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NY venture firm FirstMark Capital announced the hire of Matt Turck, cofounder of TripleHop Technologies and former Bloomberg Ventures managing director. Turck discussed with Forbes how the NY startup scene has evolved and how FirstMark has been involved.

Of the fifty investments that they are currently involved with, 22 of them are based in NY. Turck said that over the last 15 years, NY tech has evolved through three phases. The first was media and adtech companies, the second was social and eCommerce, and the third has been the application of Big Data techniques.

Amish Jani, fellow managing director of FirstMark, also said that since NY is a commercial capital of the world, the increased access to technology is opening up specialized, entrepreneurial talent, saying that the decline of Wall Street has helped the process.

Forbes

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Students in NYC will now have access to a $500,000 fund put into place by First Round Capital. The initiative, The Dorm Room Fund, was begun in Philadelphia and last year invested in student-run start ups at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel. NY-based Partner Phin Barnes, said that the idea behind the fun is that students who are motivated and intelligent enough to start a company in college should be capable of handling a  venture fund. Out of students from NYU, Columbia, Princeton, and Cornell’s Tech Campus who apply, 10-11 students will be chosen to source investments and make decisions on startup ideas.

TechCrunch

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After a recent PrivCo report that put NY-based startups second behind Silicon Valley in mergers and acquisitions, Business Insider has created a list of 25 NYC startups in their early stages that are showing signs of success.

The first of their choices is Modern Guild, founded in 2012 by Adrien Fraise as an online platform to connect high school and college students with mentors where they partake in customized career-building exercises. So far they have $500 thousand from investors. The list also included BarkBox, founded in 2012 by Matt Meeker, Henrik Werdelin, and Carly Strife. It’s a monthly subscription service for dog treats, toys, and other supplies. So far they’ve raised $1.8 million. Also included is littleBits, founded in 2009 as an open source library of small toys similar to legos. Each toy has a function like light, sounds, or motors. It’s raised $3.65 million from investors.

Business Insider

Raffles Institution ArtSpace (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The online art-sales company, Artspace, which earned offered the Brooklyn Museum an opportunity to sell prints and other art has now raised $8.5 million in funding. Artspace hired 27-year-old Maria Baibakova, daughter of Russian magnate Oleg Baibakov to help increase their reach overseas.

Baibakova said that her investment in the company is part of her goal to create more opportunities for emerging artists in emerging economies abroad. She plans to expand partnerships that Artspace has cultivated in Europe and start new ones in Russia, China, the Middle East, and India.

Artspace was founded in March 2011 as an online platform for collectors to purchase works by contemporary artists from commercial galleries, museums, and nonprofits. The recent funding, led by venture capital firm Canaan Partners is part of the continuing growth and evolution of online art sale portals and auction platforms, the Wall Street Journal reported. During the last 18 months, Artspace has sold art to collectors in 28 countries and generated more than $1.5 million.

The Wall Street Journal

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Venture capital firm Lightbank chose the Flatiron District as the location for its first NY office. The Founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky said this is their firm’s second location. The Chicago-based VC firm plans to invest in more NY and East Coast based companies. According to IT News Online, about 20 percent of its portfolio is invested in early-stage NY-area startups, including Frank & Oak, Contently, Centzy, Bevel, Ovuline and OnSwipe. Lightback principal Vicki Levine will head the NY office.

IT News Online

Yao Hui Huang and Bruce Haymes (photo: L. Keyson)

By Lauren Keyson

Bruce Haymes, a Nielsen senior VP, revealed information about a new fund his company is launching. At the Hatchery’s speaker event in Chelsea Friday, Haymes said Nielsen is partnering with Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist to launch Nielsen Innovate. The advertising technology-focused venture incubator launches on Feb. 1^st. It focuses on market intelligence, consumer behavior and technologies. It seeks disruptive solutions related to systems that analyze audience size and composition. The fund is also looking for industry solutions involving data management, advertising technologies and other tools that understand and create effective advertising.

