FastFWD: Philadelphia’s Experiment in Civic Innovation

The original FastFWD asked an unusual question for a startup accelerator: what if the city itself became part of the environment in which a new venture learned to work?

Philadelphia’s initiative brought entrepreneurs together with public-sector problems, institutional knowledge, and the possibility of city pilots. It connected the familiar work of developing a business with a less familiar task: learning how a young company and a city could work with one another.

This page is a retrospective of that program. The FastFWD journal is a separate, independent publication. It does not run the accelerator, accept applications, or represent the City of Philadelphia, GoodCompany, Wharton, or Bloomberg Philanthropies. The historical address is retained to provide useful context for readers arriving through older links.

The idea behind the program

Cities have significant needs and considerable purchasing power. Young companies may have promising approaches but little experience with public procurement. City staff may have operational knowledge but limited opportunities to examine unfamiliar suppliers or test an alternative way of doing something.

FastFWD addressed that relationship rather than assuming a good product would naturally find its way into government.

The Metropolis case study describes a process that began by defining challenges, researching opportunities, and bringing stakeholders together. It frames the initiative against procurement practices that can prescribe a solution so narrowly that new approaches struggle to enter.

That context matters. FastFWD was not simply a general-purpose technology incubator placed in a city. Its purpose linked venture development to civic problems and the conditions under which public institutions might try a new approach.

Origins in the 2013 Mayors Challenge

A Wharton announcement dated April 9, 2013 describes Philadelphia’s winning social-enterprise proposal in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge. The award to Philadelphia was $1 million.

The announcement places the Wharton Social Impact Initiative within a partnership connecting the city and GoodCompany. It also discusses early-stage workshops and ambitious expectations for the local social-enterprise ecosystem.

Those expectations must be read as expectations. Forecasts about companies, jobs, investment, or wider economic effects are not evidence that those outcomes later occurred.

The historical partnership is described across contemporary sources as involving the City of Philadelphia, GoodCompany Group or GoodCompany Ventures, and the Wharton Social Impact Initiative. This retrospective preserves the names used by the relevant documents rather than treating present-day organizational identity as proof of continuity.

A short documentary timeline

These milestones tell a coherent story without requiring an invented end date or an unsupported claim that the program continued indefinitely.

Dates also need careful handling. The city document linked below is hosted at a URL containing 2020, but the relevant request is dated February 25, 2015. A file’s hosting path is not the same thing as the date of the events it records.

Why public safety became the first focus

The first group worked around public-safety challenges. The theme was broader than a narrow definition of policing: it included education, public information, community communication, legal and social needs, and other approaches to urban problems.

Contemporary Forbes reporting connects that choice to research conducted through Wharton and describes the accelerator’s work leading toward a next phase after pitch day.

The choice illustrates the program’s problem-led ambition. Rather than beginning with a particular kind of software, the partnership examined a city challenge and assembled ventures approaching it from different directions.

It also raises questions a present-day reader should keep open. Different public-safety technologies carry different implications for privacy, fairness, rights, and accountability. Inclusion in an accelerator is not evidence that those questions were resolved or that every proposed use was appropriate.

The first group of entrepreneurs

Wharton’s March 2014 account names ten ventures. The table summarizes their described focus at that time; it is not a statement about their current activities.

The same account describes a 12-week accelerator and $10,000 non-equity stipends, alongside mentorship and access to expertise. It presents the participants’ aims and the support offered. It does not establish that every venture reached its intended social outcome.

The range of participants is revealing in itself. Some worked on information and communication, others on services or physical products. The common thread was a public problem, not a single technical architecture.

From accelerator to city pilots

The most useful later primary source is the city’s February 2015 toolkit request.

It describes an incubator-style curriculum for two groups, focused on public safety and community stability. It says selected firms received competitive opportunities for pilot funding. At that point, selected first-group firms had implemented pilots intended to last about a year, while second-group firms had recently sought pilot funding.

This is stronger evidence of activity than a launch announcement. It is still not a comprehensive evaluation of each pilot’s cost, effects, or long-term adoption.

The document’s purpose was to turn participants’ and staff members’ experiences into a toolkit. It identifies city departments as a primary audience, with startups and the broader discussion of procurement reform also in view.

That shift is significant: the program was producing questions about how government experiments, not only questions about how startups grow.

What the available evidence can support

The sources establish the partnership’s origins, an initial funding award, a first participant group, accelerator support, subsequent pilot activity, and the city’s intention to capture procurement lessons.

They support a historical account of an experiment in connecting entrepreneurship and public administration.

They do not, on their own, establish a causal claim that FastFWD reduced crime, transformed Philadelphia’s economy, or produced lasting benefits across every participating venture. Those would require additional outcome evidence and a method capable of evaluating the claim.

For the same reason, a company’s later development should not automatically be attributed to the accelerator. Ventures have many influences: their teams, other funders, customers, later partnerships, and changing market conditions.

A careful retrospective can acknowledge that the initiative was interesting without turning an incomplete record into a success narrative.

The questions that remain useful

FastFWD’s durable relevance lies in the relationship it tried to build. A city can expose an entrepreneur to operational reality. A young company can give a department a reason to question an established method. Both still need a fair and workable route from a trial to ongoing service.

Three questions follow from the documented design.

Who defines the problem? A useful challenge needs both public knowledge and a clear account of the people affected. A supplier’s product description is not a substitute.

What does a pilot prove? A demonstration can establish feasibility under particular conditions. It must be designed to answer questions about workload, reliability, inclusion, and cost if those are to inform adoption.

What remains after the experiment? A city needs records, institutional learning, and a responsible decision about continuation. A venture needs clarity about the relationship between participating in a trial and winning future work.

Our guide to city pilots and procurement develops those questions for present-day teams. Our civic tech and GovTech explainer examines the public and institutional relationships behind the labels.

The original FastFWD belongs to a particular place and period. The wider question—how a promising idea becomes a dependable public service—still deserves careful attention.