July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Neighborhood social network Nextdoor has signed up its biggest, most high-profile user yet: New York City.

City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced the news at Nextdoor’s San Francisco headquarters, says the move will make it easier for the city to communicate directly with residents on neighborhood updates and public safety matters.

The Nextdoor partnership is a bit of an obvious one for New York City, which has gone out of its way to embrace new technologies and social networks like Twitter and Tumblr. As Bloomberg noted in a statement, “Partnering with Nextdoor is an important step in our adoption of strategic technology that better serves New Yorkers.”

Launched in 2011, Nextdoor represents over 14,000 neighborhoods, is backed by $40 million, and in May, released its iPhone app. The company has inked similar partnerships with the governments of big cities like San Diego, Dallas, and San Jose.

Of course, the only problem with the this sort of big partnership is that its effectiveness hinges directly on how many New Yorkers actually take the time to sign up for Nextdoor to begin with. We’ll see how the city responds.

Photo: Flickr/Hyunlab

Twitter’s visual insights team is obsessed with the patterns that emerge from the seeming chaos of random people tweeting random things in random places.

But, as an analysis of all the billions of geo-tagged tweets since 2009 shows, there’s nothing random about it.

Twitter plotted all geo-tagged tweets for key global locations on a map. And the result is big data come to life — and a vision of how we move, where we live, and where we congregate in the largest numbers:

Not surprisingly, the tweet patterns in most cities are defined by their physical geography.

New York, for instance, shows a clearly-defined island of Manhattan. Tokyo clearly shows the concentration of the city and its density, and the relative vacuum of Tokyo Harbor. San Francisco shows the city’s two main bridges peeling off from the peninsula. The tweet-map of Istanbul clearly shows the Bosporus, dividing Europe and Asia.

And Moscow is stunning in its seemingly master-planned circularity, with ring roads ringing the Russian capital at ever-increasing distances.

One map the Twitter data team highlighted is the map of Europe, which is fascinating not just for the continental patterns it reveals, but, as Twitter engineer Miguel Rios says, ”because it shows all the maritime traffic from different cities and countries.”

After all, tweeting is not limited to the ground.

Image credits: Twitter

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The number one magazine provider in Apple’s Newstand just passed 10 million readers, moved to a New York office, and — a month after adding Hearst Magazines to its roster — has now added 20 new magazine from American Media to its stable of 1,800 magazines for digital sale.

In other words, Magzter is kind of killing it.

“Seven hundred of the 4,000 Apple newstand magazines are created by Magzter,” cofounder and CEO Girish Ramdas told me today. “That will be more than 1,000 in about a month.”

Ramdas, who called me at 11:30 p.m. local time from the company’s Channai, India, office during a short trip back home, has been burning the midnight oil lately.

Just a month ago Magzter signed on Hearst Magazines, a massive deal that brought the conglomerate’s 20 U.S. magazines and most of its 300 international editions to Magzter. And today, the company announced that it has signed a deal to offer American Media’s 20 or so U.S. magazines as well, with titles like Mens’ Fitness, Shape, Star, National Inquirer, and Globe.

Source: John Koetsier

Apple’s newsstand app.

The company’s secret? Better technology that preps entire magazines from printable PDF to interactive tablet and e-reader-ready mobile app in just 60 minutes.

“Ninety-five percent of the world is still in PDF,” Ramdas says. “When magazines upload their PDF to Magzter, it automatically goes to our automated cloud service, where we render it for Apple, Android, Windows 8, and web. Within 60 minutes it’s ready to go.”

That’s huge for a magazine company that just wants something simple.

The mobile-ready versions are automatically converted to HTML5, but there’s also a new model that skips the conversion process — and makes it easier to add interactivity. Magzter’s new Magfly service, currently in beta, enables editorial teams to actually build their magazine in HTML5 right from the very beginning, and it’s then ready for distribution to tablets, e-readers, and web. Videos, slideshows, forms, and other types of rich media and interactivity are at publisher’s fingertips.

“We’re the only one in the world who can actually do it,” Ramdas told me. “We’ve automated the entire process … some of our competitors take days to do the same thing.”

Magzter, which raised a $3 million series A round 13 months ago, is currently raising a $10 million second round. The company makes money by partnering with magazine creators via a revenue-sharing agreement — reportedly getting up to half the digital revenue. That’s after Apple fees, since all payment run through iTunes for subscription-style magazine purchases.

Source: John Koetsier

A magazine preview on Magzter.

That might seem like a big cut, but the draw is Magzter’s big user-base … almost certainly the biggest in the digital magazine sector. But also, Magzter conveniently automates the distribution of dozens if not hundreds of local editions in Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, taking a significant amount of headache entirely away from magazine producers.

And, of course, ad revenue is entirely the publisher’s.

“American Media magazines are available on their own apps and have licenses in different countries,” Ramdas explains. “But they were very interested in our audience … they came on board to expand their distribution globally.”

Passing the 10 million user milestone was big for Magzter, but bigger was the fact that the company added the tenth million in the month May alone — meaning that its growth is accelerating.

Interestingly, Ramdas says that almost all of the company’s sales are on Apple’s mobile platform. In fact, 90 percent of the magazines it sells are sold on tablets, and 90 percent of those tablets are iPads.

Which should give the company even more positive runway as Android tablets come up to speed in market share and commerce share.

Image credits: John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Updated 2:40pm with reaction from Disney/ABC.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Aereo is not just a service for watching TV remotely — it’s a tool for cracking open the closed networks of TV distribution.

“I don’t want to go beat up broadcasters,” IAC chairman Barry Diller said today. (Aereo is an IAC company.) “I want to move the centricity from fixed-line or satellite systems to open Internet systems.

“The more you can get all forms of video over Internet Protocol, the better off the world is going to be,” Diller said.

So maybe he does want to beat up broadcasters, a little bit. What he really wants to do is hasten the day when broadcast and cable networks both deliver their video over the Internet, and that’s obviously a threat to these companies’ current, closed-network business models. So, Diller said, he’s not surprised they are suing Aereo.

“I’m kind of happy they sued us in such a noisy way, because it’s helping Aereo get known,” Diller said.

Later in the day, Disney/ABC executive Anne Sweeney offered a very different perspective on Aereo.

“I think it is wrong, I think it is opportunistic, and I think it is illegal,” Sweeney said, referring to Diller as a pirate.

Diller currently has ”very few” customers, he said, given that it has only been available in New York and, since last week, in Boston. The company plans to offer its service in additional cities in the next six to eight months. It is also open to offering cable network content, not just broadcast over-the-air signals. (It already offers Bloomberg TV.)

In the future, Aereo might even produce its own, independent programming — once it reaches 15 million to 20 million subscribers, Diller said.

He’s looking very far into the future.

“We’re out to get the centricity moved to the Internet. It will never move totally, or at least for the next 20 years. There will be plenty of closed distribution [systems].” But as the world shifts toward open, Internet-based distribution, he wants Aereo to be playing a role.

“I don’t think closed systems can survive long in our world,” Diller said.

But it’s got to defend its business model in court first.

Photo credit: Screenshot from D11 onsite video feed

Apartment renting service Airbnb has faced several challenges in its history, but it keeps chugging along with strong growth. But a judge has ruled that Airbnb rentals violate New York City’s hotel laws, and one man is facing a $2,400 fine for renting out his apartment on the service, CNET reports.