“I like things that are not an app,” said Haymes. “People come with lots of apps: ‘This is like Clipboard for this’ and ‘This is like Pulse for that.’ What I really like, and one of the reasons I really like the Israeli market right now, is when there’s a mathematical algorithm or some science attached to something. Maybe it’s an application that came from somewhere else; maybe it came from a lab, defense forces, a surveillance group or spy group over there. Then they take that technology — that’s not really replicable — and apply it to a real world application.”

He thinks that the biggest problem that still needs to be solved is an effective way to measure mobile. “We’re going ‘cookie-less’ in the mobile world — both on tablets and on smartphones — and I think that the market intelligence associated with that is completely empty right now. The second thing is I would really like to see cloud-based data aggregation for the B2B environment in analytics to help simplify analytics. An audience is probably filled with people who provide all sorts of intelligence to different marketers or advertisers and who have different advertising solutions and what’s happening their brands and marketers and agencies are inundated or over inundated with data and information. I think that the killer solution would be if you could subscribe to the data feeds that you want; you could subscribe to Nielsen or comScore or IRI or some of these younger companies. The data would be up in the cloud and you could pull it down and create custom reports regardless of the source of the data. Right now everybody’s got their own customized platform — their own customized dashboard. We need something better.”

Eric Hippeau (Photo credit: jdlasica)

Lerer Ventures is hiring two new employees for its new $36 million early-stage fund. Max Stoller, a recent NYU graduate, and Nicola Korzenko will both be joining the company, according to The New York Observer. Korzenko previously worked at Signpost, Spark Capital and Creative Artists Agency. Stoller worked for both Hyperpublic as an engineer and at Foursquare while still in school. Eric Hippeau, partner at Lerer Ventures, told The Observer that Stoller is well known in the tech community. He’ll be reaching out to the community and finding all of the budding entrepreneurs. “He knows the young people to know much better than we do,” Mr. Hippeau said.

LV made headlines recently when it participated in a $19.3 million Series D for BuzzFeed—just about a year after it invested in the company’s $15.5 million Series C. Hippeau wouldn’t talk about BuzzFeed revenue, but only said he expects “them to be on a strong growth path.”

The New York Observer

Planting Money (Photo credit: Tax Credits)

There are two VC trends emerging for 2013 that will have a mixed impact on the NY tech sector. Deal volume is strong, according to Crain’s New York Business, especially seed funding. It’s expected to match or surpass 2012. But when it comes to A-round stage funding, many startups will find funds drying up. In NY, it’s estimated that fewer than 10 VCs are involved in the A-round stage. Investors say they still like consumer businesses, but with companies such as Groupon and Zynga struggling, they say a move toward enterprise investments will gather steam.

Crain’s New York Business

PAX Prime 2012 (Photo credit: Chase N.)

LiveU, based in Hackensack, NJ, recently raised $27 million in funding. The company’s 4G LTE-equipped LU70 backpack has become the go-to for companies looking to uplink HD video while in the field. The funding round included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, Carmel Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital.

LiveU’s technology has been used by big broadcasters such as BBC News and NBC. Samuel Wasserman, CEO of LiveU explained that the funding will be vital as the company moves further towards being more of end-to-end solution for broadcasters.

[Editor's Note: LiveU is a client of Trylon SMR, owned by Trylon Communications, Inc., the parent company of NY Convergence]

Venture Beat 

English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhattan, New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On November 14th, the Brooklyn Venture Community will be holding an event called, “The Brooklyn Startup Scene: Brooklyn CoWorking Spaces & Their Entrepreneurs.” The Brooklyn Venture Community is a meetup group with over 250 Brooklyn-based entrepreneurial and freelance members that serves as a support and platform for the Brooklyn tech community. At the event tomorrow, founders or managers of co-working spaces throughout Brooklyn representing various entrepreneurial communities and neighborhoods, will each give a brief presentation. The presenters will include:

1. Bat Haus CoWorking (Bushwick) – Bat Haus is a work community founded on openness, fun, and a respect for peers. It operates like a clubhouse. Every member helps make decisions about how the space is operated. Knowledge and know-how adds to the a collective pool (meaning that while you do your own work, you have neighbors who are more than happy to share some advice, a little hands-on help, or, if nothing else, conversation and a cup of joe when time allows it). Bat Haus believes that openness and the sharing of resources far outweigh the alternatives.

