BestVendor views the work app sharing segment as a logical extension to today’s social web, in which users have demonstrated their willingness to showcase and share all aspects of their personal lives. “Ten years ago it would have seemed weird that we all share our resumes online using LinkedIn. We’re working towards a world where professionals are sharing the tools they’re using online and it becomes part of their identity,” BestVendor co-founder Jeff Giesea told VentureBeat earlier this year. The company, which was founded in January 2011, launched its beta in early-November and already has over 5,000 startup and small business professionals signed up and sharing their favorite work apps.

The $3 million investment, co-led by RRE Ventures and SoftBank Capital and supported by Lerer Ventures, Old Willow Partners and David Tisch, comes after a $600,000 seed investment in mid-2011. “We’re thrilled to partner with SoftBank Capital and RRE Ventures to level the playing field in business software,” said Giesea. “They share our vision of bringing greater openness to this rapidly evolving market and to business purchasing in general.”

In addition to CEO Jeff Giesea, BestVendor is led by co-founders Ben Zhuk, Head of Product and InSITE alumni, and Magnus von Koeller, Head of Engineering. Over the last several months, InSITE has worked with BestVendor’s senior management team to support the company’s rapid growth, providing strategy advice within several key areas, including viral strategy, user testing, financial and user growth modeling, and recommendation engine development. The InSITE team consists of Adler Perotte, Rebecca Allen, Alejandro Chahin, Mark Krafft, Ed Rayner and Zak Schwarzman. Zhuk said of his experience with the InSITE team:

It’s been great to come back to the other side of the InSITE relationship and bring a new group of students into a startup. InSITE students are always a cut above, and a great help at whatever they set their minds to. This fall, our team split into functional units to create value in every part of the company: our financial model, our marketing plan, product-market fit and user testing, and even the math behind our recommendation algorithm.

I only wish the term could be longer, so we could keep working with this group!

This post was written by Mark Krafft, Columbia Business School Class of 2013.

Paint the Picture
One of the best ways to start your elevator pitch is by describing who the product or service is for. In consumer facing businesses, I am a fan of a quick anecdote that illustrates the problem. “You know how every time you watch a show on DVR, you miss out on the online discussion you get when it originally aired live?” In B2B markets a pitch can begin by describing how an industry works and where there is a major flaw or inefficiency. “Right now radio stations end up selling their excess ad space at a deep discount at the end of each sales cycle, which encourages advertisers to hold out to save money.”

Framing your pitch with a story like this accomplishes two very important things. First, it’s shows the scope of your business. Most people won’t have exact numbers, but they can infer that TV viewers who chat online or radio advertising are both sizable markets. Second, it piques a listener’s interest about how you are going to solve this issue. By opening with a frame of reference your actual idea is much easier to follow.

Be a Business, Not a Feature
Once you have told the story of all of the parties involved it is good to explain how the company plans to make money. “We are going to take a small percentage of each transaction at the point of sale” or “We’ll offer the general listings free, but we’ll charge a small fee to local businesses who want higher visibility.” Effectively articulating a simple scalable revenue model is ultimately what identifies you as a business, not merely a feature.

Thought About It
If a pitch is directed at someone that you are meeting for the first time, they may have some skepticism. People often appear to be more interested in poking holes in your idea. I like to call this “listening for flaws.” A great way to subvert this is to bring up the challenges you foresee for the business and describe what you’re doing about it. “As we explored the idea deeper, we realized most of the people that buy high end fashion online are looking for deals, but labels want to sell online at full price. By doing ‘x’ we were able to satisfy both parties.” Showing that you took the time to vet the idea makes the whole business seem more feasible.

We’re Doing It
Finally, you need to address the question, “how you are going to pull it all off?” The only appropriate answer is “we already are.” Describe yourself and your team as if everything in your lives has led up to building this business, then show the incremental steps the team has already taken. If you already have 5,000 active users, say it. Just signed a big client? Throw that in. Even if all you have done is begin the development on the website, talk about how well it’s coming together with sincere enthusiasm. The worst thing you can do is sound ashamed of the progress made so far.

