I attended the NY Tech Meetup last night at Cooper Union. As usual, it was a good turnout with a few hundred folks attending despite the blistering weather. Here’s a brief rundown of the companies that presented.

Caught the tail end of this presentation, but the gist is social networking around surfing the web. You install a Firefox extension (IE in the works) and are able to meet your friends at specific web pages. The founders are affiliated with IBM in some way and run their development out of Peru. Not incredibly interesting in my book. Kind of reminds of StumbleUpon.

This site’s goal is to prevent the buying of stolen goods. The potential market is huge, but they didn’t think through the business model and how to really solve this problem. The idea is to register the serial number of a product once you buy it. I have no clue how that addresses the problem, considering a thief could do the same. The presentation was more comical than anything. It did get me thinking about fraud prevention and how important it is to large enterprises. Companies lose billions of dollars per year on stolen or fraudulent goods.

This is a cool site where people submit short conversations that they overhear in NYC. It’s actually quite funny. They presented a new feature where users can leave phone messages and the corresponding audio files will get posted to the site. No real innovation there, as most of the work is done with human intervention (and Vonage I believe). The site is completely free and revenues are based on ads. The founder stressed that the site is really a “hobby”, but has been around for a number of years already.

The first of a few music-related startups. Let’s you discover, buy and sell music. No DRM – just straight MP3s. Dynamic pricing. Songs start out free and get bid up to 98 cents depending upon demand. Not sure if I agree with the dynamic pricing model (more to come on this). Overall, the website was clean and seemed easy to use. The founders were recent Brown graduates. Music is a very competitive space and product differentiation is key to compete with the big boys. Nevertheless, a good start for a few guys right out of school.

The guys from MusicNation were well-prepared and gave a good presentation. This startup is described as YouTube meets American Idol. That’s some pretty big shoes to fill. They hold contests for record deals and charge each contestant any entry fee. Idea behind fee is to filter out “bad” content. The founders have strong NYC ties (DoubleClick), which probably helped quite a bit to secure some of their deals – ClearChannel, Sony BMG and Epic Records.

I have to admit, I was already familiar with The Hype Machine before the presentation. Some background to those who don’t know. The Hype Machine was built solely by Anthony Volodkin (who is now only 21). The Hype Machine crawls the web for music and aggregates the results. It really succeeds at the music discovery aspect. You can listen to songs directly on the site in THM’s flash player and buy music from iTunes/Amazon. I love the site and aggregation approach. Definitely needs some work on the user-interface and business model. In fact, I have no clue how THM makes money.

This seemed more of a project than startup. Basically, a mashup between Google Earth and Skype. I believe it was a C++ application. Once connected, one person would be able to take over the others experience similar to a GoToMyPC session. Possible applications include guided travel tours, driving directions and real estate open houses.

So, I attended the Tech Meetup yesterday held at Cooper Union in NYC. It’s been a few months since I’ve been able to make it to a meetup in the city, but it’s definitely worthwhile every time I do. Here’s a run down of the night.

1. ChangingThePresent
Their goal is to create a marketplace that makes it easy for people to give charitable gifts to one another. This seems like a good cause considering we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on “crap” we don’t need. My only question here, is how are they going to inspire consumer confidence and build a brand. I give a small amount every year to charity, and would give more if I knew (for sure) my money was being used exactly for what its supposed to be. I’m guessing there a good number of people that are in this bucket with me.

2. Bitwine
These guys seek to provide a knowlege market, similar to Yahoo Answers. Maybe its just me, but I don’t get these types of sites and would never (yes, never) use them. Here’s the demo that one of the co-founders (Alon Cohen) ran. Imagine this, you’re training for a marathon, but have no idea where to get started. FYI, try Googling “marathon” or check out Wikipedia. Anyway, so he searches their network and finds a so called “expert” who has ran marathons. He decides that he’ll offer this guy up to $20 to help him, which is totally insane. Then the clock starts and you see the $20 balance dwindle down. I was impressed with the features and technical implementation. They had Skype integration with video, PayPal integration and a nice workflow. Overall, if you do plan on using the site, the process was rather simple and easy-to-use.