Airbnb host Nigel Warren rented out his East Village apartment for three nights in September for $300. Shortly after the rental, he was hit with violation notices because New York City has a law established in 2010 against renting your property for less than 29 days. Warren could have been fined as much as $30,000 for the violations.

Warren fought the charges in court, but ultimately he lost. Administrative Law Judge Clive Morrick lowered the fees owed to $2,400 but said Warren still was clearly violating the 2010 law.

Airbnb isn’t happy with the ruling, and it even showed up at Warren’s hearing on May 9 to argue for his side. Airbnb has issued this statement about the final decision to VentureBeat:

This decision runs contrary to the stated intention and the plain text of New York law, so obviously we are disappointed and we are considering all appeal options as we move forward. Put simply, this decision is wrong on the law, and bad for New York. The laws in New York and around the world are confusing and often contradictory, but we intervened in this case because this was the one area of the law that seemed most clear. This decision demonstrates how difficult is for hosts and even companies like ours to adequately understand laws that were not meant to apply to regular people hosting to make ends meet.

And more importantly, this decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own homes. There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous enforcement officials. It is time to fix this law and protect hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes. 87 percent of Airbnb hosts in New York list just a home they live in — they are average New Yorkers trying to make ends meet, not illegal hotels that should be subject to the 2010 law.

Warren and his landlord have 23 more days to appeal the decision, but Warren isn’t sure if he wants to take the case any further.

“While I’m disappointed with the ruling, I’m relieved the penalty is far less than what the original fines seemed to be,” Warren told CNET. “I’d say it’s now a pain in the ass, which is much better than life-altering. I’m also glad that four of the five violations were dismissed. I plan to talk to Airbnb before making any decision on whether to appeal. I like what Airbnb does, and I don’t want this ruling to stand in the way of what I think is, overall, a great startup.”

So where does that leave Airbnb’s business in New York City?

The ruling doesn’t necessarily mean city officials will heavily crack down on the many listings in NYC. But this case does show that if you place your property on Airbnb, you could face serious legal action. New Yorkers, rent at your own risk.

New York photo via Erik Daniel Drost/Flickr

Sometimes regulation puts the brakes on innovation, and car-focused startups have learned this more than most. Now car-sharing startup RelayRides has suspended its service in New York City after the New York state’s Department of Financial Services served it with a cease-and-desist letter.

RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace in which people offer their cars for daily or weekly rentals, and it recently acquired competitor Wheelz. But the Department of Financial Services says RelayRides has been operating in violation of New York insurance laws and is “putting the public at risk” with inadequate insurance coverage.

So RelayRides has shut down in New York until further notice. The company writes in a blog post:

We are actively working with the Department to address these concerns. While we’re cooperating with the Department on these changes, we will be suspending activities that it considers non-compliant.

Effective Thursday, May 16, and until further notice, renters will no longer be able to make reservations for New York vehicles. Likewise, owner vehicles listed in New York will no longer be available. Trips already in progress in NY will not be affected by this change.

New York City has become a battleground for taxi, car-sharing, and ride-sharing applications. Just a few weeks ago, the CEOs of ride-sharing service SideCar and taxi-hailing app Hailo slugged it out onstage about New York’s rigid regulations.

Broken down car warning sign via SteveWoods/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Mobile phone theft is a massive and growing problem, accounting for more than 40 percent of all thefts in San Francisco in 2012. But is that a good thing for mobile carriers like AT&T and Verizon?

According to one police chief, yes.

District of Columbia police chief Cathy Lanier says that carriers benefit from phone theft, going so far as to insinuate that they are somehow complicit in the underground economy of stolen mobile devices.

“The carriers are not innocent in this whole game,” Lanier told the NY Times. “They are making profit off this.”

Our own reporter, Christina Farr, was recently robbed of her iPhone 5 at knife-point in downtown San Francisco. Police who took her statement were “nonchalant,” simply having far too much experience with similar crimes. San Francisco and New York Police have launched special initiatives and teams to curb mobile crime in response to the influx of thefts.

But what about carriers?

The contention seems to be that carriers should be doing more to identify stolen phones as they enter the underground resale market, often on auction sites like eBay, and are activated by new owners. Carriers have established a national stolen phone database that works by tracking stolen phones’ IMEI numbers, a International Mobile Station Equipment Identity that identifies a mobile device independently of the owner and can be used to block network access to a device that has been reported stolen.

One problem, however, is that full integration is not scheduled to take place until November. Australia, for example, had similar technology in place country-wide a full decade ago, in 2003. In addition, many Verizon and Sprint devices don’t yet have IMEI numbers.

Carriers say that the full database will help prevent crime, that they do care about cell phone theft, and that it is not just an excuse to sell another phone or register another subscriber.

Image credit: Dave Hosford/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Transportation startups are a hot thing now, with Uber, Hailo, SideCar, Lyft, and others getting a lot of attention and controversy. But this space is a battleground with regulators attempting to stop innovation and some startups getting more favorable treatment than others.

The CEOs of ride-sharing service SideCar and taxi-hailing app Hailo showed that tension in a combative panel today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY.

SideCar CEO Sunil Paul (pictured, right) took a lot of shots throughout the conversation. His biggest target was New York City’s Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC). He said the TLC is using its power to protect taxis and apps that coordinate with the industry like Hailo and Uber.

“The TLC protects the taxi industry, and I don’t think anyone can deny that fact,” Paul said. “SideCar driver shifts are voluntarily and payment is voluntary. It is the regulation of taxis that is an illegal restraint of trade.”

Paul is understandably frustrated. This past weekend, New York City police targeted SideCar drivers in a sting operation. In a blog post, the company wrote that a SideCar driver named Sandra was interrogated by police and her new car was impounded.

“People are being treated like criminals for doing something that might threaten the taxi industry,” Paul said. “Sharing is not a crime. We want to make sharing possible in New York.”

By comparison, Hailo and Uber have just received approval from the TLC to operate e-hailing taxi services in NYC. With a few taps on your smartphone, you can now have a taxi come pick you up wherever you are in the city.

Hailo CEO Jay Bregman said he was happy about the development. He took the jabs from Paul quietly but finally responded when he’d had enough. Bregman said his company was part of a “broadening” taxi industry that has begun to innovate.

He said his service had paid out “millions” to taxi drivers in cities where Hailo already operates. He praised taxi drivers for embracing innovation. Paul said he didn’t have a problem with drivers, but with governments.

“Taxi drivers are great, but they are protected by a monopoly,” Paul said.

Hailo has only been operating in cities around the world for 14 months, so Bregman also said he was pleased that it only took that amount of time before the TLC approved his service.

“You can be disruptive without being abrasive,” Bregman said.

Paul shrugged off Bregman’s comment, saying, “If you want to be disruptive, you have to be willing to piss people off.”

At the end of the panel, the two did eventually hug, but it’s understandable why they are so at odds at the moment.

Check out the conversation in full below:

Photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

NEW YORK CITY — New York VC Fred Wilson always likes to share his insights to a wide audience. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, not only did he talk about why Foursquare is doing fine, but he also shared what he thinks makes a good entrepreneur — being a little crazy.

Wilson is the cofounder of Union Square Ventures and someone who has placed a lot of smart bets. He’s invested in companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga, Kickstarter, Etsy, and Dwolla.

“You don’t want a psychopath, but it happens,” Wilson said. “You want someone who is crazy but mentally healthy. … To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently.”