Entrepreneurs are usually very excited to talk about their business, but some are better than others at quickly describing what they are doing. The key to a great elevator pitch is being able to cover all of these components in about 30 seconds. This is much easier to accomplish if you have a clear vision or your business already established. Mastering your pitch will lead to better opportunities with potential employees, partners, and investors. Needless to say your elevator pitch worthwhile to practice and perfect.

This post was written by Austin Clements, class of 2013 at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Launched in 2007, RightsFlow helps online music services, record companies, distributors and artists license music and lyrics while also managing royalty payments for the rights-holders. The company’s proprietary licensing technology and 30-plus million song database allows RightsFlow to license content, render accounting, and pay royalties on behalf of clients.

As CEO Patrick Sullivan writes in his announcement: We’re pleased to now be taking a momentous step with the team at YouTube, that shares in our vision of solving the really challenging problem of copyright management. Combined with the worldwide platform and reach of YouTube, we’ll now be able to drive awareness, adoption, and licensing success to a much larger audience — ultimately benefiting users, artists, labels, songwriters, publishers, and the entire global music ecosystem.

YouTube says that RightsFlow has been at the “forefront of solving the complex issues of licensing and royalty payment management.” The startup’s technology will be integrated into the video platform to allow musicians to efficiently license music on YouTube. Clearly helping musicians get compensated for the use of their work make YouTube even more appealing a a platform to showcase music and talent.

It is as important for athletes to win championships as it is important for entrepreneurs to hit homerun exits fortheir companies; but value cannot be placed on the bottom line alone. Value is created by the determined people putting their heart and soul into making their dreams come true.

InSITE’s end of the semester event, which was held last Friday, truly embodied this spirit. It was a unique opportunity to reflect back on the work that has been done throughout the past months, to be inspired by entrepreneurs who are trying to improve our lives in many different ways, to hear about new, innovative ideas and emerging technologies, to learn from the other fellows, and to absorb insights from a distinguished panel of venture capitalists.

No two InSITE teams had the same experiences or takeaways from their work with these young startups; various markets, stages, competitive advantage, business needs, and most importantly – people, kept Friday’s event exciting throughout the entire morning. These are the companies InSITE fellows worked with throughout the semester:

BestVendor is a free online resource that helps professionals find the best “work apps” through social recommendations. InSITE fellows assisted with a wide range of business aspects – financial modeling, recommendation engines, viral exposure, etc.
Zeel is a marketplace to find and book appointments with qualified heath & wellness providers. Already serving thousands of customers, Zeel’s goal is to make American people happier.
The Geno.me is a startup striving to improve scientists’ ability to research and innovate in genomics. The company’s goal is to help accelerating genomics research, and it received some excellent suggestions from our panel on how to target a larger market.
The Runthrough is a platform that facilitates communication and discovery between the fashion industry’s most influential editors, stylists, and designers. The “W-Magazine Mafia” worked closely with InSITE fellows to perfect their pitch and mission of revolutionizing the fashion industry.
Framey provides the easiest way to record video on any website. InSITE fellows assisted with a full market segmentation and pricing analysis.
bre.ad is a word-of-mouth marketing platform for celebrities, brands and charities thatoffers a technology to amplify its customers’ exposure on Facebook and Twitter.
Roundtable is a platform for hosting and publishing public conversations online. The company’s mission is to bring dialogues to the monologue that is the Internet.

The companies gave their pitches to a wonderful panel that included Kirill Sheynkman (Managing Director, RTP Ventures), David Teten (Partner, ff Venture Capital), Bob Greene (Managing Partner, Contour Venture Partners), and David Lerner (Director of Venture Labs, Columbia University Tech Ventures). This journey would not have been complete without our panelists’ time and insightful comments.

