Co-working space General Assembly gives NYC startups a home

New York City’s tech ecosystem has been flourishing recently, with both rookies and alumni from local successes like Foursquare, Etsy and Gilt Groupe starting companies. Co-working space General Assembly (GA) is looking to become the central hub of New York’s early-stage startup scene.

Although GA is officially launching today, the offices have been open since the beginning of January. GA’s 20,000 square feet are near Union Square and several prominent venture capital firms. The space … Continue Reading

NYC Turing Fellows Program imports elite tech students

Many in New York City’s startup ecosystem have lamented the lack of technical talent. To address this problem, a group of New York City investors and entrepreneurs are looking to lure elite technical talent from universities across North America.

The NYC Turing Fellows will bring 15 top undergraduate and graduate students to New York and get them paid internships at a New York City startup.  Led by venture capitalists Warren Lee of Canaan Partners and … Continue Reading

Access 360 Media raises $40 million-plus for outdoor digital advertising

With advertising dollars going digital, Access 360 Media is looking to cash in on the time people spend away from their computers. The outdoor ad network just closed a round of more than $40 million in debt and equity financing, led by Columbia Capital.

Access 360 Media’s ad network runs digital display ads in approximately 100 shopping malls and professional sports venues nationwide.  The company claims to reach 54 million viewers monthly on over 20,000 … Continue Reading

Confessions of a Hashable addict

In early September, I noticed introductions popping up on Twitter always cc’ing @Hashable. My first impression was that they were incredibly stupid vanity tweets clogging my Twitter feed. Three months later I have to confess that I am a Hashable addict.

Hashable is a networking and contact-management service that rose from the ashes of Tracked, a Yahoo-Finance like site that launched in late 2009. The service facilitates introductions and allows you to post your real … Continue Reading

Bebo cofounder Michael Birch buys back a piece of his baby

After AOL sold Bebo, many scoffed at the idea of the social network’s resurgence. Despite AOL’s years of neglect, Bebo cofounder Michael Birch isn’t among the naysayers. Birch will be rejoining Bebo as an investor and advisor, purchasing a significant non-controlling stake in the company.

There’s no word yet on what the purchase price was. Birch will be advising Bebo’s product and technical teams led by Kevin Bachus, an early member of Microsoft’s Xbox team, … Continue Reading

Big data draws big money as IA Ventures raises $50M fund

Roger Ehrenberg, a former Wall Street investor,  launched IA Ventures earlier this year to invest in startups that leverage “big data”. Now that big data is attracting big cash from limited partners as the fund has raised $50M, Dan Primack of Fortune reports.

Ehrenberg has been an active New York angel investor for many years, investing in companies like Tweetdeck, Bit.ly, and Buddy Media.

IA Ventures has already made 15 investments, including daily deal aggregator … Continue Reading

Microsoft lifts New York City into the cloud

Earlier this week, VentureBeat reported on New York City’s efforts to modernize its government. The Big Apple is moving ahead quickly, announcing a partnership with Microsoft today that will anchor the city’s technology infrastructure firmly in Microsoft’s cloud.

The five-year deal will move the city’s 30,000 employees to Microsoft’s Internet-based service, including email, instant messaging, and collaboration tools like SharePoint. The deal will also deliver email to an additional 100,000 city employees who currently lack … Continue Reading

New York, New York: A heckuva tech platform?

Already the most successful tech entrepreneur in New York City’s history, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration are hard at work transforming government into a platform where the tech and social media communities can create solutions to problems facing the nation’s financial hub.

Last week, in the Bloomberg administration’s most recent monthly strategy workshop, staff from a number of city agencies discussed technology and social media strategy with a panel of city leaders including Deputy … Continue Reading

Trendrr is the latest "social media" dashboard — but it's got your location too

Trendrr is the latest company to launch a social media dashboard, but it hopes to distinguish itself from the growing number of competing products in this area by focusing specifically on how conversations are tied to location.

The dashboard, called V3, allows brands to monitor and manage the large volume of conversations as they occur across the web. But with the rise of Foursquare and other location-based services, more people are leaving comments and having … Continue Reading

New York gets another super angel as Josh Kushner announces his new fund

As the New York tech scene has flourished in the past few years, a number of so-called ‘super angel’ funds have been formed to fund the city’s fledgling startups. Now another angel is ready to spread his wings with Josh Kushner announcing his new $10 million seed fund Thrive Capital.