Wilson refused to name “pyschopaths” that he has funded, but he was willing to name a few people who fit the bill of “good crazy.” Two entrepreneurs he thinks fit that are Kickstarter’s Perry Chen and Zynga’s Mark Pincus. “They just do things differently,” Wilson said. “Perry and Mark have some common traits. … Pincus can drive me crazy.”

What not to do in a pitch session

Wilson also gave insights into things founders and entrepreneurs had done in past pitch meetings that were ill-advised. Here are few tips of what not to do:

• Don’t give a lengthy background. Get to the point. (“Going through a long backstory is a bad idea.)
• Don’t pitch something incredibly derivative. (An example of what Wilson hates: “I’m taking a Pinterest model and I’m applying it to automobiles, and there will be flash sales.”)
• Don’t demo a product that doesn’t always work. (“I had a meeting yesterday with an entrepreneur and the product didn’t work. It was a painful moment for both of us.”
• Don’t talk for 20 minutes and then show off your product. Show your product for 20 minutes and explain it.
• Don’t show 20 slides when you can show one really great slide that explains your product.

Photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

New York City’s one billion subway riders are about to get a pleasant surprise: more cell phone service underground.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, along with Transit Wireless and the four big carriers, is expanding its cell phone service project to 30 more stations, including massive hubs like Times Square and Rockefeller Center.

“Every service that we’ve come to expect above ground will be enjoyed and expected below ground,” MTA acting executive director Thomas Prendergast told reporters during the announcement this morning.

Along with cell phone service, commuters will also be able to take advantage of Boingo’s sponsored Wi-Fi service.

The rollout, which is expected to extend to all subway stations by 2017, has been a slow and difficult one for Transit Wireless, which has had a tough time adapting new technology to New York City’s 110-year old subway system.

“One of the challenges we face is figuring out how to incorporate technology into a system that wasn’t even built for it. A lot of things just take time here,” Transit Wireless CEO Bill Bayne said.

But while the MTA and carriers were quick to talk about the security benefits of the cell phone service project, what was most telling was what they didn’t talk about: the terrorism question. Is the MTA aware of the possibility that terrorists could use the cell phone service to remotely detonate explosives?

Thomas Prendergast’s response wasn’t particularly illuminating.

“We work very closely with the counter-terrorist task force in New York City and any decisions we make about any communications medium in the subway are run through those channels,” Prendergast said, dodging the question.

The concern, while a tad sensational, is understandably on everyones’ minds, given that remote detonation was the method used in the Boston Marathon bombing last week. While the MTA left the question unanswered today, it’s certainly one that will pop up frequently as the company continues to expand cell phone service in subways.

Another significant — but slightly less pressing — concern is whether the increase in cell phone service will increase the number of devices stolen from subway riders. Prendergast’s response? Use common sense.

“I think proper care should be taken, as you do with your wallet and things like that, but beyond that, this service is something that you should use when you use the system,” he said.

Photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

This is the latest in a series of VentureBeat stories about startup culture. This week, our reporter spent time with ZocDoc in New York, a stark contrast to several San Francisco startups we’ve covered.

New York City health startup ZocDoc is best known for helping Americans easily book doctor appointments online. That simple premise helps attract more than 2.5 million unique visitors to ZocDoc’s web and mobile apps each month.

ZocDoc’s appointment booking service (and extras like online check-in) is in more than 35 major metropolitan areas, and it covers 40 percent of the U.S. population. It doesn’t reveal its number of bookings or the number of doctors using the service, but a cursory look at listings in cities like Chicago or Boston shows hundreds of medical professionals, who each pay $300 a month to use ZocDoc.

But there’s a lot more happening inside ZocDoc that’s helping the company push forward. ZocDoc promotes a specific culture to attract the best employees and enable those workers to do their jobs effectively.

In the picture below, you can see the seven values ZocDoc focuses on promoting: “patients first, great people, speak up, own it, us before me, work hard, make work fun.”

“Health care is the biggest problem facing our generation,” CEO and founder Cyrus Massoumi told me. “To change that is very ambitious. … To accomplish it, we try to have ‘humble ambition’ or ‘hum-bition.’ And that permeates everything we do.”

After touring the office and talking with several ZocDoc employees, including Massoumi, I noticed a few ways that ZocDoc is creatively approaching problems like growing pains and subordinate employees. Here’s what I took away from the visit.

Source: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

The values ZocDoc emphasizes.

Great people

Recruiting has become one of ZocDoc’s the most pressing issues. ZocDoc has more than 400 employees in offices in New York, Phoenix, and India, and it plans to keep hiring like crazy to keep on growing. On top of revenue ZocDoc generates from its customers (doctors), it’s also tapping the $95 million in funding it has raised from DST Global, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures, and others to keep the engines pumping. Its newest office is in the Phoenix area and the company claims it will hire more than 60 more people for that office alone before the end of 2013.

ZocDoc’s space in New York has gotten crowded enough that employees are now flooding over into the fourth floor of its SoHo-based building. (It also shares that building with other major NYC startups Foursquare and Thrillist.)

“We’ve been in the same space for three years, and we started out with a quarter of this floor,” Karsten Vagner, ZocDoc’s director of people and its third employee, told me.

A hallway in the New York ZocDoc office contains a row of seven rooms, all dedicated for interviewing new employees in person, by phone, or via Skype. When I viewed the office, the rooms were nearly empty, but multiple employees said that was unusual and on the majority of weekdays applicants fill most or all of the rooms.

Massoumi says he chiefly looks for people that will care about fostering the community of his workers, and he’s willing to look anywhere for these employees.

He uses a story to show how serious is about this. Early in ZocDoc’s history — about three years ago — he was visiting Chicago for business. At a pizza restaurant, Massoumi liked the waitress that was helping his group so much that he asked her to interview with ZocDoc. Massoumi said that she put customers first and dealt with their problems more effectively than most waitresses he’d ever seen, so he had to see if she’d come work for the company as its office manager.

“We hire for intrinsics over experience,” Massoumi said. “We need them to share our values more than anything else. … Every employee we have is better than the average employee.”

She is still ZocDoc’s office manager in New York.

Source: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Mike from Monsters Inc. with a ZocDoc hat.

Speak up

Clearly, ZocDoc is trying hard to recruit and fill a lot of key roles. But to get those employees on board, Massoumi believes you have to give those recruits an unusual incentive: the freedom to tell bosses — sometimes loudly — that they are wrong.

“If you want the best people, you have empower them to speak their minds,” Massoumi said. “You can speak your mind here without your job being in jeopardy.”

The call to “speak up” is so prominent that people are criticized if they ever admit later to thinking another approach would have been better but did not say anything.

“Part of your job is to say what’s wrong,” Vagner said. “I don’t want people on my team who just nod along.”

Additionally, employees are able to book time with Massoumi to discuss issues or ideas. That’s made his schedule a bit hellish (it took more than two weeks for me to get him on the phone), but he cares about his employees’ thoughts enough that he’d rather be busy than not have the time to talk to them. “Office hours” sessions vary between 15 minutes up to two hours.

Massoumi also has an initiative to do lunch once a week with the newest New York employees. “I need to know every member of my team,” Massoumi said.

Staying lean

While employees speak their minds about things, something that they don’t question is the operation’s leanness. Even with the $95 million in funding, the company still acts like an early-stage startup.

ZocDoc makes employees share hotel rooms, pushes the boundaries of its office spaces, and only buys used furniture.

