Gotham Gal

NYU ITP 3rd Annual Pitchfest

This might be my second pitchfest but it might even be my third as I have done a bunch yet they might have been for others.  Regardless, I was so incredibly impressed with the caliber of ideas, students and pitches at the NYU ITP pitchfest that I was a little blown away.  From a tech angle, you can easily build platforms now and if you can hone in on your idea you can make a great presentation.  Research was certainly done and you could tell that there is a method that ITP teaches these students on how to get from point A to the pitchfest.  It was just awesome and most of them had the world Kickstarter written all over it.

So here is a short summary of each of the ideas.  Pool it, Gabriela Gutierrez.  A web service that acknowledges that there is an important social dimension to payments.  It is designed to make pooling money with friends fast, easy and painless.  You want to buy a gift for someone.  You get on Pool it and send the idea to your friends and give them the ability to join in.  You can even cap how many people can come in or what the amount is that everyone can spend.  She was one helluva presenter.

Bricolo, Nick Yulman.  Nick is already working in the music industry with the products that he has built.  This one is totally cool.  It is a modular toolkit for creating computer controlled mechanical instruments.  This will allow musicians, composers, producers, DJ's, kids etc to tap into the world of musicial robots.  He put a book on top of the product and the sound was great and when he opened the book the sound changed.  Community was written all over this too.

RADS, Paragini Amin, Andrew Lazarow ( I forgot their pic)  Retail has figured out ecommerce but the brick and mortar stores still have a way to go when it comes to technology.  Truth is, the retail space is still stuck in a time and there is a lot of opportunity.  RAD is a responsive accesory display set-up for retail spaces designed to steamline the shoppping experience and give the store comprehensive data.  Suppose you are walking into a high end jewelry store and you could let them know what you are looking for, in a range, and each time you went to a counter the jewelry you pointed to would illuminate with information including price.  I am probably not doing the best job of describing this but these two are on to something impressive which is why they are already talking to major retailers.  One of the things I like about Food52 is the founders are from the food industry, and Paragini and Andrew come out of the high end Jewelry business so they fundamentally understand exactly what this industry needs.  Smart.

Killr, Thitiphon Luangaroonlerd, Puripant Ruchikachorn.  Both of these guys are from Thailand.  Killr is a time-based social networking app giving you idea and recommendation of things to do in your free time.  It is really smart.  It makes you more productive, it can tell you things that you don't know even exist in an area that you are because everything is crowd sourced.  Their presentation was great and once we started talking about it we all realized how powerful this tool could be.

TONNE Bag, Melissa Holtz.  Melissa is creating bags with a super super light fabrication that is water proof.  This is the kind of fabric that military backpacks are made with.  A better hangbag for women where she combines bio mechanics and fashion to create something that will help women avoid injury and back problems. 

Ginny Hung, Goldfi.sh  This is a way to share and collection things for our closest friends.  Think Pinterest that is not public.  Perhaps this is a knee jerk reaction to public sharing for those of us who want to be more intimate about how we use the web.  We want the social with our friends but not our 2000 facebook friends. 

Anh Q Ly, miCar.  How about a car avatar that tells you on your app when your car needs fixing.  Using augmented reality through your mobile to take traditional instruction manuals and make it fun and easy.  You know when you need to have your oil checked.  She is working with car companies.  Very smart.

Catherine McCurry, Karaoke TV.  Instead of going to your local bar and belting our your favorite song as the lyrics are streamed at you, how about participating with your friends acting our a favorite scene.  There is something here..

All and all, an impressive group.  I hope some of them come back to the group when they are ready to get funding!  I was honored to be a judge with Andy Weissman, Jennifer Hill and Amy Millman.  Lots of fun. 

Entrepreneurial Class at CUNY

I was thrilled to be able to judge the final presentations at the Entrepreneurial Journalism class at CUNY that is headed up by the one and only Jeff Jarvis.  Not only was it an impressive group of people but I got to do it with my husband, Fred.  First time we got to do something like this together.  Of course, we had to agree on everything....only kidding. 