3. Platial
Photo storytelling on a map. Essentially, you can use their APIs to create your own custom maps. Maybe something is wrong with me, but I don’t get this one either. They have angel funding from Kleiner Perkins and all their revenues are currently from advertisements. From a tech standpoint, they are build using open source software such as PHP and PostgresSQL.

4. Cheap animation techniques in 10 min
This was just “some guy” (Lee) presenting a technique to learn how to draw animations using an open source software program called MonkeyJam. You only need a few things to get started – transparent paper, webcam, MonkeyJam, market and basic lighting (or lightbox). I’ve always wanted to learn how to draw cartoons so here’s my chance. Look for a few soon, but please be kind. This demo was refreshing since Lee wasn’t promoting his own company, but rather spreading the word about this cool software. In the future, he hopes to apply the technique along with the software as an educational tool for children.

5. Citizen image
Citizen Image aims to connect photographers and publishers. Their goal is to help citizen journalists monetize their photos. Seems reasonable. Publishers can also request photos (had an example from National Geographic). One thing that stuck out in my mind was a quick comment by the presenter that 2006 was the year people gave away their content on YouTube and how they wanted to change that in 2007. That’s total bull. People contribute content on YouTube b/c they want to. It’s a form of self-expression and part of their online identities. Not everyone wants to make money from their 1 minute rant about how their trip to Panera sucked. Anyway, things are changing a bit and becoming a bit more corporate, but the fundamentals started out that way. Nevertheless, the site looked clean and easy-to-use.

6. Daylife
Jonathan Harris demod Daylife – a news aggregation/analysis service. I had never heard of them, but apparently they’d been covered by TechCrunch (here) and Scott had a vested interest himself. They are attempting to aggregate global news and provide “better news”. I love the grand ambitions and passion of the Jonathan. They also seemed to focus on their openness to partnerships and third-party applications via APIs.

The night ended in a discussion around the new Apple iPhone. If you have not been spending your days stuck on an island in the middle of the ocean then you know about the brand spanking new and amazing iPhone unveiled at MacWorld on Tuesday. It’s always interesting to hear other people’s perspective. I really really hope Apple changes the game and opens up the phone so developers and startups can innovate on the platform.

We had another tech meetup last Thursday at Phanfare. Only about 6 or 7 people wound up showing up, but the event turned about to be good. Mostly all new faces and more of a casual atmosphere.

Jason from uGather was kind enough to show us the world premiere of his product/community. He described uGather as “classifieds evolved”. Their goal is to be a one-stop-shop for user generated content. I love the user generated content part, but not the approach. This is a very tough problem to solve and probably falls into the realm of trying to do to much. They have categories such as blogs, audio, personals, jobs, etc. I would argue that most of these could be their own companies. I don’t see the value proposition in offering all of these categories. They would have a better focused and more useful application if they concentrated on one of these areas. Another problem with user generated content is the lack of incentive for the users. Why would they take the time to contribute content and, more importantly, why on your site? Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that if you can figure out how to monetize the content and generate revenue for the users you might be onto something. The bad news is that no one has done this successfully – as far as I know. It would also be useful if this system fed other systems so then me as a consumer only needs to enter my content (e.g. job posting) once. In conclusion, the guys over at uGather have a tough road ahead of them in this space. Nevertheless, they are in the game and if you aren’t playing then you have no chance at winning. Good job guys and good luck! Some other interesting facts about Jason is that he’s only 20/21 years old and originally from NJ.

Lastly, check out some of the photos from our past two events here hosted by Phanfare.

I attended nextNY’s first community conversation event (Startup 101) tonight at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm in the city. About 50 or so people showed up along with several panelists including Jason McCabe Calacanis (Weblogs, Inc), Ian Landsman (Userscape Software – microISV), Jay Rand (Manatt – lawyer), Jackie Reed (Administaff – Business Consultant), David Rose (Angel Investor), Peter Semmelhack (Bug Labs), Michael Volpatt (Larkin/Volpatt Communications) and Albert Wenger (delicious).

