NYC 3.0

Slideshow: “The Startup” Screening at Drop.io

Vadim Lavrusik — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:40:20 +0000

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.

Steve Greenwood, PressLift creator Drop.io offices Cody Brown, founder of NYU Local and Kommons IMG_4663 The audience Great turnout Mashable crew Charlie O'Donnell Shane Snow and Libby Brittain

Join us for a screening of “The Startup” at Drop.io Offices

Vadim Lavrusik — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:37:45 +0000

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.

Ultra Light Startups founder: Build a business for customers, not investors

JC Hewitt — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:51:23 +0000

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.

“What I advocate is, before you build the product, think about who you’re expecting to buy it. Track down your prospective customers, show them the product you have in mind, and ask them how much they’d pay for it. If they won’t buy it, you need to redesign and test again – before you build it. If someone indicates they will buy it, then ask them for a commitment to do so. Get this commitment before you build it, or roll it out or start marketing it. Then, you don’t need any external funding,” Lawlor said.

Topics from previous seminars through Ultra Light Startups include Bootstrapping, Web Analytics, and a legal series including courses on accounting, term sheets, and copyright law. A typical session begins with startup founders practicing pitches with one another, followed by a seminar, a meal, and socializing.

The group focuses on creating viable businesses at a minimum cost in a short period of time.

Lawlor criticized what he sees as a dominant belief among young technology entrepreneurs that securing the rounds of funding as the primary goal in starting a company.

“It’s a phenomenon that I like to call the ‘cult of funding’. A lot of first-time entrepreneurs believe that the first job of a startup is to get funding,” Lawlor said. “This is exactly the wrong focus and almost universally dooms the project to failure. People have an idea with no product and no customers expecting someone to fund it. They don’t realize that nobody will fund an untested idea, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be any better positioned to succeed.”

He argues that founders often give up large stakes in their companies before the business has matured, skewing incentives away from serving the needs of customers.

“They’d have just given up equity, control, and flexibility, gained the time-consuming overhead of investor relations, and they still don’t have a product that anyone has said they’d pay for.” he said.

Lawlor said rather than focusing on funding, entrepreneurs are better off focusing on building a customer base.

He considers Mike Bloomberg a model for entrepreneurs in that regard. Bloomberg secured the sale for his first terminals to Merrill Lynch in 1982 before he developed the prototype for the product.

The meetings hosted by Ultra Light Startups are often attended by venture capitalists, business executives, and their associates. While the meetings were originally free, the company currently charges a small fee for tickets through their website to cover costs.

Lawlor argues that New York City has a powerful competitive advantage over other locations for startups due to the density and diversity of talent.

“Technology, finance, marketing, monetizing strategies, social networks: on and on and on. I can find top experts in all of these subjects. I have a lot to choose from. Those advantages are tremendous and far outweigh the costs,” Lawlor said.

Lawlor provided three examples of what he called success stories: companies that were developed through the meetings that ultimately went on to multi-million buyouts or extraordinary revenues. Index Tools coalesced within Ultra Light Startups before being acquired by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! analytics for an undisclosed amount. The popular blog Mac Rumors and the dating site Plenty of Fish grew from it as well.

Embeddable “The Startup” videos

Vadim Lavrusik — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:01:51 +0000

Per popular demand, here are the videos on Vimeo for you to embed:

The Idea (Chapter 1)
Click Read More to see the rest…

The Pitch (Chapter 2)

The Sacrifice (Chapter 3)

The Investment (Chapter 4)

About “The Startup”

Vadim Lavrusik — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:51:55 +0000

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.

Video: Hot Potato releases new site, iPhone app and API

Vadim Lavrusik — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:18:27 +0000

Hot 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.

Is being a female entrepreneur really any different than being a male entrepreneur?

Guest Author — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:35:10 +0000

By 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.

A lot of the current female founders I’ve met own sites that cater to the female demographic. For most this is their second career; they either write or publish content about themselves or women like them, probably because earlier in their career they were among the first women to do something. Or they are mothers, or wives, and so they created a site about what they lacked when going through their experiences.