2. Dumbo Startup Lab (Dumbo) - The DUMBO Startup Lab is a community hub for entrepreneurs, designers and innovators focused on tech & web development providing cowork space, host classes and events in a beautiful 2,300 sq. ft. corner loft in Dumbo.

3. The Yard (Williamsburg) – Private work suites in Williamsburg (overlooking McCarren Park) designed to inspire creativity, collaborations and connections.

4. The Secret Clubhouse (Williamsburg) – a recently launch coworking space in Williamsburg that lives up to its name! Also home of the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club.

5. Brooklyn Creative League (Park Slope/BoCoCa) – Brooklyn Creative League was founded to give independent professionals, small-shop companies, and nonprofits the tools they need to get their work done: affordable, green, shared workspace and a community of professional colleagues — someplace to meet with clients, host a conference call, and make a pitch

For more info and to RSVP, visit http://www.meetup.com/Brooklyn-Venture-Community/events/83235392/ OR http://brooklynventurecommunity.eventbrite.com

Speaker Michael Richter, NY Rangers All-Star and Silver Medalist (photo credit: NY Venture Capital Assoc.)

By Lauren Keyson

That the NY tech community continues to be effervescent was an overriding message at yesterday’s Third Annual Ingenuity Conference at New World Stages in center of off-Broadway. The goal of the event’s organizer, the NY Venture Capital Association, was to promote the entrepreneurial ecosystem of NYC and the NY area. “The NY tech scene is unequivocally the number two tech community in the nation now, and maybe in the world,” said David Pakman, partner at Venrock and event co-chair.  “It’s an ascendant geography that is doing really well and is a vibrant scene of both entrepreneurs and capital.”

Hundreds of attendees came to learn from other entrepreneurs, companies, thinkers. The information was provided by VCs and tech luminaries like AOL’s CEO and chairman Tim Armstrong who founded multiple companies of his own — two that sold to AOL and Yahoo.  He talked about how he equips the companies he buys with three key benefits: Guns, meaning brand power and equity; Steel, in the way of infrastructure; and Money.  He looks for CEOs and visionaries who will take the abundance of resources they are given to perform even better and faster than they had previously done.

His lesson for the audience was simple: sell products, not features.  He said that when he evaluates potential opportunities, he looks for things that he can sell rather than simple features or add-ons to make something appear more valuable than it is.  Attendee Chris Luken, product director at RetailMLS, described it best, “I might be able to have a subscription product where I could keep adding extra bells, whistles or features to it.  But if I know that I can instead create a brand new product with similar feature sets, I can now potentially sell it to two different audiences with two different buying habits and capture more share of wallets across the greater industry.”

One of the most powerful messages came from NY Rangers Hall of Famer Michael Richter, a three time NHL All-Star and an Olympic Silver medalist.  His current venture is Healthy Planet Partners, a project finance fund which finances and manages the deployment of renewable energy technologies and energy saving retrofits for sports facilities. He talked about discipline, teamwork, performance, potential and what it takes to be a winner. “You have to have this balance of pushing the envelope or you will never improve or reach your potential, which is really the point of playing,” he explained. “If you play it safe, that’s where you’re going to be. You are never going to reach those heights. One long distance skater on the 1980 Olympic team fell all the time in practice, but his theory was that if you’re not falling, you’re not trying. Pushing the envelope kept him moving further and further along the lines – if you don’t push you’re envelope, you are never going to improve.”

His other big message was about self-discipline, which he believes translates to almost every endeavor in life. “You have to have discipline. And if you’re prepared to have success, then every bit of your training and preparation has to be massaging yourself in that direction. I can’t expect success at a big sales meeting Monday morning if I am not prepared now.

“You really have to take care of your own responsibilities if you are in a team or business setting — or really anything – and the corollary to that is that you need to learn to apprentice yourself to new things. This is a different world that we live in – you don’t go to work for GM at 20 and stay there until you are 65. You’re going to have to learn different skills and you have to be open to the idea of learning as you age.”