I found the discussion to be very useful, but not for obvious reasons. There was a wide range of topics covered and opinions expressed. Everything from patent strategies to hiring sales people to war stories to legal issues. Honestly, a true entrepreneur does their homework and would have known most of this stuff already. Heck, I haven’t even started a company yet and have heard or read about almost all of the topics that were covered today. That’s what entrepreneurs do or, in my case, people who want to be entrepenurs. My takeway was more motivational than anything. Events like this make me want to get off the “sideline” and into the game. I talk about it all of the time and have tried a few times only to see the momentum eventually fizzle away. I love hearing about past successes and failures. No two paths are the same. Every person has a unique perspective that all others can learn from. The one speaker that I found most inspirational was Jason Calacanis. He started a few companies (Weblogs Inc, Sillicon Alley Reporter) and exited them very successfully financially. The reason he was so compelling was because of his upfront attitude and honesty. He stressed the fact that execution is everything and ideas are pretty much worthless.

Overall, this was a good event. Thanks to Philip Cotty and some of the other folks who helped out on this. Wish I could have stayed for a few drinks!

Here’s a recap and random thoughts on the NY Tech Meetup event that I attended on Tuesday, June 6th. Sorry, for the delay in posting this.

1. Streeteasy
-This is a real estate technology company focused currently on New York City.
-They provide your typical search and Google maps mashup functionality.
-Most compelling features were complimentary stats such as local school systems, market data and new rental section (I have yet to try). Obviously, the rental section could be extremely valuable to those living or thinking about living in NYC. As we all know, a good apartment at a decent price is hard to find.
-For those techies, this site is built on Rails and is well designed. I believe it got best in meetup. Good job guys!
-Disclaimer: I knew of this site beforehand from the local ruby community.

2. Wellcomemat
-This company was focused on real estate and specifically video listings. It seemed that had two goals – to allow homeowners to post their own video listings and secondly to connect professional videographers to homeowners.
-In general, I love the idea of video real estate listings. Anything to give additional insight to the buyer is great. The only problem here is filtering out the bad and/or poor quality content. Also, hooking in the videographers is a good move as most people (myself included) wouldn’t product a professional looking real estate ad.
-Overall, site seemed to be well designed.

3. Infostoria
-I didn’t quite get this one. Seemed to be a content collaboration / management solution (e.g. file sharing).
-A few things I did notice: everything was hosted locally (wait you’ll see why), file uploading was done with 80+ MB TIFF files (who does this?) and the app was really quick.
-Not really impressed or interested here.

4. Noloh
-Stands for Not One Line of HTML
-Goal of this company is as its name states – a platform so you don’t need to write any HTML code.
-I believed it was PHP-based, but they could support others.
-Interesting idea, but a tough sell in my opinion. HTML is not that bad. Heck, with Rails I don’t mind it at all.
-I’d be curious to see if they are going the open-source route or not.

5. Kinooga
-Help people raise money for films. Seemed like a decent idea.
-Almost like buying stock in a film *** idea ***. Funny thing is, I could probably log on and say I’m creating a new film and I need $30M for it
-Fraud and regulation could be problems in the future.

6. Hot-n-cold
-This was a simple mobile device game.
-By far, this was the worst product – not presentation.
-The presenter (forgot his name) was okay and enthusastic about the product, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to play this game. It wasn’t easy to play and uninteresting.
-I understand they were looking for $$$, but the screens looked horrible.

7. Posticky
-Sticky notes for the browser.
-Innovative technology (all ajax), but not idea. The business model and product set needs work though. I don’t think making money soley from sticky notes will cut it.
-Site was created by 2 recent graduates (i think). Good job guys!
-Great look-and-feel and design.

8. Root Exchange
-This company has been around for a while and definitely has an interesting business model.
-They are targeting the high-end b2b lead generation market. In particular, Root Exchange is a marketplace where you can buy and sell these leads.
-Good presentation and technology, but uninteresting industry. Funny, I say that about a billion dollar industry.