Six of the presentations were entrepreneurial platforms and hopefully disruptive businesses and the other three were more journalistic content using the web as a platform.  I will give a quick run down of what we saw. 

Pique.  This was a site geared towards the celebrities and their fashion.  Think if you were sitting on your couch with some friends watching the Oscars and you could start to comment on the clothes, bring in feeds, talk to friends elsewhere, pull items you liked and put them in a box to find out later where to get them.  I liked this business.   A little bit like Pinterest meets People magazine.

Silly Parents.  There are local communities for parents to share information.  Silly Parents would duplicate that in other areas giving information from what to do, where school is good, etc.  Didn't love this business and felt alot of what he was trying to provide was already been done on a variety of other sites.

Instablatt   Live photos of breaking news by eyewitnesses that is curated from journalists on the ground.  Think of live twitter feeds, on your computer or handheld with photos as they are happening by an elite group of journalists who are crowd sourcing.  It wasn't that flushed out but I thought there was something there.

Gelotone  Personalized music news about your favorites bands including a discovery platform.  Think of Spin magazine but better on line.  Opportunities down the line to follow your favorite theater actor, etc.

Gourmeet   Love the name.  A place where you can offer to share a home cooked meal at home and people would sign up to attend and pay a small fee.  Think Meetup for home cooked diners.  I could see this working with young chefs or pop-ups. 

Linktamer  Personal curation of your news feed.  This is being done in many places so they would really have to come up with something so special that they would beat out the rest in this race.

Beyond Brussels  Writing and aggregating information for the European community about what is happening in Brussels in regards to the EU as much of that coverage has been cut out of the newsworlds budget. 

Cimmaron  A media site that highlights innovative alternative positive news in the third world.  I really like the concept.  One of the reasons I read Monocle is that I want to know what is happening in areas around the globe that I might not get a newsfeed about on a daily basis.  We rarely see the bright spots coming out of third world countries and perhaps if we saw more of that we would find more people investing in these areas. 

Talk Cameroon   Internet news for Cameroon on the political landscape and economy.  A country of people who need to get out from underneath a dictator as journalists are being beaten and living under death threats.  How to change that from outside the country and make that information available to the world. 

Some of these businesses might have very long legs others may not.  Regardless, each presentation was well done and thought out.  Impressive group and glad to know they have Jeff Jarvis looking out for them. The added bonus is that they are all trying to make their dreams come true in NYC.  BTW, they all used Prezi for their presentations. 

 

Boulder Start-up Week

A long time reader of this blog brought this event to my attention.  I know there are a lot of these type of events starting to crop-up around the country but Boulder has definitely been a leader among the pack. 

This week, Boulder Start-up Week is holding a contest to fly 5 entrepreneurs and engineers to come out to Boulder to participate in this event.  The deadline is Monday.  BTW, there have been no women who have applied.  Come on now, here is a great opportunity for women to be part of the start-up world. 

There are over 40 events that will take place over the week.  Here is the criteria for entering the content. 

Are you an engineer or entrepreneur?
1) Why you are interested in coming out to Boulder?
2) A resume or examples of your work (your personal site, etc)
3) Your phone number

Email the answers to the above questions to ryanwanger at gmail. 

I admit, I have never been out to Boulder.   But from what I understand, it is a great place to spend a week thinking about your future. 

 

change the ratio

Last night I went to see Rachel Sklar moderate a panel of four women conversing about the start-up world.  Questions around growth strategy, management styles, coders, etc.  The event took place at Pivotal Labs which has been taken over by Tech Stars for the past month.  Great space. 

The Pivotal Labs space has become the stomping ground in the past month and will be until April for people and events surrounding the tech space.  It has become something akin to the local bar in college where friends hang out. 

Last nights panel included Alexis Juneja who is a co-founder of Curbed, Sarah Tavel of Bessemer, Emily Hickey of Hashable and Beth Ferreira of Etsy ( and many other things ).  An interesting group of women.  All engaging, all smart, all on top of the start-up world.  These are the positive women that I love to talk about.  Loads of energy, lots of interesting experiences and advice all rolled up into one panel.  There might not be a lot of these women running through the veins of the tech community but the ones that are are pretty damn impressive.  Their energy and smarts is what will drive other women into this industry. 