Massoumi illustrates this by telling me about the chair he has for guests in his office. The chair’s nickname is “Bouncy” and has a broken piece that makes it sink when people sit down in it.

“It’s been broken for four years,” Massoumi said. “It used to surprise people, but I think they’ve come to appreciate it.”

Source: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Diet Coke cans stacked in a hallway.

Soda love

Outside of pushing values, another thing that seems to be helping fuel ZocDoc’s growth is the staff’s love of soda. Like many startups, caffeine helps drive employees who work long hours, but there seems to be a special affinity for the stuff; it’s a guilty pleasure among employees driven to make other people’s lives more healthy.

While water and coffee are the most popular employee drinks, the office is also well stocked on soda. When I toured the office, empty Diet Coke cans were stacked at the end of one hallway. I found it humorous that one of the most prominent health-tech startups consumes so much soda, and I pointed that out to Massoumi. (Admittedly, I’m a soda addict myself, so I wasn’t trying to judge.)

“We’re a health startup, I know, and we do our best to reflect a healthy lifestyle,” Massoumi said. “We do have one member of our exec team who drinks a lot of Diet Coke, but I haven’t had a drink of soda in 10 years.”

The company also offers beer and wine to employees on Fridays.

‘Unlimited vacation’

Finally, the last thing I took away from speaking with ZocDoc employees was the sense that they could actually take time off without getting a hard time from management. Startups have such a fierce mentality that taking time off can be a negative — and taking too much time off could get you fired.

“I think unlimited vacation is unusual, but it’s also valuable,” Massoumi said. “It taps into ownership. It’s our job at ZocDoc to improve health care in America, and our people understand that.”

ZocDoc head of communications Allison Braley took two-and-a-half week break in Sri Lanka when she started, senior PR manager Jessica Aptman just took a 10-day vacation to Taiwan, and Vagner said he recently took a two-week vacation to Fiji.

“I worked a lot to make sure everything was covered,” Vagner said. “There’s a clear expectation that you do your job and do it well. We believe taking time off doesn’t have to interfere with that.”

Check out more photos of ZocDoc’s office below.

All photos by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Big data and analytics startup Sociocast recently shifted its focus from enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses, but the move has already paid off with it serving more than 700 million calls from its flagship Prediction API in just a month.

“One of the biggest challenges with targeting enterprise is that sales cycles are very long, and it was hard to get traction,” Sociocast CEO Albert Azout told VentureBeat. “But our new shift aligns better with the market. A lot of companies out there want smarter data now, and we can help with that.”

Sociocast’s Prediction API does exactly what you think it does — it helps companies make actionable predictions based on their data. Specifically, it can help give predictions in two categories: 1) Entities (number of users, devices, cookies, social media IDs, and so on) and 2) Clustering (grouping together various entities).

Azout said the majority of its customers use the API for advertising and audience targeting, but there are also businesses using it to serve media recommendations. Pricing starts at $39 per month for tiny developers and goes up to $4,999 per month for demanding big data users.

Sociocast announced last month that it had raised $1 million in new funding and would move its Prediction API to a self-service model tailored to small and medium-sized businesses. 42 new customers have been signed up since that time, and Azout expects the company will have 150 customers by the end of Q2. The company also plans to continue building out features on top of the Prediction API, including churn and anomaly detection.

“We’re one of the only prediction companies trying to convince developers to embed our solution into their products,” Azout said. “And the trajectory of the business is to eventually offer it as a virtual appliance behind the firewall.”

New York-based Sociocast was founded in 2010 and has attracted nearly $6 million in funding to date. Customers using the Prediction API include Quicken Loans, StyleCaster, Are You a Human, and FlxOne.

Fortune teller photo via Everett Collection/Shutterstock

Ever had to collect thousands of applications and whittle them down to find the best hundred candidates? Universities and businesses do it all the time, and it’s not an easy task.

New York and Cleveland-based DecisionDesk wants to change that. The company takes the application and selection process into the cloud, promising to make the lives of administrators a lot less stressful. And it just raised $1.75 million in new funding to keep innovating.

Here’s how it used to work: Let’s say you are a music program for a major university. You get hundreds (or maybe thousands) of video auditions when students are applying to your program. Employees at the college have to review all of these materials to select the right candidates. But most of the software used to process these materials is on-premise, so the review process is not easy to manage among remote and traveling employees.

DecisionDesk skirts all of those conventions by streamlining the process and offering its software in the cloud, making it accessible from any browser and on mobile devices through HTML5. On the back-end, everything runs on Amazon Web Services. To date, the company has processed more than 56,000 applicants, more than 200,000 files, and about 100,000 reviews.

“This opportunity presented itself when we looked at the legacy providers in the market,” DecisionDesk CEO John Knific told VentureBeat. “Some of these services aren’t even online and require you to locally store content. People are still sending DVDs and cassette tapes to these programs.”

Not only does DecisionDesk’s software streamline the application process, but it also does advanced filtering. This way, if a candidate has a major red flag (like they don’t actually play an instrument), they can be taken out of the reviewing process faster.

“We’re allowing the entire application and decision-making process happen in one product,” Knific said. “There’s big savings in time and money.”

Knific said the average amount of time saved on each application is two hours. The company’s biggest clients have as many as 5,000 applicants for a single program, which means up to 10,000 hours can be saved with each batch of applicants.

DecisionDesk is already working with a number of universities and prestigious programs, including the University of Michigan, University of Southern California, Northwestern University, Carnegie Hall, and the Fulbright Scholars Program. But much like hot research startup Qualtrics, DecisionDesk is building its roots in academia and then plans to branch out to bigger companies.

“We’d like to disrupt other areas that focus on tryouts and auditions,” Knific said. “In theory, we could replace casting agencies. We’d also like to get into HR.”

To help with its mission of making the application process easier, the company has raised new funds, which come in two parts. DecisionDesk took $1 million in capital from angel investors in Ohio and New York, led by North Coast Angel Fund. DecisionDesk also scored a $750,000 loan from the state of Ohio, called an “Innovation Ohio Fund Loan.” Combined with $400,000 in prior seed funds, the company has raised $2.15 million in funding to date.

The new funding will go toward expanding its 15-employee team and working on with new products. The company says it is discussing future funding with several VC firms.

Check out the video below for more.

Square CEO and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey is already an incredibly successful entrepreneur and businessman. But he has more ambitions — including that he wants to be mayor of New York City one day.

“What I love about New York is the electricity I feel right away … there’s people everywhere … it’s chaos,” Dorsey said in a 60 Minutes interview last night. “It’s kind of like being caught in a car during a thunderstorm. So New York feels very much to me like that.”

On the segment, Dorsey also admitted a few other interesting tidbits about his life, including that he does not have a desk (he just carries an iPad around with him) and that he had a speech impediment when he was growing up.

Watch the full 60 Minutes segment below.

Jack Dorsey photo via david_shankbone/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Streaming TV startup Aereo has expanded its coverage area to include parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania — the first major step in a larger rollout that will likely attract more consumers.

New York-based Aereo puts out HDTV broadcasts from major channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, and others) on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. On top of watching channels on other devices, it offers a DVR feature so you can record up to 40 hours of video and watch it whenever you want. The service costs $1 per day, $8 per month, or $80 per year. Essentially, if you don’t have a TV but still want to watch broadcast stations as they airs, Aereo could be your friend.

