First business graduates from Rowan incubator

Social ad network company will leave N.J. for Philadelphia, founder says.Socialreach, a media company that powers advertising on social networking Web sites, on Monday became the first venture to graduate from the new business incubator at Rowan University’s Rohrer College of Business.

Stephen Gill, 23, who founded the company a month before graduating from Rowan in May 2008, said the flexible, low-cost office space at the incubator was a key to his company’s growth.

“When we started, we only needed three workstations, but as we grew, they gave us more space,” Gill said. The company now has 17 people — a dozen at the incubator and others in New York and in Montreal, where Gill’s business partner, Gabriel Malca is based.

Gill said his company operates a social advertising network that works with developers of social network applications, enabling them to generate revenue.

Socialreach is both leaving the incubator and moving out of New Jersey: Gill said he has leased new offices in Philadelphia, near the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. “We will have access to a lot of computer science and engineering talent there,” he said.

Gill said he was also attracted to Pennsylvania because business taxes are lower than in New Jersey. His company has funded its growth internally, and doesn’t have any plans to raise money from investors, he added.

Socialreach is one of six tenants who moved into the incubator at the South Jersey Technology Park at Rowan University, in Mantua Township, last October. As Socialreach becomes the first graduate, “we are excited to have reached this milestone in the short existence of the incubator,” said Niranjan Pati, dean of the Rohrer College of Business. “Every incubator strives to help firms develop and grow so that they can in effect stand on their own. Stephen and Socialreach have done this at a remarkable speed, which is a refection of his innovation and drive.”

E-mail Beth Fitzgerald at [email protected]