Aside from the traditional work with the startups, InSITE fellows have also been involved in several special projects in biotech and cleantech, and in a new initiative named InSITE Research. Under InSITE Research, a pair of fellows dives into a specific industry or investment thesis – such as the NYC incubators and angels scene, or the mobile payments investment research that was presented on Friday (and will be available as a white paper in thefuture). We also heard a quick recap of the successful Sony Always Be Closing event held last month, where promising NYC startups pitched directly to Sony executives in order to provide a solution to Sony’s business development and technology needs.

Fellow Elliott Robinson mentioned at the beginning of the semester on how humbling the venture capital industry is, since you are constantly surrounded with extremely talented, smart, experienced, visionary entrepreneurs that inevitably fail (a lot). Friday’s event provided an opportunity to celebrate our companies’ dedication and courage to dare to challenge the status-quo, dare to create something that has not been done before, and dare to succeed. It was also an opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of InSITE fellows, who – in Sean Weinstock’s words – are “just kids with passion”, and InSITE has helped us to develop the set of tools to make this passion a reality.

This post was written by Maya Mandel, Columbia Business School Class of 2013 and Arun Batra, an Applied Physics PhD student at Columbia Class of 2015.

“What do you mean we’re out of coffee?” : The 8:30 am start dampened neither enthusiasm nor immaculate dress sense.

All Hands on Deck: BestVendor CEO Jeff Gisea introduces the InSITE team that worked with him this semester.

Our Illustrious Panel (Left to Right): Kirill Sheynkman, David Teten, Bob Greene, and David Lerner.

Not So Strictly Business: Ayo Omojola showcasing a demo of WanderPlayer, one of the startups that participated in the Sony ABC event, and turns a smartphone into a game controller so one can play games in any screen. Mandy Teng, COO of The Runthrough, is Mario.

One of the most interesting aspects of our discussion centered around how David came to be one the figures in NYC’s startup ecosystem and the MD of TechStars NYC. In brief, David met David Cohen and initially suggested others for the role, but eventually found himself in a very atypical sort of interview. David essentially spent some time with the team in the Boulder office until it was clear that he should be on board.

Possibly the most surprising thing we learned about David is how much he likes to keep to himself. Given David’s presence in NYC and how engaged he was in our breakfast you would be hard pressed to identify an introvert in him. But David assured us that it takes effort for him to meet new people.

One thing that was clear from our meeting is that David is making his mark on the NYC startup ecosystem.

Ben, Victoria, Joe, Brian, and I would like to thank David again for taking the time out of his schedule to meet with us.

Adler Perotte, MD
Senior InSITE fellow

Jim highlighted the increase in the volume of early stage investing in his discussion, describing the “barbell” shape of the investment market: lots of early-stage activity and lots of growth equity, leaving a nice area of opportunity for RRE in between. He remarked that RRE helped spur the rise of angel stage investing in New York, but that the explosion of interest has been even greater than they imagined. He also gave us a word of caution: starting a startup now is easier then ever because of low capex, but starting a business is harder because of talent. He advised those interested in becoming entrepreneurs, especially those thinking about starting up right after the MBA program, to gain valuable insight by first working at a startup.

He also spoke about his outlook on investing in the future. In terms of where there is opportunity now, he still sees many gaps in areas that are yet to be effectively moved online. For example, there are no dominant brands in health and wellness or self-help online, though these areas have thriving offline markets. In the future, due to long cycle times for technology adoptions (he thinks we have ~15 years left in the current 50 year macro cycle), he thinks “startup” will mean nanotech, genomics etc. He also sees startups on the rise in places like China and Brazil and has explored investments in the Chinese market. Like any investor, he seeks out interesting and growing markets. However, his approach to investing, no matter how big the opportunity, is to never be the sheep.

Thanks Jim!

This post was written by Marianna Zaslavsky, Columbia Business School Class of 2013.

As a healthy and strongly growing company we decided to pick up the fundraising project again a couple of weeks ago and were able to gain the support of some incredible individuals. Expect some great news near the end of this month on that front!

We recently launched a project we had been working on to bring the Holstee Manifesto to life: the LifeCycle Film. Again, we are amazed at how rapidly it has gone viral–amassing over 70,000 views only a week after we launched the film. It has been so amazing to us to see how many people have been inspired through the words of the Manifesto, and the response to the film has been a true testimony to how deeply the values of Holstee resonate with our fantastic community.