The company announced back in January that it would be expanding to 22 new markets in 2013, including big cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Miami. But with today’s announcement, it looks like Aereo will still be focusing on New York and areas surrounding it in the short term.

To make sure New Yorkers and people in the NYC area know what Aereo can offer, the company will start a new advertising blitz. It promises to market its service on “NYC billboards, phone kiosks, and at key city transit points, including waterways, commuter trains, and PATH transit hubs.”

“Today, consumers are tethered to expensive and outdated technology that limits how, when, and where they can enjoy their own television programming,” Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said in a statement. “Aereo’s technology now lets us provide simplicity, ease of use and rational pricing –- three things that have all but disappeared for the consumer. We believe that consumers deserve better and we’re committed to delivering on that promise.”

Aereo has raised $63 million to date from investors including Highland Capital Partners, IAC, First Round Capital, and High Line Venture Partners.

Check out the new coverage map below to see what counties Aereo now serves.

This post was written by Ben Cole, a technologist and adventurer. 

After spending the last few years traveling the world, it’s become clear to me that every major city is an aspiring tech hub.

No matter where I go, the locals tell me the same thing: The government has recognized the importance of tech entrepreneurship, and they’re taking major steps to encourage it there. The obvious archetype for these places is Silicon Valley in California, but there’s a Silicon Something-or-Other just about everywhere I visit: Silicon Alley in New York, Silicon Roundabout in London, even Silicon Savannah in Kenya.

After months of trying to figure out where I should move next, the only obvious conclusion was that each place had its own pros and cons. In this post, I’ll look at each of the cities I considered and the facts that ultimately led me to my decision.

The Obvious Choice: Silicon Valley, California

With its rich history of tech entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley is the undisputed center of the tech world. Roughly defined as the stretch of California between San Francisco and San Jose, the Valley is home to some of the world’s most valuable tech companies, most of the top-notch venture capital firms, and of course, the Valley’s academic center, Stanford University. For decades, if you wanted to start a tech company, the Valley was the place to do it. There was no other reasonable option.

You might ask: With so much going for it, why would anyone go anywhere else? In my experience, the central factor that makes Silicon Valley a suboptimal option for some startups is the same aspect that makes it such a brilliant place for others. Silicon Valley is full of bright young people looking to build something cool, change the world, and make a billion dollars.These people tend to come from similar backgrounds: upper middle class families, Ivy League (or similarly prestigious) institutions, and most likely, one of the two coasts.

As a result, the Valley can be an echo chamber. That’s great if you’re building technology for technology’s sake (there’s nothing wrong with that), but if you want to create technology to be part of a larger industry like health, finance, or commerce, Silicon Valley may not be the place to do it. On a personal note, the Valley can also be a little suffocating. As much as I love technology, even I can’t live and breathe it 24 hours a day. The tech scene in Silicon Valley is so large and so (justifiably) self-important, that it can be all-consuming.

Still, the Valley remains the center of the technology world. In my judgment, for mainstream startups, there’s only one place to rival it:  New York City, the center of the rest of the world.

If Not Silicon Valley: Silicon Alley, New York

The term “Silicon Alley” dates to the mid-’90s and originally referred to the tract of Manhattan from the Flatiron District down Broadway to the TriBeCa neighborhood. (It’s since become a much more diffuse term as tech companies have popped up all over the city.)

Similar to Silicon Valley, New York has a huge number of smart, motivated, and passionate people. The major difference is that New Yorkers are wildly more diverse. While this may seem great for people with broader interests, it also creates its own set of problems. In my experience, the largest among these challenges is the shortage of technical talent in New York, especially at the senior level. The number of meetings I’ve had with local startups struggling to find a CTO/technical cofounder/senior developer has been staggering.

As a result, a key difference I’ve observed in New York is the prevalence of technical outsourcing. Many NY-based startups contract with dev shops (i.e. external software development firms) and design agencies to build their prototypes, which can be very costly. On the other hand, if you’re in a field like advertising, commerce, or fashion, you’ll find yourself in a much better position to get meetings with potential partners in New York than anywhere else. Just like its west coast counterpart, in New York, it’s all about the people.

So at the end of the day, which do you choose? More than anything, it depends on what you’re looking for, how your personality meshes with the different alternatives, and finally, on where you see yourself being happy. At the end of the day, both places have clear advantages and disadvantages; you just have to ask yourself what’s important for you. Only by understanding the key distinctions can you come to the best decision.

Photos: Flickr/laverrue/ Shht!/ David Armano

Everybody and their mother is on the hunt for a data scientist, dubbed the “sexiest job of the 21st century,” by the Harvard Business Review.

To train the next generation, New York University (NYU) has launched a data science and statistics initiative, which is intended to drive breakthrough research in other programs, including medicine and technology. The new website for the program cites research from McKinsey that projects the U.S. alone will need 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytic skills by 2018 as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts for “big data” jobs.

NYU has created a Center for Data Science composed of faculty from across the university and will offer a variety of graduate-degree programs to its students. A two-year master’s program will begin accepting applications this month and will commence this fall. In addition, the university plans to establish a doctoral program in the field.

“Data Science is becoming a necessary tool to answer some of the big scientific questions and technological challenges of our times,” said Gerard Ben Arous, director of NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, which will house the Center for Data Science.

Machine learning expert Yann LeCun will lead the initiative. He said in a statement that we can use a variety of data sources to answer questions like, “How does the brain work?” The new program will focus on managing a vast volume of data, but also on exploiting it in ways that can yield myriad “social and economic benefits,” according to the statement.

As we reported when eBay opened its New York office, the city’s startups and tech companies have a keen interest in analytics and “big data.”

Bloomberg Ventures’ Matt Turck, who also runs the Data Business meetup in New York, said with initiatives like these, the city is in a position to become a “big data mecca.” “[But] let’s just hope that all the graduates don’t get scooped up by hedge funds or the Facebooks of the world,” he warned. 

Jacob Brody, a New York based partner at seed fund MESA+, said this is a first step in addressing the talent shortage for data scientists in New York. “So many problems currently being solved by companies in New York require expertise in Big Data,”  he said.

“The program will help startups somewhat in the short term, but it will help longer term when alumni leave big jobs in a few years to join startups or start their own,” said Brody, who is also a former tech reporter for VentureBeat. “It’s about creating an ecosystem, and this is a start,” he explained. 

NYU isn’t the first university to offer training to budding data scientists: Syracuse University has a certificate in advanced study in data science, Columbia University recently launched its own Data Science Institute, and Stanford University has classes in data mining. Check out this fairly comprehensive list.

Graduation hats image via Shutterstock 

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Crowdfunding darling Kickstarter has finally launched an iOS application that accesses many of the site’s core features, including tracking projects you’ve started or funded, commenting on projects, and finding new things to fund.

The launch of the mobile app helps Kickstarter fans and creaters tools to connect with the platform no matter where they go. It’s a wonder Kickstarter didn’t have the app available before now, considering how much buzz it has received in the past year.

New York-based Kickstarter has helped many high-profile projects come to life through the power of crowdfunding, including the Pebble smartwatch, the Ouya game console, and a number of huge indie games.

Kickstarter raised $10 million in funding in 2011 from Union Square Ventures, Zach Klein, Caterina Fake, Chris Sacca, Jack Dorsey, and others.

The app is now available in the Apple App Store. Check out screens of the new app below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Popular handmade marketplace Etsy has shared some eye-popping stats about its performance in 2012, with CEO Chad Dickerson calling it a “breakthough year.”