I realize there are female founders outside of the traditional “women’s interest sphere” of fashion and weddings and children, but we’re a unique breed. The site I own doesn’t focus on fashion or being a mom; it’s a social news site that has content curators who aggregate the top trending stories of the day, and though I am physically part of the female demographic, I lean towards the male demo.

Since I launched, I started attending more meetups in NY; usually to meet other people in the space; sometimes to feed off the energy in the room. The ratio of guys to girls is about 4:1, a large percentage of who are PR girls.

Being a guys girl, this doesn’t bother me; though, what’s interesting is that the guys, whether bloggers or other entrepreneurs usually see me as a girl first. Sure, I wear makeup, do my hair and wear high heels, but I’m there because I want to network, and in those situations I’m a techie first, and a female second. Yet, when I go to meetups for and with women in the tech space, I find myself not fitting in, and there I actually am a female first, and a techie second.

Which leaves me in a weird situation; I’m either one of the only female founders among other male founders, or I’m only there because of my gender.

A friend of mine, Yuli Ziv, who founded the user generated fashion site, MyIT Things.com here in NY, put together this video back in December of 2008 of how to raise money from VCs…in style. Some tips include, wear a push up bra if you pitch media, butt fitting pants for long commitment, no highlights, don’t wear fake lashes and try to get a 2nd date. The video is made in jest but with a serious undertone. And the truth is, no matter how old or young the VC is, he will see you as a female first.

I can’t really comment much on the whole VC scene, neither NY’s nor Silicon Valley’s, because I haven’t gone out to get funding yet. I’m not sure if Vivek is accurate in saying that VCs have a gender problem, but I do know that a lot of the current female founders own sites for females. Now, that makes sense, except I think it’s hard to convince a room full of men why a woman would want to do something. In addition, I also think it’s hard to convince a room full of men that you want to own a percentage of half of the population, discounting the other half which they belong to. That can’t be an easy sell. It’s like trying to sell a roomful of non-smokers a new flavor of cigarette. Sure, I get it in concept, but why would I invest in it?

Maybe it’s not that at all and the good female founders haven’t been found or funded yet. If a female-founded start-up is the first that firm decided to back, then I’m sure it will be a story in and of itself. And for that to be a success story, well, that’s just a start-up’s dream.

And while many women have established sites, it’s been in spaces that don’t compete with the big boys leaving myself and other female founders that don’t run female-focused sites, without a role model, or path, or community.

So the question is, can a female ever become part of the boys club? I’ve always felt comfortable there, but are there more women like me? And just because I’ve broken that wall in every facet of my life, does that mean I can actually do it when it comes to getting funded or taking the site to the next level?

Growing up with two brothers, I was taught very early in life what guys like and don’t like and I’ve always found dealing with guys to be easy; no bullshit. If you’re smart and you know what you’re talking about, they won’t notice your gender. But I feel like this needs to happen in droves, not one-offs.

I can only hope that there are women out there in dorm rooms dreaming of a site that will change the way we do things.

I hope that I’m not part of the select few that wake up at 4 a.m. thinking of ways to make things better. Inherently that is a unique quality in both girls and guys, but I’m assuming there are other women like me.

Problem is, I haven’t been able to find them yet, but I use that as motivation.

If I make it big, I’ll be part of history. I could be the tech version of Kathryn Bigelow, or the female Mark Zuckerberg. Currently, I don’t have someone like that to look up to, so I could either work hard to be her for the next wave of girls, or let the guys take all the credit for the next big thing. I’ll go with working hard.

If you’re a female founder in NY, I’d love to talk to you and find out about your experiences.

Socially Edible: Let’s roll location-based gaming, restaurant reviews and online ordering into one

Vadim Lavrusik — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:03:36 +0000

Here’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.

Mobile and Social

If users are on the go, they are able to get all the website’s services through a mobile application that also finds restaurants based on their GPS location. The aim is not only to provide convenience, but also create community through user-generated content on the site. This would include text reviews or social photos (Twitpic, Facebook, Flickr), tweet reviews and much more. Those who use the mobile application are able to check-in to the restaurant and write recommendations. Community would also be furthered through an integrated connection through social tools like Facebook Connect, allowing you to see what your friends are eating and recommending.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?

