abuse, she says.

It got violent. There are details. They were estranged by the time Yuriy was a pre-teen. His mother Helen retreated more into academics. They always had a close relationship with their grandmother, Anastasia Sagaty known as Miss Nasty to some, Yuriy said , and now that grew. She largely raised the kids, while mom worked and studied. So he was shook when Anastasia died this June. But their mother Helen continued to travel extensively with Yuriy and Andrea, including frequent family trips to the Ukraine and exploits elsewhere in Europe, particularly during summers.

Yuriy might have logged more air miles than any other kid growing up in East Oak Lane. Yuriy says he ended up going to St.

For a kid as well-traveled as he was, The Prep, as it is affectionately called, was its own cultural education, in the classroom and out. Today he still cherishes his time there — along with Ukrainian culture and literature, it may be the only institution he speaks of with reverence — but it was painful, too. I think he had a lot to prove. One time, Andrea said, Yuriy came home and told a story of how one of his fellow students who grew up with Main Line money had gotten a new watch and was showing it off at school.

But The Prep showed him there was an entirely different end of the socioeconomic spectrum. As a teen, he was always on the move. Childhood friends remember him with a motorcycle and a Ford Bronco and other vehicles — always with vague details of where they came from. In , during their next family European jaunt, Yuriy, then just a thin teenager, got a Eurail Pass and left his mother and sister behind. He ended up in Greece, wrecking a motorcycle but ultimately finding his way home on his own.

Yuriy thrived at The Prep, although he was eccentric and mischievous. He did well enough — fourth in his class, Yuriy says — that he got into the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in with a degree in European History — the classics, just like his mother.

Through The Prep and Penn, Yuriy began building a network otherwise beyond reach for someone from the block. Through a spokesman, Brook declined to be interviewed for this story. Yuriy and Brook surely made unorthodox friends: one the privileged Main Line son of a thriving entrepreneur, the other a street-smart tough with a soft spot for Jesuit theology.

But Yuriy was larger than life to other city kids, too. Drinking and drugs were common, said one childhood friend. She was another tough woman, the only one who could manage to get Yuriy to go to home for a special family meal and one who was supportive of his academic work.

With that prestigious Ivy League education, Yuriy spent five years after graduation working for Beyond Beepers , a retail chain he joined through an uncle and cousin of his, rising to a vice president role. He started with them in South Jersey and helped launch a Philadelphia storefront.

It is still his longest single professional tenure to date. Yuriy lasted in the Suburban Connect role for about two years. But there is some dispute about what his title was and some details of his responsibilities. By February , Comcast owned Suburban Cable, and the Lenfest family was deploying its new found wealth. Yuriy says he was a primary operations lead for Brook to establish the office and its investment priorities. There was a split — more on that later — but for the next several years, Yuriy tried to build on something he found he loved: technology and investment.

Looking through SEC filings and other documents, Technical. In , this startupper met Yuriy, who was then representing some tech dev consulting firm that aimed to trade cash and equity for outsourced development work.

It was another chance to start over. Lentz is the one who points out to me that so many of the highest-profile, most-damaging experiences Yuriy has had in this local tech community all stem from his one messy relationship with SmartInvest. No fewer than three other former business partners report feeling taken advantage of. One longtime institutional organizer in the Philly creative community felt bilked out of money after Yuriy agreed to produce a project website.

One other organizer reports being owed money but declined to speak on the record. In all of those cases, it was a case of Yuriy promising something he could never deliver on — but, critically, not him stealing. The common theme is over-promising.

Yuriy with organizers of nvigor upon receiving their first sponsorship check in He has a particular focus on younger and inexperienced entrants and often helps get them into the right room when something new and interesting is beginning, said several sources. It was through PSL that Yuriy joined the community. He still painstakingly curates tech event listings weekly for the newsletter.

Later, he added an organizing role with FundingPost, the investor event and information resource. Yuriy was an early organizer of what became Start. Full disclosure: Technical. Perhaps most prominently, Yuriy took under his wing nvigor , a cross-campus effort by a group of undergraduates to establish a wider pipeline between colleges and Philly tech. He is now in a management consulting role in New York.

That group is led locally by Chris Alfano , who also cited a series of crucial introductions, including with an executive at Philadelphia Gas Works , which led to an impactful hack night, and an introduction to an accountant he has used for his company, Jarvus Innovations.

She said in he was among the first to volunteer to test an early version of her app and praised her company to a pair of investors he knew that she was later pitching. Through it all, his focus was action, not just kind words. Gotama thought it was a telling example. Last month, the developer was sharing that he was broke and feeling anxious. In the comments, there were lots of well wishes. Then there was Yuriy, telling the kid he could get him a job, giving him advice, offering other support.

I followed up with the young developer, and he confirmed Yuriy often did that, offering real direct support. Yuriy has a saying, something he picked up from his girlfriend Jill, herself proudly independent and strong-minded.

Yuriy with the long hair and black T-shirt with friends in Wildwood in the s. But something big happened in fall , something big enough that it fractured the improbable childhood friendship that had previously thrived between salt-of-the-earth Yuriy and Italian-leather-shoes-without-socks Brook Lenfest.

Yuriy spiraled. Court documents show he and his wife were behind in local and federal taxes. In , they filed for divorce. By October , Yuriy Porytko, well-traveled, Ivy League—educated and once in business with one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia, was arrested drunk at 3 a. It was an ugly incident, not one becoming of the kind of man Yuriy wants to be seen as. I found no fewer than five local Philly tech organizers who have had to, in some form, ask Yuriy to leave one of their events or encourage him to slow down his drinking.

Troublingly, I, too, once had to strongly recommend to Yuriy that it was time for him to leave one Technical. An event organizer read to this reporter an email complaint they received in April about Yuriy repeatedly getting into the personal space of a female attendee. In the category of why this story is important to be told publicly, without anyone more formally addressing it with Yuriy, it happened again. After initially agreeing to be part of this story, that founder declined to speak further.