Etsy has been in the news recently due to its purchase of photo app Mixel and the launch of its sleek new Android app, showing its 800,000 sellers that it’s committed to mobile. The company also recently hired a new CFO.

“As you ramp up your businesses in these first weeks of 2013, I want to take a moment to reflect on 2012 one last time and celebrate your collective success,” Dickerson wrote to his sellers. “This was a breakthrough year for the Etsy community by any measure.”

Here are some of the key takeaways, per a lengthy blog post today:

• Overall sales in 2012 grew 70.3 percent over the previous year, to $895.1 million from $525.6 million in 2011
  
• 10 million new members joined Etsy last year, almost doubling the total number of members to 22 million in about 200 countries
• New buyers increased by 83 percent in 2012
• Sales in December 2012 were 72.9 percent higher than 2011
• Mobile visits on Etsy grew 244 percent in the past year, representing more than 25 percent of all traffic
• Jewelry is still Etsy’s #1 category, but the fastest-growing category is Furniture, which grew 134 percent from 2011.

New York-based Etsy has raised about $91 million from investors including Index Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Accel Partners.

Personalized Money Clip via 3LittlePixiesShoppe/Etsy

Imagine that you’re sitting at home or at work and you receive an alert on your smartphone that a train is five minutes from your local subway station.

The new app MTA Subway Time can tell subway riders in New York when their train is arriving in real time. A similar service already exists in cities worldwide, including San Francisco and Washington D.C. This is a leap forward for the MTA, which has been slow to adopt new technologies that may benefit commuters.

The free app covers 156 stations on seven of New York’s 24 subway lines — the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 lines and the 42nd Street Shuttle. According to the Associated Press, the L will come to the app over the next 12 months, with the 7 line sometime after 2016.

The Wall Street Journal conducted an early review of the app and warned that users can expect a lag time between the app and the boards in stations, anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute.

The app is available on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and also online. The MTA expects that a Windows and Android version of the app will be available in the coming months, and will be built by third-party developers.

Image credit: European Pressphoto Agency/Metropolitan Transportation Authority

If you’re a startup that wouldn’t mind moving your office south of Chambers Street, Take the HELM wants to hear from you.

Take the HELM’s basic goal to complement the Financial District with a more diverse array of businesses, which is why the organization aims to give up to five companies $250,000 to make lower Manhattan their home.

You don’t have to be a startup to apply, however. Take the HELM is targeting creative, tech and new New Yorker-run companies to be a part of the contest as well.  So don’t shy away from applying if your company has been around for more than three years.

As far as the evaluation criteria go, the judges are looking for innovative companies that can help diversify lower Manhattan and re-brand it as a growth-prone business hub. And that’s an exciting thing to be a part of.

The deadline for applications is December 31st, so if you’re looking for free money and a new office, you’d best get moving.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Hugely popular handmade marketplace Etsy has launched a slick new Android app to help connect mobile buyers, the company announced today.

The app lets users of the service browse through more than 17 million items from 800,000 sellers around the world. Thankfully, the app supports English, German, French, and Dutch, so many folks worldwide can immediately take a dive into the mobile experience. While the app is great for browsing items, some reviewers noted it could use some serious work to help sellers.

Etsy’s launch on Android follows launches on the iPhone and iPad, showing how important mobile is for future growth.

New York-based Etsy has raised about $91 million from investors including Index Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Accel Partners.

Check out more photos of the new app below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The Startup Genome has analyzed 50,000 startups around the world to create what it is calling the first “data-driven ranking” of the top 20 tech hubs on the planet. And to highlight just how important startups are to national and global economies.

Who knew, for example, that Sydney, Australia, is global capital of “data-driven startups?” Or that the top nine startups of the last 15 years have generated nearly a trillion dollars in value, helped along by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Amazon? And while everyone would likely have guessed that Silicon Valley is the top hub of entrepreneurship on the planet, with Tel Aviv high on the list (if not exactly second), Los Angeles coming in third is a bit of a surprise.

The conclusions are based on data from startups that use the Startup Compass, a tool that helps founders make better  decisions through data. Startup Genome analyzed factors such as startup incidence, funding availability, business performance, founder mindset, technology trends, support networks, and talent availability to find the hottest locations to start and grow a company.

Here are the top 20 technology hubs, as defined by the Startup Genome:

1. Silicon Valley
2. Tel Aviv
3. Los Angeles
4. Seattle
5. New York City
6. Boston
7. London
8. Toronto
9. Vancouver
10. Chicago
11. Paris
12. Sydney
13. Sao Paulo
14. Moscow
15. Berlin
16. Waterloo (Canada)
17. Singapore
18. Melbourne
19. Bangalore
20. Santiago

More valuable than the ranking, Startup Genome provided the ranking data for each technology hub on eight key criteria. Using these criteria you can see, for example, that while Vancouver ranks 14th in the support index, probably due to being a relatively young ecosystem, it ranks second in the mindset index (indicating that it has plenty of eager and driving founders) and fourth in the talent index.

Tel Aviv, on the other hand, ranks second in startup output and equivalent to Silicon Valley in funding, but only 12th in performance, perhaps due to Israeli startups’ sometimes-wondered-at predilection for building smaller companies, outfits that don’t turn into enormous enterprises.

The report is rich in data and many more details — you can get your own copy right here.

Image credits: Startup Genome

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Our parents told us not to trust strangers, and while this wisdom is primarily applicable to issues of safety, it applies to food as well. LocalSpin is an iPhone app that lets people share recommendations on restaurants, bars, and cafes with people win their social network. Rather than trusting 250 anonymous strangers on Yelp or the high falutin’ opinion of a food critic, users can access their friends’ preferences to decide where to eat. The New York City company has raised $250K from a group of local angel investors.

New York-based blogging powerhouse Tumblr is using its influence for good and partnering with Brandon Stanton, the storytelling sensation behind the photography blog Humans of New York (HoNY), to not only raise money for the victims of Superstorm Sandy but to also document the stories behind the storm.

Today, the startup and the famous photography project kicked off a 10-day fundraising campaign on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. The goal is to bring in at least $100,000 for the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a charity providing support to people in the areas hit hardest by Sandy. HoNY also promised to capture the many sides of Sandy by chronicling the stories of first-responders and capturing the devastating affects of the natural disaster. Both are using Tumblr to promote the fundraising initiative.

The Tumblr/HoNY-powered campaign pooled together more than $86,000 in its first 12 hours, with do-gooders donating roughly $63 a piece, an Indiegogo spokesperson told VentureBeat. Backers have so far contributed more than $94,000 to the not-for-profit project, which means the campaign should surpass its goal before the end of the day. Tumblr and HoNY have promised to give 100 percent of proceeds to charity, and they are also giving away perks such as tote bags, prints, and portraits to donors.

“For the next 10 days, I’m going to be dedicating HoNY to raising money for Hurricane Sandy,” Stanton wrote in a Tumblr post. “We’re going to try to do this in a HoNY-like way. All of the blog’s content will be dedicated to telling the stories of people affected by the storm. Sandy left behind a lot of sad stories, but also some happy ones. We’re going to try to tell them all. The good people at Tumblr have stepped in to cosponsor the fundraiser, and they are going to be promoting these stories through their channels.”

The campaign joins several others started by folks in the technology community. Sandy’s disastrous impact on the North Atlantic region has driven companies such as Apple, Airbnb, HotelTonight, and Indiegogo to help the victims by either using their own products for support with relief efforts or by making generous donations to the American Red Cross.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard as I write this. It’s got New York City right in front of it.