We had our 2nd official meetup at Phanfare in Metuchen. Overall, the meetup was great. I truly enjoy meeting new people and talking about “cool” things they are working on. About 8 people showed up, which was a small showing. We definitely need to grow this group a bit. Where are all you techies in jersey? If you are a techie in jersey and don’t know about us contact me.

The format was a Phanfare demo by Andrew and then a Ruby on Rails tech talk by myself (then drinks). Phanfare is a photo publishing platform. That means they manage your photos and publishing. You dowload their client application (Windows and Mac). You create albums and drag your photos into Phanfare. From there, your photos become part of Phanfare and you can access your photos from any computer. Andrew created an album on one computer added photos and it magically appeared on the other. This is great for people who don’t want to worry about where their photos are and backing them up. Other cool features include advanced album sharing (via custom urls), tracking updates via RSS, embedding video in blogs and sending custom links via email. They also don’t have ads (yeah!!!) and have a subscription based revenue model. Phanfare already has customers and is operational. Overall, I found this to be a pretty useful application and would use it myself. On a side note, I love that these guys found something they think needs to be fixed (photo sharing/publishing) and are going for it. That’s what startups are all about. Check them out. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about them soon.

The second demo was a brief tech talk on Ruby on Rails. Basically, a high-level what is ROR and what can I do with it. I’m definitely a ROR noob, but I thought it was worth while showing a few background slides on ROR as well as a quick screencast from rubyonrails.com. There was some good questions on scalability, performance and overall application design using Rails. These are all common concerns when dealing with a new web framework. Unfortunately, I’m not expert so wasn’t sure myself. Here are the screencasts. We walked through the 5-minute Flickr one.

Again, thanks to Andrew and the folks at Phanfare for hosting this event (and the beers)!

Tonight I attended my first Ruby NYC meeting. The group is mainly techies and mostly Ruby or Rails programmers of varied skill levels. The group’s been around for a few years and has seen a spike in membership due to the recent Rails craze. I would say about 20-30 people attended. The format for the meeting was a recap of the recent Canada on Rails conference (a few people went) and a brief Ruby discussion for noobs. I found this event extremely valuable especially to someone who is working everyday with Ruby on Rails. There were numerous side discussions and tech tips (testing, design) during the meeting. I always enjoy hearing experiences others have had working with a technology, especially the details. Overall, the consensus in the room around Ruby on Rails seems to be very positive. They even have hackathons once a month (I think). That’s awesome!

On a side note, it seems like there are a ton of companies looking for Ruby programmers. Just at this meeting, there must have been at least 5 or 6 people mentioning they are hiring. Mostly startups, but a few established players.

So, we had our first NJ Tech meetup today at Harvest Moon Brewery in New Brunswick, NJ. We had about 9 people in attendance. In the group we have a great mix of experiences and industries such as pharma, finance, marketing, digital media, photo/video, manufacturing and mobile just to name a few. The one hiccup was that the atmosphere was a bit loud and it was tough hearing everyone speak.

We did have a good discussion around the state of social networking. One thing that surprised me was I’m the only one on MySpace and I barely use it. LinkedIn seemed kind of popular – although the crowd was split on steady usage. There were some good points around the differences between social networking sites and communities. Although there are similarities and overlap between the two, there were a few key points on their differences. For example, LinkedIn doesn’t really have a community feel to it. We also touched upon mobile content and MVNOs (e.g 7-Eleven, ESPN).

Also, thanks to Stan for bringing his PowerBook and demoing Toonamation. Toonamation is python application / library that can be used for a variety of different photo and video customizations (e.g. cartoon-like features). It seems like there are many potential applications and avenues for something like this. Could be used for marketing presentations, video editing software or as an add-in to existing services like Flickr, YouTube, or Photobucket. Great stuff!

Looking forward to the next one. Oh, and I definitely won’t forget my camera next time.