I also had the opportunity to reconnect with a bunch of people who I have talked to over the past six months.  Catch up on their businesses and where they are at.  I am hoping we will do that with the Womens Entrepreneur Festival too.  As someone raved to me about the festival last night and what has taken place in her life since.  I'd love to get everyone together again in June and hear a bunch of people, like speed-dating, get up on stage and give us a brief synopsis on how WEF impacted their life, their network and their thoughts since the conference. It would make quite a powerful presentation. 

The buzz is in the air for women.  It is fantastic seeing so many women in the room again last night who were sharing ideas and doing their own fair share of networking.  Nice one Rachael. 

Demy

The Demy arrived at my house at the end of March and I finally got around to really playing around with it this past week.  The Demy is gadget/device (sort of looks like an old school Sonos player) that holds all of your recipes in it.  Instead of on paper, you can store everything in the Demy.  A kindle for recipes.

I plugged it in immediately, charged it up and checked out the recipes and information that had already been loaded in.  Pretty user friendly and a variety of nice additions for cooking.  A conversion table, a timer, cookbook features, categories and more.  A quick scan through the recipes and then I let it hang out in the kitchen for a while.  Every day I looked it and felt guilty about not being able to find the time to play. 

Last week, I finally got around to really playing with the Demy.  First of all, the device sits nicely on your kitchen counter.  Although everything these days seems to be built on an ipod, I am not sure I’d want that for the kitchen.  First of all, the Demy stands up, is water proof and is a better size for kitchen use.  At least I think so. 

I connected the Demy to Key Ingredient and downloaded the software on to my laptop.  A nice feature is that the recipes available through Demy can be edited so if I play around with a recipe for my tastebuds, I can make the changes permanently where on a paper recipe I just make notes with a pen.

As a whole, I like the concept.  I am sure many people will buy the device and just use the recipes provided.  For me, I have collections of recipes that I have pulled out over the years in a huge binder.  I also own many cookbooks which as time goes on, I rarely use.   I would probably prefer a Demy to come complete blank and let me slowly fill in my recipes.  Pull recipes off of Amazon, Tastespotting or even Key Ingredient.  Perhaps in the future, as people write cookbooks, like music, you can just buy a page (like a song) to download on to your device.  I know that the people at Demy are working on that with a few companies now. That would be fantastic.

One thing that I noticed with my cooking habits, is that they have changed over the years.  I used to pour over my cookbooks and I never do that anymore.  I definitely pull recipes off the different sites to make.  I still love when Food and Wine, Gourmet, Bon Appetit or Saveur shows up in my mailbox.  Based on the size of ads in these magazines ( and others ), I am becoming a shrinking audience.  More than likely I will make one thing out of the magazine or at least it will provide some inspiration.  As much as I applaud the Demy, and I can see it being a great tool for so many people and certainly a tool for now, I wonder how much I will use it.  I could send them all of my pages and pages of recipes to scan and download for my own use but the cost would be exhorbitant.  If there was a way to do it on my own, I might spend a few days on a large project.  Only time will tell.  Conceptually I love the idea of all of my recipes on my Demy.  I'd rather go through Gourmet once a month and pull the recipes I want and store them in my Demy vs my exploding 3 ring binder.   It would certainly be easier.

I do know, thanks to the owner of Demy, who gets a huge thank you for sending me one to play with, that they are starting to get reorders for larger quantities and take off.  I applaud their efforts.  Making a device with software is not a cheap start-up.  All the of the things that I want from the device is being worked on.  It might be worth creating different applications for different consumers.  One person might want all the recipes that comes with the product, others might not or others ( like myself ) might want the ability to pick and choose before the device is delivered to my door.  You buy the Demy empty and once you make the connection to Key Ingredient, you get to choose what you want in your device and that comes with the purchase.  If I could go online and go to Amazon or Gourmet.com and download my favorite stuff to create a base to layer on top of, that might be even more interesting and certainly fun and interactive to get me started. 