Location

The site would cater to New Yorkers that are looking for a convenient place to find all their food needs. The content would be searchable by address so that users can not only learn about restaurants hyper-locally but also connect with users in their neighborhood. This also works well with deliver methods since many restaurants have distance restrictions. Eventually, this platform can be duplicated and adapted to other communities. Users traveling would be able to learn about food news on the go, review it and order food.

This site, of course, would have a mobile application that combined these elements, but featured a gaming aspect that made dining out rewarding and fun. Perhaps a food-focused version of Foursquare, but features and rewards tailored for foodies.

How is this idea innovative?

There are New York City news sites that review and feature restaurants. There are user-generated review sites like Yelp for restaurants. There are even sites from which users can order takeout from specific restaurants. Then there are mobile applications that provide a gaming aspect to checking into restaurants and seeing where friends are, all while earning rewards. This site would combine these elements into one hub for eaters to go to.

What do you think? Is this something that is feasible? Do you think users would enjoy this? Or is it simply trying to do too much?

NY Tech Meetup #71: Text money to your friends, build the next IMDB, and get kicked in the face!

Shane Snow — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:00:54 +0000

by SHANE SNOW | Guest Writer

Throngs of programmers, MBAs, and entrepreneurs in all varieties swarmed Fashion Institute of Technology’s Haft Auditorium last night to watch nine New York technology companies demonstrate their products; the Fire Marshall had to order a few dozen people standing in the back to bounce. (But geeks in the crowd squeezed in close so they could all fit.). With 70 previous such events under its belt, New York Tech Meetup, a monthly gathering of tech talent, kicked off the night with a set of five one-minute demos by new companies, and concluded with five five-minute demos. As usual, the crowd ate it up.

The night’s big hits included Venmo, an SMS-based money transfer system based on “friend trust,” and CrowdFusion, a powerful, customizable content management system built by the guys behind the custom CMSes employed by Engadget, TMZ, and Wow.com. Needakick.com’s demo drew the most laughs with its quirky goal reminder service that incentivizes people to fulfill their dreams by making them pay for an email reminder.

Other demos included PinkDingo (a microlending platform with one-click donations), Bellaga (a fashion marketplace), Filife (a finance Q&A site), Bundle (a finance visualization site to compare users’ habits against particular demographics), Surphace (related content plugins for blogs), and Qlipso (a crazy multi-media, multi-friend screen sharing platform that looks a lot like an MMO). NYC 3.0 plans to feature in-depth interviews and reviews of a few of the night’s big products in future coverage.

With around 800 people in attendance, fans and founders mobbed NYTM organizer, Nate Westheimer, after the event. Westheimer admitted that NYTM is becoming too big to be the first jump-off point for new startups on the scene anymore. “I’d encourage you to go to some of these smaller events,” he told one woman who seeking advice on where to get buzz and feedback for her new venture. A two-month-old student meetup group held at Rose Tech Ventures before the event (students in attendance there got in free to NYTM), is just one of a dozen related groups, such as Hackers and Founders and the Columbia Venture Community, that have stepped in to meet the early-stage needs of entrepreneurs in the area.

Guest author Shane Snow is a journalist and entrepreneur based in New York City.

Video: Nate Westheimer on AnyClip: ‘Moments from movies matter’

Vadim Lavrusik — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:00:23 +0000

Nate Westheimer, co-founder and EVP of product & technology at AnyClip. He is also known as the organizer of the NY Tech Meetup.

Nate Westheimer, the co-founder and executive vice president for product and technology at AnyClip.com and the executive director and organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, demoed AnyClip for us and talked about how the company plans to make money through affiliate revenue, advertising and partnerships.

The site uses meta data to allow users to search words or subjects to find specific movie clips. In the video, you’ll see Westheimer search gas station and several movie clips in which a scene takes place at a gas station show up. The idea is similar to that of SpeakerText, which we’ve written about, in that it helps make online video more usable and searchable.

The biggest challenge, for the startup, is getting the licensing to use clips from movies and working with studios to expand its library of clips. But with a team of some 20 people working at AnyClip, they have an opportunity to grow the library quickly.