I attended a VANJ event this afternoon. The topic was “What Does It Take To Get This Angel Investor To Write The First Check?” and featured Bob Gailus from Lenox Venture Partners. Bob is an experienced angel investor and has worked in the industry for over 20 years in both Silicon Valley and NY. Overall, I found the session to be informative and, most importantly, validated my assumptions around angel funding. In general, I wouldn’t even bother trying to get funding if I did’t have a product and customers already. It’s just to competitive. These guys get several hundred business plans a year and only fund a few. Not to mention most of the funding they do is from referrals in some way. What you really want is to have investors come to you (e.g. self-sustaining business). That’s in an ideal world. We all can’t be as lucky as eBay. This is the challenge with consumer-focused internet businesses. That’s why the entreprise route is so attractive, but is a much harder way to go (in my opinion).

Anyway, the format was entirely Q&A which seemed to work well. Lastly, here’s Bob’s criteria for investing (paraphrased).

• Is the market opportunity large enough to grow a $25-50M+ company?
• Is there a validated market need?
• Is there unique technology that differentiates the company?
• Is the “go-market” strategy compelling?
• What are the market adoption issues and timing?
• Can the company be a dominant player?
• Does the founding team have the right background?
• Are the founders open to working with investors?
• Is the capital requirements sized to the opportunity?
• Will be the company be a compelling acquisition?

So, I attended my first NY Tech Meetup today. I’ve been a meetup member / lurker for quite a while and decided to finally check it out. I have to say this was a pretty good event for the amount of people that showed up – I believe somewhere between 200 and 300. Personally, I think a smaller group size would be more effective and actually give you the opportunity to get to know the people there. Let’s see what happens with the NJ Tech Meetup group.

Nevertheless, here’s a recap of the presenters and my thoughts.

1. Andrew Rasiej, FON
-Interesting idea here. The goal is to get people to share their wifi and leverage the current wireless infrastructure. Once you signup and agree to share your wifi, you get access to everyone else’s shared networks on FON.
-Described themselves as providing a bridge between residential and municipal wifi providers.
-Powerful backers in Skype, eBay and Google.
-Raised alot of money > $20MM.

2. Jim Coffman, Blogamp
-Solution that combines webcasting and podcasting to anyone who produces audio for the web.
-Didn’t really understand how this worked.
-They have their own web-based media player.

3. Tom Kane, Commontales
-A kind of wiki-like application that allows people to create and share stories. I don’t think I would use something like this, but that’s me.
-Could be very interesting if this was around for a long time and people were able to go back and read stories from years ago (timeline feature).

4. Patrick Fitzsimmons, Zipapp
-Allows users to create online spreadsheets, databases and web pages.
-Defintely a market for this kind of application, but has some serious competitors in DabbleDB and Intuit’s Quickbase.
-Patrick is currently a senior at Yale and has done an excellent job for someone who created this application out of his dorm while going to school.
-Disclosure: I knew about Zipapp and Patrick already from NextNY.

5. Breck, Alias-i
-Java api for natural lang processing and text analytics.
-In general, I think this is a really interesting and challenging field. Not sure though, if the technology is there yet. I’ll need to test this out a bit.
-Basically, the company has been around for a while and has been funded mostly through research grants. Only started recently, letting companies license there software commercially. Personal use is currently free.
-Tons of applications for this kind of software in the future.

6. Mark Hurst, Gootodo
-Gootodo is a simple web-based todo list that integrates directly with your email.
-He is taking an interesting approach in that there are no buzz technologies (e.g. ajax) in his products. Basically, keeping them as simple as possible to solve the problem at hand. Mentioned that he would add new features only if enough people requested them.
-Overall, really enjoyed Mark’s talk as he is a compelling speaker and seems passionate about what he is working on.
-Really emphasized that we should build software that helps people and not just for the sake of “cool technology”. This point really hit home with me. Most technology geeks are more focused on the technology and not really what the consumer needs or even wants.

FYI – There was a last minute addition and I didn’t quite get the speaker’s name. The company’s focus was on microscopic images and particularly on the clinical trial market. Looked like interesting technology, but highly focused on a specific segment of the market.