Big startups such as Etsy, Kickstarter and Kaltura are based here and corporate tech companies including eBay, Facebook and Google opened NY offices. He also refers to local incentives in the article,  including Mayor Bloomberg’s push to establish technology as a major government priority and Roosevelt Island’s forthcoming Cornell NYC Tech science and engineering campus.

The Huffington Post

New York University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to CB Insights, startups founded by New York University alumni raised $1.2 billion during the past five years. The University Entrepreneurship Reports revealed that the most of the funding went to Internet companies. Of these, 95 percent are still in business and 70 percent conduct business in NYC.

According to New York CityBizList, most of the NYU deals were lead by Union Square Ventures.

New York CityBizlist

General Assembly

According to TechCrunch, the company is setting its sights on expanding its educational curriculum online as well as creating a global network of campuses.

TechCrunch

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Lerer Ventures, NY-based investment firm, has raised its largest fund yet. According to Business Insider, this third round of funding amounted to $36 million. The group was started by Eric Hippeau, Jordan Cooper, Ken Lerer, and Ben Lerer. With the money, the firm plans to continue investing in early-stage companies in NY. Since its second fund was raised last May the company has invested in about 70 companies, and over the last two years has been one of the more active NY early-stage firms.

Some of its investments include Venme, which was just acquired for $26 million, and GroupMe which was acquired by Skype for $80 million. According to Hippeau, the firm is frequently asked to make joint investments with other funds, even some on the west coast. Lerer has gained popularity among early stage companies because the partners all come from a variety of backgrounds. Ken Lerer co founded Huffington Post, Ben Lerer co founded Thrillist, Hippeau was a media executive and entrepreneur and former Huffington Post CEO, and Cooper recently sold Hyperpublic, his startup, to Groupon.

Business Insider

Empire State Building as seen from Top of the Rock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the latest Q3 report from CB Insights, two out of every 10 Internet deals are done in NY. Even though NY ranks forth in VC funding (behind Silicon Alley, Massachusetts and SoCal) its deal count reached a five-quarter high. Small seed VC deals make up 49 percent of the activity. While NY is tech dominated, green tech and healthcare tech businesses are also emerging.

New York Observer

Peter Moustakerski of Voila Chocolat shares his homemade product. (Photo Credit: Lauren Keyson)

By Lauren Keyson

Several entrepreneurs came to iEvening’s “Are You Fundable?” event last night to get feedback on their products. All of them involved technology or the internet.  A lot of advice for the timid and not so timid presenters included the need for grit – the need to stick to their guns and argue their case even in the face of rejection.  Alan Brody, CEO of Convean and organizer of the iEvening event, felt that there were two fundable possibilities out of the group.  One was Keepskor, simplified game creation because it helped ad agencies make games. “The competitive environment warrants examination, and CEO Tristan Louis will have to drill down on that, but he is a proven serial entrepreneur.”

Brody also liked a company called Memorist that had “memory volts” and was a way to store valuable documents. “Theoretically it’s fundable because there is a huge need for this.  But in order to make it work, they need to warrant it and do several demonstrations that show it’s safe. “

There were also a few unfundable startups. One was a make-it-yourself chocolate business called Voila Cholat from founder Peter Moustakerski. The other was Rodawg.com, high-class packaging and paraphernalia for marijuana.  The CEO Josh Gordon explained how his startup was making smoking products for the medical marijuana marketplace. “I figured out how to leverage the cultural acceptance. We created a brand with better packaging for medical industry — we provide a more professional way to promote product instead of in a baggy.”

According to the feedback, both were in danger of being lifestyle businesses, which Brody explained had their own unique problems. “Neither of them had defensible products.  They both have the possibility of reaching a mass audience, but the chocolate company needs to find a way to reveal some knowledge of chocolate that hasn’t already been tapped, and the marijuana company needs to show that they are offering extraordinary, early-stage access to a potentially explosive marketplace.”

