DreamIt Ventures recently announced its summer 2013 NYC class, which marks its third class since expanding to New York from Philadelphia and Austin.  Today, Jack Yulzari, CEO of Trippin’ in, a recommendation engine for places that integrates social check-ins in real time, tells AlleyWatch about his decision to apply to DreamIt Ventures and shares his thoughts on New York’s startup landscape.

Tell us about the decision to apply for DreamIt Ventures.

Well, for us, same as it is for other Israeli companies, the local market is almost irrelevant.  Hence, it was time for us to do some marketing and business development offshore.  We asked around, went for some meetups and DreamIt seemed like a great opportunity for us, giving us a great platform to make our move rightly and quickly.

Then again, telling that to our wives was a totally different thing.  It went kind of like this:

Me: “Honey?  We’re applying to a thing called ‘an accelerator’ and it’s in New York, but there’s an extremely low chance that we’ll be accepted.”

Me: “Baby?  I have great news!  We’re among the finalists.”

Her: “You go to be kidding me…”

Me: “Honey, did I tell you that you look lovely today?”

Her: “Oh sh!t…”

Why did you choose DreamIt New York versus other locations?

DreamIt’s Israeli branch takes part in the New York program, so that could have been an option for us, but given a choice, we’d choose New York any day.

What is your take on the current scene in New York today?

I hear it’s becoming crazy!  For us, the fact that travel and advertisement industries are looking and willing to adopt new technologies is great.

Where does your company fit in the ecosystem?

The travel and local industry is bursting with web and mobile, local and international, “all-in-one” and niche related applications.  Realizing that, we made a pivot early on, making our recommendation engine available for all those applications, and providing them with crazy technology while shifting ourselves to a nice and comfy blue ocean – a recommendation engine for points of interest via API.