While Kushner is only 25 years old, he is already a successful entrepreneur in his own right. He is the co-founder and chief strategy officer … Continue Reading

Freshly-founded startup GroupMe raises $850k to bring group chat to mobile

Mobile application GroupMe thinks there’s money to be made in enabling group chats via SMS and voice calls from any phone in the world. And investors seem to agree. The New York based company has just raised $850k from premier investors including Betaworks, First Round Capital, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, and Lerer Ventures.

GroupMe lets you sign up for a group chat via a mobile web interface. Each GroupMe chat is given a unique number … Continue Reading

Payfone gets $11 million for mobile payments

After operating in stealth for the past 3 years, mobile payment startup Payfone is officially stepping into the fray today after announcing an $11 million Series B financing, the company’s second infusion. While competition in the sector is fierce — see the news today about AT&T and Verizon getting in the business — Payfone and its backers believes the company’s mobile payment platform will turn your phone into your wallet.

Payfone allows users to use … Continue Reading

NYC Seed Start Demo Day shows New York knows how to build startups

At today’s NYC Seed Start Demo Day, companies pitched a crowd of over a hundred of New York City’s early-stage investors. Five fledgling startups presented to a packed house, hoping to catch the attention of investors willing to write them a big check.

NYC Seed Start is an incubator program in the mold of Y-Combinator and Techstars funded by a syndicate of venture firms including RRE Ventures, Polaris Ventures, Contour Ventures, and IA Ventures.

In … Continue Reading

LearnVest's founder: Is Alexa von Tobel Suze Orman 2.0?

LearnVest founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel turned down Harvard and a life on Wall Street to make personal finance education accessible to women, and she has no intention of failing.

She thinks learning how to manage your money should be simpler, a passionate belief which comes from her personal need for her New York-based company’s product, a series of online tutorials on personal finance which have led some to dub her “Suze Orman 2.0.” … Continue Reading

Convoke Systems raises $5.5 million to help creditors collect debt

Financial information management software firm Convoke Systems announced late Sunday that it has raised a $5.5 million round of financing to help creditors keep track of all the necessary data required to collect on consumer debts. It closed the round Thursday, the day after the U.S. financial reform bill was signed into law.

A large number of consumers are defaulting on their debts due to the recession. Credit card companies sell the debt to collection … Continue Reading

Foursquare talking to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft about search deals

After announcing 2 million users last week, Foursquare is quickly looking to monetize the massive amounts of user data it’s amassing. Now company founder and CEO Dennis Crowley has told The Telegraph that Foursquare is in talks with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft about a data partnership.

This partnership would be similar to the deals made by the three companies last year to license Twitter’s real-time tweet stream. Foursquare believes agreements with the search giants could … Continue Reading

ZocDoc raises $15M to schedule doctor's appointments nationally

With an eye on expansion, New York-based medical scheduling site ZocDoc raised a $15 million second round of institutional funding. Founders Fund led the round, with existing investors Khosla Ventures participating.

ZocDoc, which launched in 2007, is basically OpenTable for doctors. The service allows users in New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Chicago to view doctors’ schedules online and book appointments across 20 different specialties.

Patients can make same day appointments, a vast improvement over … Continue Reading

Crisp Wireless demoes cross-platform ads with first campaign

In January, Crisp Wireless launched the Crisp Advertising Platform, the first to support ad campaigns across iPhone and Android devices, on both the Web and in mobile applications. Today, the New York based startup is announcing the first iPad campaign on the platform in the Popular Mechanics’ iPad app

Crisp Wireless creates ad units competing with Apple’s iAds, as well as startups like Medialets and Greystripe, for placement in apps and websites. The difference between … Continue Reading

Clearleap brings cable TV to Roku set-top boxes

While you can access Netflix movies and Major League Baseball video from your Roku box, you can’t get the expansive content catalogs of a cable-TV provider. Today, Roku and video-delivery startup Clearleap announced a partnership to bring cable video-on-demand content to Roku boxes by the end of this year.

Roku is a set-top box that allows you to play Web video content on your television, so anything you can stream on a PC, you can … Continue Reading

Brand.net raises $14 million for brand-only ad platform

Brand.net, an online display and video advertising platform, announced today that they raised $14 million in a series C financing round. Focus Ventures led the funding, with previous investors Interwest Partners and Norwest Venture Partners also participating.

Today’s announcement brings Brand.net’s total funding to $27 million. The funding will help the San Mateo, Calif.-based company expand its sales team and open new offices.

Brand.net is true to its name, providing tools to increase offline sales … Continue Reading