We are so glad to report that we are growing! There are many new products in the works that are set to launch this winter, including a limited edition color of our minimalist Upcycled Wallet that will go live in the next few weeks. We are honored to be connected to the inSITE community and thrilled to see where the adventure will take us next!

(Here is the link for the film: http://www.blog.holstee.com/lifecyclefilm-debut

This post was written by Mary Shouvlin (@maryshouvlin), Holstee’s Community Engagement Officer.

In case you’re wondering, the answer to the first question is 5 am! I’ll leave it as an intellectual exercise for the reader to guess why.

The InSITE Leadership Breakfast series is a biweekly event designed to give InSITE fellows the chance to interact with and learn from a leader of the NYC Startup Community. Past leaders have included Steve Martocci, Chris Dixon and David Tisch.

At the most recent Leadership Breakfast with Andy, he talked about his new job as a partner at USV, the firm’s highly successful investment thesis (and the importance of a VC firm to stick to their first principles), and some of USV’s recent investments, including DuckDuckGo (http://duckduckgo.com/) and Codecademy (http://codecademy.com/).

One of the things that really appealed to me was Andy’s philosophy on what he calls “Disruptive Innovation” as a first principle for entrepreneurship. The traditional approach has been to take an old world (offline) phenomenon, copy it and bring it online. However, this does not always cause “disruption” and lead to success. Rather a disruptive idea is one that is radical enough to change the way business is done and redefine an entire industry. For example: Until recently, online advertising had been about replacing, what we have in the offline world (magazines/newspapers) and getting it online in the form of display advertising (think DoubleClick or popup banners). However, what truly disrupted this approach was Google Ads, which took the content displayed on the page and presented relevant text-ads. Not only did this enhance the user experience, but also transformed the traditional model of advertising. Andy hinted that there was a high possibility of such disruptions coming from products being built on top of existing major platforms (such as Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter).

Abe, Joe, Brian, Austin and Amrish would like to thank Andy for taking the time to meet with them and wish him good luck on his new role at USV. Thanks Andy!

- Amrish Singh (@amrish), InSITE Fellow and NYU Stern MBA 2013

Andy Weissman is a partner at Union Square Ventures. Andy began his career in the Internet at AOL in the mid-90s, then managed a series of venture funds with Dawntreader Ventures. In 2007 he co-founded betaworks, which both created and invested in social, real-time applications and services. Andy was born in New York City and has a BA from Wesleyan University and a JD from Georgetown.
Source: http://content.usv.com/pages/andy-weissman

InSITE worked with Sony and NextNY to assemble a lineup of six of New York City’s most promising media startups to open a dialogue with industry leaders about their businesses. The lineup is:

• Shelby.tv: the most amazing way to discover web video;
• VYou: a video Q&A platform that allows people to broadcast video structured as conversations, offering the most personal form of social interaction on the web;
• Brevity: A breakthrough, high-speed digital video transmission technology;
• Wanderplayer: which lets you use your phone as a game controller and play your favorite games on any screen;
• YouNow: a social platform for user-generated live video that allows users to broadcast live and curate content in a fun, game-like fashion;
• iMediaShare: which provides thousands of On Demand options from breaking news to popular shows – available instantly on a TV near you, in HD.

These companies will share a dialogue with an audience comprising NY’s top VCs and members of the tech community, and a panel that includes:

• Andy Weissman, Partner, Union Square Ventures
• Andy Tseng, Vice President of Corporate Development, Sony Electronics Inc.
• Jason Hirschhorn, CEO, The ReDEF Group
• Rob Wiesenthal, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Sony Corporation of America
• Warren Lee, General Partner, Canaan Partners

InSITE is pleased to present this event along with our partners to the New York startup community. We look forward to sharing a recap of the event later in the week.

If you are attending the event, please use the hashtag #SonyABC.

Post written by Zak Schwarzman, Columbia Business School Class of 2013