An interesting product.  I just want it to be filled with my stuff sooner than later. 

The end of Geocities

Fred wrote a great post about Geocities which is supposedly being shut down by Yahoo.  Geocities represents many things to me.  First and foremost, it was one of the first and most successful companies in the first round on the web.  Geocities, which was started by David Bohnett, one of the nicest men, changed our life.  The profits on that investment alone allowed Fred and I to move back to the city ( where we always felt we belonged ) and buy a home.  We always referred to that house as the house that Geocities built. 

For any of you that read Fred's piece, I want to add to it by sharing how that investment changed our life. 

Flatiron Partners was also a start-up.  Jerry and Fred began the partnership with capital from Softbank and Chase.  They started to see the most interesting deals that were happening on the Internet.  They were also seeing ones that were ridiculous.  The one thing that was special about how they did business is that they really cared.  We all did.  We loved the businesses, the people, their brains, their ideas and we all wanted to succeed together.  I fundamentally believe that Fred and I are still like that in every investment we make.  It is not only about the return but the excitement and the relationships you build getting there.

We were living in the burbs.  In a house that was vacant of furniture except for the strands left over from our first post-college purchases.  We had 3 kids, all young.  I was working with Jason Calacanis at Silicon Alley Reporter and loving being in the craze of things.  Our lives were stressed as we were basically living from hand to mouth. 

Flatiron had many investments, some good and obviously some bad.  As gung-ho as we both were about the possible upsides, we were watching out bank account barely holding its own.  Fred was so stressed that when Josh was born he got shingles.  We had a lot riding on the next steps in our careers. 

One particular day, I went to the grocery store.  We always paid cash for groceries.  Our theory at that point is pay cash for things that don't appreciate over time and charge things that do such as a new car purchase.  Anyway, I went to take out cash and we had none.  I called Fred.  At this point we were both at our wits end in some ways and just praying for something to change our situation.  Fred said, charge the groceries, Geocities is going public on Tuesday and it should change things. 

I charged the groceries and needless to say, Fred was right.  After Geocities, company after company started having exit strategies.  We then had the ability to think about expanding our house, buying a new one and just changing our living situation.  Instead, we decided quite quickly that back to the city was the call.  Within 2 weeks we have a contract on a house, had our kids in a school and never looked back.

Lots of hard work and of course luck too.  There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about how lucky I am to live in NYC. Many times I think about Geocities and how that company ( and obviously David Bohnett ) changed our lives.  I embrace every investment and person I have had the pleasure to meet with gusto but there is a very very special place in my heart for Geocities.  I am sorry to see them go but as they say, onward and upward. 

History of the web

This afternoon I attended the Web 2.0 Expo conference for the only reason to see Fred give the keynote speech.  Granted, I am biased, but it was a fantastic speech.  There is definitely a talent in getting up in front of a large audience and speaking fluently and confidently about a topic.  The history of the web, in NYC, is a topic Fred is very familiar with.

It was fun discussing the past, the successes, the failures, the players prior to the speech.  Although I have always been involved through Fred, I was involved professionally in Silicon Alley (a label that Fred hates) starting in 1996 too.  I rode the crazy roller coaster on many levels for quite a few years.  Instead of using a sporst analogy, I will use a child rearing analogy. I think of the first round of the web like the baby years.  Constant change, ridiculous hours, begging for attention while trying to make your mark.  Like a baby through the early toddler years. 

Web 2.0 is a bit more grown up.  It is the kids and the teenage years now.  A broader age of kids.  I could say that the Internet industry will never move into the adult stage but then again, I guess that is what Yahoo and Google are...adults. 

Fred's speech was about 25 minutes.  There has been many books written about the topic.  I always think I will write a book through my eyes.  My birds eye view is not only an intimate look at many of the companies, people and of course parties,  the success of the Internet changed our lives. 

I can't believe that so much time has passed and how much has been accomplished.  I'll keep thinking about that book.....