Gotham's Tech Start-up Scene
I snapped some photos from our screening of “The Startup” at the Drop.io headquarters in DUMBO. The turnout included folks from other startups to the likes of First Round’s Charlie O’Donnell and staff from Mashable, which today published a post about TeamHomeField on their site. The post also included the first chapter of the documentary. Thanks to all who attended.
Join us for a screening of the “Startup: Four Entrepreneurs Battle the Odds in Gotham” at the Drop.io offices in Brooklyn on April 19 at 7 p.m. We’ll show the documentary and you’ll have an opportunity to network with others in the New York tech scene.
Thank you to Drop.io for being kind enough to host!
Go to the Facebook event for more information and to RSVP.
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Graham Lawlor
By JC HEWITT | Guest Author
In 2008, Graham Lawlor resigned his position as an IT product manager at Deutsche Bank to found Ultra Light Startups. He began the group as a method to test out his technological business ideas. He used it as a method for getting in touch with other tech entrepreneurs looking to start their businesses with little to no outside investment. Since then, a thriving community has grown around the organization, featuring regular seminars and pitching events.
Lawlor implores Ultra Light Startups members to develop businesses around the needs of customers rather than inventing hot ideas that will appeal to investors.
read morePer popular demand, here are the videos on Vimeo for you to embed:
Team Homefield gathers on top of their office roof.
The Startup is a four-chapter video documentary with interactives on a young tech startup trying to make it in New York City. My colleague Alex Hotz and I followed the entrepreneurs behind TeamHomeField.com for the past four months as they develop and grow their web-based video application for sports teams. Below is the Vimeo video intro for the project, which we encourage you to to embed and it includes the likes Fred Wilson, Nate Westheimer, Charlie O’Donnell and more.
The intro briefly explores how the New York City’s start-up community is growing, evolving and becoming more collaborative. In 2008, 95 seed and early stage startups could be found in the Big Apple. In 2009 that number shot up to 150, according to Union Square Ventures. Many of these start-ups are technology focused, gaining prominence and growth in recent years. In many ways, the scene is reaching a new level, 3.0. This is the inspiration behind “The Startup” and NYC 3.0.
The project was quite time-consuming and both Alex and I learned a lot. We first started following the guys from TeamHomeField.com in late October and tried to highlight some of the aspects startups have to take on (pitching, sacrifice, etc.). We hope you enjoy(ed) it. Also, take a look at the interactive timeline of TeamHomeField and a map of some of the tech startups in the city. We may also be hosting a screening of this in the near future. Stay tuned.
The music in the documentary is by the NYC-based group CARLON. Check them out at www.carlonmusic.com. You can also find them out on Facebook or Twitter.
read moreHot Potato, a location-based social platform, released a fresh version of their site, a new iPhone application and an API for developers to play with Thursday – just in time for South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas this year.
We sat down with Justin Shaffer, the founder and CEO of Hot Potato, at their Brooklyn offices last Thursday, to talk about the new release and where the company is headed.
read moreBy LIMOR ELKAYAM | Guest Writer
There’s been a lot of chatter lately about the lack of female founders in the tech space and some are even questioning if VCs have a gender problem.
Being a female founder of the startup iSpotaStory.com, I started wondering…Is it really any different than being a male founder?
My first reaction was no, but after thinking about it, I realized there are striking differences.
I’ve always had a lot of guy friends and even if there were girls around, I never really paid attention. I knew the tech space was dominated by guys, but I never really noticed that there were no iconic female founders; a la Mark Zuckerberg.
read moreHere’s an idea that Shane Snow and I have had for a site and I’ve been meaning to share it for quite some time. The basic idea is to solve a problem in location-based restaurant information apps and websites: fragmentation. The rough name we were throwing around was Socially Edible (sociallyedible.com).
Let’s create a one-stop shop that combines online restaurant reviews (Yelp), location-based social gaming (Foursquare), and online food ordering (SeamlessWeb), and sprinkle in some journalist-produced restaurant reviews to create a connected user experience for foodies.
Why not start with a specific location, say, New York. These features with the combination of social media and mobile technology would make it easier for New Yorkers to get food news and information on the go, as well as the ability to order from our site.
A person looking to get some information on a restaurant can not only read what a reporter has written, but also what website users are logging in to say. On top of that users can also see what the buzz is on social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) through trending topics as well as specialized social sentiment reports for each restaurant page (perhaps by using social media mining software?). In addition, users can explore new restaurants in their area by searching with their address or zipcode and browse through search results on a map or list.
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