He continued, “An investor would look at Gordon and say, ‘I’ll keep an eye on him because he is young enough and an obvious ambassador to an emerging marketplace.’  He has grit. He is pushing it and willing to fight. Moustakerski may have grit, but it’s not demonstrable in the chocolate world.  It’s out of his business zone and he is at an age where you expect him to be working with his business pedigree, which is finance.

Brody’s colleague Mayra Ceja, CEO of Tiger Cub Advisors, gave slightly different feedback to the two entrepreneurs, “Only 2% of people get funded by angels and VCs. You need to have a product that gives investors a 100x returns. Things that are not VC friendly — like food oriented products — need to be pitched to very specific types of investors.  And how do you pitch something that isn’t mainstream? There is a bias from investors and VCs – for instance, they don’t want to be associated with porn.”

John Ason, professional angel investor, had this to say about funding startups, “I’m looking for exciting new companies that can get into hyper-growth and I am looking for good ideas with passion. Passion is one of the key items I want to see in companies – something that I can relate to and get an emotional connection to.”

“Life’s a pitch,” added Ceja.  “The whole idea is that you are always pitching as a startup or entrepreneur – new product, referrals, investors –so be clear on why you are pitching. Most businesses are not fundable so you have to fight for yours, defend it.   Show them you’re passionate.”

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Rap Genius, the Brooklyn-based site that annotates rap lyrics via crowdsourcing, received $15 million in funding from the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Since Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is a big donor to Republican campaigns, some wonder whether his financial backing will undermine the street cred of Rap Genius. But the founders have a bigger goal in mind—they want to annotate the world.

Betabeat

New York City Serenade (Photo credit: joiseyshowaa)

Investment in NY tech from corporate venture capital firms such as Comcast and Verizon decreased by 87 percent from the same period a year ago.  According to CB Insights, only $30 million of the total $2.1 billion of investments went to NY companies. The lion’s share of funding–$1.45 billion– went to California. Massachusetts came in second with $80 million and New York was third. Adaptly, an advertising social media startup, was the recipient of the largest NY investments–$10.5 million from Valhalla Partners and Time Warner Investments.

Crain’s New York Business

PepsiCo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WeWork Labs, a co-working space for new tech companies, is located in SoHo and holds about 220 people. To keep costs to a minimum, the space has brought in advertisers like PepsiCo. In fact, according to Crain’s NY Business, PepsiCo is not a stranger to startups and almost always has about 10% of its digital-media budget for beverage brands in the U.S. invested in startups. Additionally, PepsiCo10, an incubator program, has been supported by PepsiCo since 2010. The company also flaunts working with FourSquare when there were only 30,000 users. Despite all of this, PepsiCo still wanted to go deeper into the world of startups.

Shiv Singh, global head of digital at PepsiCo, told Crain’s that, “One key insight [is] you can’t just do competitions, temporary engagement, check the box. We decided to formalize a relationship, to really think about how to bring infrastructure to supporting startups, helping them help us.” This resulted in the creation of Digital Labs, a program that focuses on the company’s beverage brands and working with startups. A lot of these startups are introduced to PepsiCo through WeWork Labs.

Crain’s NY Business

Eric Hippeau (Photo credit: jdlasica)

Eric Hippeau is a prolific investor in over 80 startups, most of which are based in NY. Previously the CEO at The Huffington Post, Hippeau is currently working at Lerer Ventures and has been praised by names such as Buzzfeed‘s Jonah Peretti and Buddy Media‘s Mike Lazerow. When Hippeau started at the Huffington Post in 2009 he was just a board member, but he managed to turn the website into a business with $30 million in revenue by 2011, according to Ad Age.  After the site’s sale to AOL in 2011, which he opposed, Hippeau left to join Ken Lerer at Lerer Ventures.

Many wonder now whether Hippeau will consider a CEO position again. He said, “Yeah, why not? But that’s what we’re doing here: We’re building from scratch.” This comment is in reference to Soho Tech Labs, a startup incubator located at the Lerer Ventures SoHo Office. The supervisor is ex-CTO for Huffington Post, Paul Berry. So far, the incubator has launched one company, CasaHop, a house-swapping site.