The National Weather Service is forecasting torrential rains, power outages, and widespread flooding. The storm will pick up this evening, and vent with full fury beginning tomorrow morning. The New York City transit is preparing to shut down.

Here’s why “Frankenstorm,” as residents are calling it, is not flustering New York City’s tech entrepreneurs.

In the past, extreme weather conditions like these have halted business: Mom-and-Pop stores close their doors, and large corporations issue warnings to employees to stay at home. However, through the adoption of cloud-based management systems, social enterprise tools and robust servers, tech founders are finding ways to surge ahead.

The vibe in the city is a mixture of anxious and couldn’t-care-less,” said Kathryn Minshew, cofounder of the digital media startup geared toward professional women, The Daily Muse. “A lot of people who’d previously experienced Hurricane Irene were very lackadaisical up until today, but are now starting to take this more seriously.”

With competitors down, it’s a boost in business

For H.Bloom, the flower delivery startup, these “fire drills” as cofounder Sonu Panda refers to hurricanes Irene and Sandy, are par for the course.

Panda (on the right, featured with cofounder Bryan Burkhart), who is currently in Manhattan preparing the disaster plan, needs to balance safety with the company’s customer satisfaction guarantee.

“We’re not a digital media startup where everyone can just work from home until the whole thing blows over,” he said. Although many of the operations staff will remain at home, for those that are engaged in the processing, design, loading and delivery of the flowers, it’s business as usual.

By leveraging the latest cloud-based, geo-location technologies to monitor the weather and the movement of trucks up and down the coast, the company will continue to deliver for as long as it can, far surpassing expectations. If a shipment of flowers cannot be delivered, its customer relationship management (CRM) system will automatically notify customers to expect a delay.

“During Hurricane Irene, we were delivering when the U.S. postal service was shut down,” said Panda.

If anything, the storm is a marketing boost for the startup, and an opportunity to showcase its technological prowess.

Hooray! More time to code

For small teams, it’s an opportunity to hunker down and devote time to product. “We’re using this time to sneak in a few extra hours of productivity when no-one is looking,” said cofounder Jana Trantow of JoinFun.

For companies based in Brooklyn, an evacuation zone, technical types are already congregating in the nearest safe haven.

“Three of our engineers live together and plan to work for the next three days, iterating on any feedback we receive,” said Reuben Doetsch, cofounder of Brooklyn-based startup, Sportaneous. To prepare for the storm, Doetsh told me he bought them all the essentials: “bedding, flashlights, and a generator so we can still code.”

With face-to-face meetings cancelled, entrepreneurs view this as an opportunity to get things done.

“We actually built our office to be a lot like an apartment, so myself and a few others are crashing there for a couple of days,” recalled Jason L. Baptiste, CEO of New York startup, OnSwipe. “I see the hurricane as an opportunity to be heads down and get a lot of work done over the next couple of days.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, a handful of startups went the extra mile by opening offices in perpetually sunny locations. ZocDoc, the New York-based health tech company, opened an office in Pheonix to be geographically isolated and avoid power disruptions.

They have a “business as usual” disaster plan

Not ready to open a second office on the West Coast? New York’s most well-prepared entrepreneurs from startups like Mirror, a Flatiron-based social discovery tool, Tip or Skip, the mobile shopping game, and OMG Foodie shared their finely-tuned disaster relief plans:

• Re-route servers: According to reports, power outages are to be expected! For the tech entrepreneurs that have experienced those dreaded Amazon outages (last week, Reddit, Foursquare and others were down last week due to a performance problem in Northern Virginia), it’s always a smart contingency plan to roll over servers to the West Coast. “That way, at the very least, you’ll have a web presence,” said Doetsch.
• Set guidelines for work at home.  “Productivity matters at every business, especially startups.  If our team has power, they will be working,” said Daniel Mattio, cofounder of Mirror. Mattio plans to remain in the office during the storm to coordinate workflow — he told me that during Hurricane Irene, he communicated with his Pennsylvania-based CTO on Skype (“I was watching his hotel room service get delivered while Irene was raging in the background on my end”) and asked for updates from the staff via GroupMe every three hours.
• Charge your devices and buy a few generators: “We hope to utilize backup generators and tether off our phone as a worse case scenario,” said Gary Reloj, CEO of OMG Foodie. ”I’m home charging every single device I have,” added Julie Fredrickson, CEO of Manhattan-based PlayAPI, who emailed me while stuck on a checkout line at Whole Foods.
• Stock up on food! ”Myself, I’ve stocked up on gallons of water, Korean ramen, and Mac & Cheese,” Reloj advised. The team is finalizing its three-day work plan at the office with a hard-stop at 5pm to ensure that everyone can get home before the MTA shuts down at 7pm ET. Just hours ago, the office of the Manhattan Borough President issued a warning to New Yorkers to purchase plenty of bottled water, granola bars, medications, a first-aid kit, pet care, child care, and other non-perishable food stuffs. Not a native New Yorker? Expect the unexpected. Peter Shankman, founder of HARO, made a food-run to ensure his staff wouldn’t starve. “I’m prepared for Sandy doesn’t mean I have take-out menus. Go shopping tonight and give the delivery guys a break so they don’t have to deliver tomorrow in a hurricane,” he said.

Cancelled tech events

• The Google Android Kick-off Event: As we reported this weekend, Google had planned Monday’s event in an evacuation zone. Learn more here.
• D: Dive Into Mobile: The conference, organized by tech blog AllThingsD, has been postponed until further notice. The conference hotel, the Ritz Carlton, is giving full refunds and waiving cancellation fees.
• The Big Apple Smackdown: VentureBeat’s own Ping Pong and networking event has also been cancelled until the storm blows over.

New Yorkers, you are nothing if not resilient!

We are updating this list as we learn more. 

Top image via Shutterstock

With New York rapidly becoming home to many more technology companies, Lerer Ventures is stepping up its investment game.

The early-stage startup firm is adding a $36 million fund to its arsenal, its biggest one so far.

News of the incoming fund emerged last month, though at the time the number reported was a slightly lower $30 million.

Launched in 2010, Lerer Ventures is run by the father-and-son duo Ken Lerer and Ben Lerer, the latter of whom is the CEO of Thrillist Media Group. The fund’s other partners are Eric Hippeau and Jordan Cooper.

Lerer Ventures has been behind a number of big investments as of late. Earlier this month it helped  invest $2.4 million in Google Now-like service Grokr, and last month it fueled a $3.25 million investment in women’s fashion marketplace JOOR.

Other big investments by the firm include those Warby Parker, Rap Genius, MakerBot, and Chartbeat.

Photo: Flickr/Chris Isherwood 

NEW YORK — Aiming to remind New Yorkers just how receptive the city is for startups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stopped by Boxee’s headquarters today to discuss a variety of technology initiatives happening here.

“Today the tech sector is bigger, more diverse, and more innovative than ever before,” Bloomberg said, and he pointed out that New York City is on track to create more jobs in any year since the tracking of job growth records began 50 years ago.

The mayor revealed that he went on a cab ride yesterday along with Square CEO Jack Dorsey to commemorate the company’s acquisition of NYC design firm 80/20 (which also marked Square’s official moved into the city). Bloomberg said he paid for the ride using Square’s credit card reader, which are in some cabs in the city. Even though the trip was only a few blocks, he noted that the cab driver said he was earning higher tips through Square’s service.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Boxee CEO Aver Ronen, and Paperless Post CEO Alexa Hirschfeld joined Bloomberg today, and all chimed in on why they believe NYC is a compelling spot for technological innovation.

