In a stage set up for King Lear (literally; the New York Tech Meetup is held at NYU’s Skirball Center and guess which Shakespearean play is about to be mounted there?), David Rose, one of the kings of early stage investing in NY, took to the stage to introduce the city’s new Digital.nyc site, which he did, covering a lot of territory in two minutes or less, in a presentation that was pure – ok, we’ll say it – poetry.
For the record, we spotted Esther Dyson and a few other investors present as well.
Onward to the presentations, which included everything from babe to baby apps, and an alumni presenter who found his investor at the NYTM after presenting the first time.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN ALL ABOUT THE STARTUPS THAT PRESENTED
Kuaiboard
Kuaiboard turns your keyboard into a clipboard so that you can type much faster. It’s the fast way to insert a long message or a location, especially those ones you type over and over. You can also protect your text clips with a swipe. Which seems to be the gesture du jour in tech these days.
Shyp
Shyp is the easiest way to send anything, anywhere. No more trying to sort out the right boxes to use, fussing with bubble wrap and waiting on long lines. Just take a picture of the item you want to ship and a shyp ‘hero’ comes and picks it up – and they do the rest. Their warehouse has an app that plugs in to all carriers to find you the best shipping rates. They even have their own machine to cut boxes to order, so you don’t have to worry about fragile items being damaged. Or large items, either: they recently shipped a MakerBot. The cost for the service: $5, plus shipping. Available in Manhattan (to 96th Street) and parts of Brooklyn. iOS only; Android coming soon. Mention NYTM for $10 off your first shypment (sic).
Glimpse
Glimpse is a new way to meet people, though Instagram. People who experience the world the way you do – and the app makes smart introductions though geolocation and hashtags. You can reply to or ignore the request – the recipient is always in control. The founders use it all the time – to make new friends, of course. It’s all photos – no profiles yet, but the team did imply that that’s coming to. Guess you’ll have to wait for the next release.
Partake
Partake is the easiest way for couples to share expenses. It syncs with your bank or credit card, gives you all of your transactions in a live feed, and you just tap the ones that are shared expenses – then you split them. Partake keeps up with those expenses you share – easy! Think divorced parents sharing expenses for their kids. Splits are 50/50 presently, but they’re working on changing that. Suggestions from the NYTM crowd: market it to roommates and small businesses sharing expenses.
The Scaffold
Bad leadership is rampant, and The Scaffold wants to change that by helping to build better leaders. Answer five questions that tells The Scaffold team about your leadership style and you receive tips on how to be a better leader – and how to work better with your colleagues. Are you a harmonizer? Logician? Dreamer? The Scaffold helps you to build teams, too, but balancing them out. And you also get personalized emails from a virtual coach who offers tips on how to improve your leadership skills. Think of this as a leadership development platform. But warning, and the presenters admit it themselves: it’s not based on a perfect science.
Monbaby
Monbaby is wearable baby sleep monitor in a smart button that easily attaches to your baby’s nighties to tracks your child’s breathing, movement and sleep patterns on an iPhone/Android app, so that everyone can get a good night’s sleep. It’s also a raw data monitoring device and just so you know: they make the audible signal that goes off in case something happens that requires your attention as annoying as possible. There are also settings for adults and the elderly. Sometimes they need attention, too, baby!
Emozia
Imagine a world where your apps and products are emotionally aware. Emozia is developing technology that enables machines and software to understand and respond to human emotion. It registers when people are irritable, stressed, happy, sad or fatigued. The above chart shows the emotions of presenter Aleksandar Vukasinovic in the 24 hours leading up to his presenting at the NYTM. He was irritable, stressed and happy. In other words, he was a mess. Working with a company to monitor coffee consumption, they found that after drinking the brew, people were more energetic – and irritable. Not so with tea drinkers, for the record. The irritable part, that is. One possible use: they’re attempting to monitor the emotive value in zip codes, to take the mood of the country. And we’ll just leave it at that. It works through telemetry from mobile devices.
Power to Fly
PowerToFly is the first social platform that connects top women tech talent to great jobs at high-growth companies – and allows them to work remotely. Newsflash: there is great tech talent outside of New York and Silicon Valley. PTF is a platform that gives employers access to that talent, globally, and women can work from home. Women publish their location, abilities and rates, and potential employers reach out to the talent that best suits them – for example, time zone considerations. The team launched in August and already count Buzzfeed and Hearst among the employers with whom they’re working.
Fly (Alumni Demo)
Fly is a fast and elegant new way to craft videos, and the NYTM has been very, very good for this startup. They first presented at the October 2012 meetup, and High Line Venture Partner’s Shana Fisher, who happened to be in the room, wrote them a check. The app took 2-1/2 years to develop – and saw 750k downloads over the summer. It’s not quite the same app that those of us who saw it demoed in 2012 were privy to (it was originally intended to make multi-angle videos, then synchronize the streams). Now it’s the fastest video editor there is for the iPhone, and allows user to edit videos, swipe to do dissolves, tap with two fingers to do split screen. It also lets you do a picture within a picture – all with zero rending time. You can also import other videos and play them sequentially. Or grab B roll, which you can then incorporate into the screen, as if you’re doing a newscast. Oh, and they never did give up on the multi angle idea. It’s still in there, too.
And in the words of King Lear (Edmund, actually): the wheel has come full circle.