Advertising Age

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Charlie O’Donnell, former principal at First Round Capital, has raised $3.5 million for his new fund, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. LP’s in the new seed stage investing venture include Two Sigma Ventures, KEC Holdings, partners at FRC and others, according to Business Insider. O’Donnell has not announced any startup investments yet, but says that the new fund has six deals in the works, three of them based in Brooklyn.

“Raising this fund was a real learning process for me,” says O’Donnell. “I’ve never been expose to a fund fundraising. It was my first time going through it and seeing how all the stocks are structured. And it’s a new world to network in.”

Business Insider 

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A sold out audience of more than 800 people filled NYU’s Skirball Auditorium for the New York Tech Meetup recently. A number of new tech startups had 3-5 minutes to showcase their companies and to dazzle the NY tech community. The meetup was also seen by hundreds of people watching a live stream from New Work City, which was courtesy of NYTM’s new sponsor, Major League Baseball Advanced Media. Some of the stand out presenters from the event included:

• ClearHealthCosts.com- created by former New York Times writer Jeanne Pinder, uses crowd-sourcing and other methods to reveal truths about healthcare provider costs.
• Brewster- founded by Steve Greenhouse, seeks to organize disparate address books and social contacts into a single, searchable and visual database on your iPhone.
• Movable Ink- the startup showcased an app that lets you grab rich media content from anywhere on the web, convert it to HTML and insert it easily into the body of an email.
• VoiceBunny- a platform that uses crowd-sourcing and an algorithm to help anyone find the right-person to record and deliver a voice-over.

 Forbes

IgniteNYC attendees, with the speakers in the first row, sat with rapt attention. Photo Credit: Robert Gregson

By Lauren Keyson

Failure was the theme of the IgniteNYC event last night at the Tishman Auditorium at the Parsons The New School, and 14 speakers each told a story about how they failed but then rose out of the flames. Surprisingly, this topic turned out to be poignant, inspirational, sad — and extremely funny. It was a platform for speakers who had experienced failure and were not afraid to share it with anyone – and that they did.

David Carroll, associate professor of media design and director of design and technology at The New School talked about how the school is trying to incorporate the idea that ‘failure isn’t awful’ into the  pedagogy. “We are undoing that failure is bad, but that it’s important to learn from. We acknowledge that education is responsible for stigmatizing failure. The business and startup community really valorizes failure, but in academia it’s taking some time, and we’re in the process of reconciling success and failure. If you can learn from failure, then that’s a success.”

Ryan MacCarrigan, one of the organizers of the event, works at leanstartupmachine, whose tagline is Fail Fast, Succeed Faster. “You come into it high hopes, gun ho expectations, and you realize ‘this is not for me, what do I do?’ It’s okay to be in those situations in life. We need to have moments of failure so that we can really learn and internalize what happened and move forward.”

All the panelists had equally poignant stories, but they laughed about their failures and obviously learned from the experience and moved on.  Kyle Studstill, partner at Three Kings, said that he wanted to make things interesting, and that telling stories was a good way of doing that.  “We have this culture of ‘failure is cool’ now.  Over the past couple of decades, we have this compulsion to say ‘we fail faster’ and the like. One of the reasons this exists is because we live in this age of transparency, where we can talk about things we’re doing, not as failures as such, but we can tell a story about them. We can say ‘hey this made my life or product more interesting.’ We want to build something that expresses our ideas. Use the failure as a fact that you actually did something as a way to get value out of that thing you did, even if it didn’t succeed.

Kim Boekbinder has reinvented how tours are booked by selling the shows before booking the venues.  She did this through crowdfunding.  She came up with the idea when she had a bad tour. The venue had a capacity of 200 to 300 people, and there were only 18 people in the room. “I lost a lot of money, and it’s pretty sad to play to an empty room. I went and bought myself a couple of shots of whisky and thought about how I could change my life.”  Therefore, she set up a show in NY using Kickstarter.  She had a date – but no venue.  She told people online that she needed $1,000 to make it happen, and the show was funded immediately.