Ronen, beaming from hosting such a high-profile event, said that he hopes the city can attract more Israeli innovators thanks to the city’s partnership with Israel’s Technion for Cornell’s upcoming tech campus.

“In order to believe in the future of America, you have to believe in innovation,” Schmidt said. He went on to say that innovation is particularly attracted to cities that have the right combination of elements: money, a reason for people to come to the city, and a committed leader.

When asked if he felt that the digital industry was shifting toward New York, Schmidt said: “If you look at the investment data, New York has been the fastest growing on a percentage basis. … I think that structure would be true for a while, and I think it’s good for Silicon Valley to have a competitor.”

Taking the well-placed opportunity to chime in, Bloomberg pointed out that many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are moving up to San Francisco. But he added: “Why would they come here? We’re the intellectual capital of the country, and arguably the world … for those people who really want to be challenged mentally, this is where you want to be.”

Top photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Like floral prints, leather, and the color white, ‘democratization’ is a hot trend in the fashion world — and the internet is a strong force driving that evolution.

For this year’s series of Fashion Week events (in New York, Milan, and Paris), big name designers are holding digital fashion shows accessible to the public, not just the fashion elite. There is real time video footage of models walking down the runway. Google+ hangouts backstage with designers also provided a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes action. Even fashion doyenne Diane Von Furstenberg wore Google Glass spectacles to produce a first-person video of her adventures.

Democratization goes further than merely broadcasting fashion shows in new ways. Now, instead of a core group of tastemakers, social media activity reveals which collections are hits and which fall flat. Similarly, content from bloggers and Instagram is just as prevalent as content created by magazine editors and professional photographers, and can be just as influential.

Furthermore, fashion companies are using big data analytics and forecasting technology to predict trends, rather than relying solely on words from industry leaders.

This embrace of technology has been a long time coming. There are several reasons why the fashion industry has been slow to jump on the cutting edge of tech. Many designers want to maintain the prestige of their brand and tight control over how it is presented. Every detail, from the shade of lipstick to the order of the models to the lighting, is meticulously chosen, as are the members of the audience.

But that’s finally starting to change.

“Fashion Week was once only accessible to the elite,” said Eventup CEO Tony Adams. “I think the fashion industry has been slow to adopt new forms of media because initially, most designers felt that fashion is an experience that is hard to replicate online, but the abundance of online fashion portals, live streaming, and social media are making fashion more accessible than it has ever been.”

Eventup is a startup that matches events to venues. This year at New York fashion week, the company helped multiple designers plan their runway shows and published an infographic on the evolution of fashion week.

Media companies like IMG and KCD are producing digital shows that sends the glitter and drama of haute couture into living rooms, while media outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal provided live stream coverage of events. Now those of us who don’t have closets full of Dior dresses and Jimmy Choo shoes can watch an event at the same time as the A-List celebrities doe. But this does not necessarily undermine a collection’s status.

“Ten years ago, the idea of someone in South Dakota watching a live stream of a runway show was outlandish,” said John Jannuzzi, a digital editor at Conde Nast’s Lucky Magazine. “Now, everyone is watching it at the same time, but accessibility does not make it less exclusive. Nothing compares to being at the actual show.”

Big data and internet broadcasting

Broadcasting event footage to the masses opens collections up to tremendous amounts of discussion across social networks. People of all backgrounds and ages can offer their opinions, but the power of social media means these opinions actually have an impact. Viewer reactions to runway outfits can indicate what themes were the most well-received and popular with potential consumers.

Editd is a big data company that provides actionable information for fashion brands. It not only analyzes the amount of traffic surrounding designers or trends, but also looks at the sentiment surrounding data points. According to its reports, New York consumers like feminine and retro aesthetics, while Londoners dislike the presence of dip-dye.

Another fashion big data company, The Whispr Group, provides a “social media intelligence service” to help designers assess the effectiveness of their social media efforts. The team created an infographic about which designers “stole the social show”, with Victoria Beckham, Marc Jacobs, and Diane Von Furstenberg rising to the top.

“Brands can see which hash tags drive the most engagement,” said Whispr exec Linda Harleman. “They see the top themes and looks people were most excited about, and maybe use that to develop new strategies and inform their content calendar.”

Reinventing fashion shopping

For some of the most luxe, avant-garde design houses, paying attention to social media may not be a top priority. However, brands marketing their clothes to customers outside of a wealthy minority have to adapt to a new paradigm for exposure.

“An advantage of social media is it exposes a more widespread audience to brands at fashion week,” said Adams. “Twitter and Facebook are key platforms for customer sales and engagement, as well as driving traffic to brands sites. Also, Instagram has been a great platform for designers to test their new designs by posting a picture and tracking how often it’s “liked” by the brand’s followers. Social media should be a personal and authentic experience.”

Startups have also revolutionized the way shopping happens at fashion week. Before, standard practice was to sit in the audience, frantically take notes as models flit past on the runway, and then scramble to place orders and be put on wait lists for items. This year, there are apps for show attendees dedicated to documenting looks, as well as for live blogging and managing hectic schedules.

Social commerce site Lyst lets users browse through the inventories of thousands of brands and add desired items to their “list.” Users can also subscribe to feeds centered around designers, bloggers, stores, magazines, and their friends. The company offers a runway tracking feature where fashionistas can add make a list of their favorite looks and receive alerts when they become available. This year, Lyst offered “Live Lysting” with style mavens Nina Garcia and Olivia Palermo, as well as the Google Plus hangouts with big names like Rebecca Minkoff.

“Lyst is all about empowering the consumers,” said head of business development Hilary Peterson. “The hangouts gave them unprecedented access and a glimpse of the backstage atmosphere, while also allowing them to ask the designers anything they wanted live before the show. So we really felt like we were giving consumers, who aren’t normally at fashion week, access to something special.”

Fashion’s tech invasion

Technology infiltrated fashion week in other ways. Digital prints were a popular trend, as were retro aesthetics reminiscent of Instagram. The internet also provides a useful tool for fledgling designers to cheaply produce and publicize their own fashion shows and potentially rise to stardom. Microsoft even partnered with Bloomingdales to create a high-fashion, high-concept, high-tech dress, complete with circuit boards, and style startups were able to get off the ground amidst all the noise.

For this grown up little girl who loves both fashion and technology, this is a trend I am thrilled about.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

DETROIT — Jack Dorsey confessed something on stage here at Techonomy Detroit today: He hacked into the world’s largest dispatch company’s email system in order to get a job.

“I was in college, and I really wanted to go into the dispatch industry,” Dorsey said.

Dorsey had grown up loving cities and loving maps. That translated into a fascination with dispatch software — in fact, some of his open source software for taxi companies is still in use today.

But when he wanted to get a job with a dispatch company in New York and checked its website, he found a problem: no contact information.

“So I found a hole in their web server and found their corporate emails. I emailed their chairman, told him there was a security hole, and said here’s how to fix it.”

The next week Dorsey was on an airplane. He got the job.

Dorsey says he is still fascinated with New York — in fact, he even harbors a not-so-secret dream to be the mayor of New York.

However, I’m not sure a similar strategy will get him that particular job.

Image credit: John Koetsier