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, professor at Baruch College and a TED fellow, does collaborative curating online and collects money through Twitter and Facebook. Her students collaborate with people around the world. They wrote an e-book on racism called Could You Be The Bigger Nigger, with middle and last word crossed out, and 4,000 people downloaded it.  However, her failure story was about how last year she got married to someone she met on Facebook, and it didn’t work out.   The lesson she learned from that year was about radical openness online, “If you’re going to take a big risk, you really need to plan – you can’t just follow your heart.”

MacCarrigan added, “One of the recurring themes is that if you fail, you can pivot your way towards success. You can learn from failure and achieve a successful outcome. If you’re having success after success, you probably aren’t learning anything valuable.”

Image via CrunchBase

Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, wants to invest in businesses that transform traditional industries. The NY based fund just closed an oversubscribed $150 million fund in only 10 weeks. Last fall, they closed a $40 million dollar fund.

Kusher, 27, invests in Kickstarter, Instagram, Warby Parker and Fab.  He is also the son of real estate mogul Charles Kusher and brother of Jared Kushner, owner of The New York Observer.  Thrive is one of the few VCs that have raised bigger funds within the past year, putting it in a class with Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures, Manu Kumar’s K9 Ventures and Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.

TechCrunch

The objectives of the Investor Feedback Forum are:

• To help early stage startups refine their investor pitch
• To provide actionable advice and feedback for each presenting startup
• To provide insight on how investors evaluate startups and pitches
• To award prizes to the most viable startups, based on audience voting

Investor Panelists at the forum will include:

• Somak Chattopadhyay, Partner at Tribeca Venture Partners
• Owen Davis, Managing Director at NYC Seed
• Daniel Schultz, Co-Founder & Managing Director at DFJ Gotham Ventures
• Kirill Sheynkman, Senior Managing Director at RTP Ventures

Startup Pitches from:

NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 13: Exterior views of the Soho House on December 13, 2010 in New York City. Swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay was found dead in her room on December 9, 2010 at the Soho House. Cachay’s boyfried Nicholas Brooks has been charged with attempted murder and strangulation. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The newly formed Technology, Advertising and Startup Council will hold its inaugural event today at NYs SoHo House. VC’s from Greycroft Partners, Union Square Ventures, Physic Ventures and Lerer Ventures will sit down with startups such as content aggregator RebelMouse,  hyperlocal advertiser PlaceIQ and the Twitter-social analyzer Topsy. 

TASC, formed by ad executives Darren Herman, Ian Schafer, David Berkowitz and Mark Silva, is still in early stages, but is considering expanding to other cities. They may also roll events for specific categories—such as e-commerce startups—and add other agencies and VCs.

Adweek

The steering committee of the program consists of 12 successful people in the Long Island business community as well as several high profile companies as sponsors.

LI TechComets

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Super angels are a bigger presence in NY startup investments. David Tisch, former managing director of Tech Stars NYC, Brian Cohen, chairman of New York Angels and investor David Rose are a new breed of angels with large portfolios. They invest actively, and move in and out of opportunities quickly.

Super angel investors don’t sit on companies’ boards. Instead they offer advice and mentoring. Unlike venture capitalists, super angels tend to encourage startups to sell to larger companies instead of creating their own business model. That typically translates into a faster exit and a smaller return on investment than a venture capital firm.

Crain’s

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Fred Wilson, managing partner at Union Square Ventures, made his first big deal with an investment in the Web community GeoCities, which Yahoo bought for about $3 billion in 1999. He went on to back startups including Twitter, Zynga, and Foursquare. However, he worries the industry is in trouble. Lately VCs haven’t come close to generating the returns on their investments that they were making in the 1990s, according to Technology Review.

IT firms are finding it cheaper than ever to start their companies and many alternative funding mechanisms are proliferating. Also, VCs tend to stay away from ideas that take too long to come to fruition, which includes many in energy and biomedicine. This leads to critics contending that VCs flood the world with too much money for ideas that don’t solve big problems.

Technology Review