Joelle continues to highlight InSITE as the most beneficial extracurricular activity she undertook during business school. Joelle has leveraged the hands on work experience with startups provided by InSITE to the benefit of her corporate development roles. She is especially grateful for the robust InSITE community of entrepreneurs and VCs that she is able to call on to help source deals and connect with industry thought leaders.

President – Abe Geiger, CBS ’12
VP Partnerships – Ted Rosenwasser, CBS ’12
VP Sourcing – Brian Malkerson, Stern ’12
VP Operations – Victoria Cheng, CBS ’12
VP Events – Matt Puzio, CBS ’12
VP Alumni – Alessandro Presti, Col JD/MBA ’12
VP Communications – Nistha Tripathi, Stern ’12
VP Special Ops – Joe Rizk, CBS ’12
VP NYU Recruiting – Steve Mayne, Stern ’12
VP Columbia Recruiting – Rebecca Allen, CBS ’12

And the New 2011-12 Young Alumni Board Members

Shirley Xu, CBS ’11
Alex Shellhammer, Stern ’11

Thank you to our two outgoing 2010-11 Young Alumni Board Members Rich Powell and Jeff Hui.

Congrats to our Fall 2010 Company, Sportaneous for their prizes at the Big Apps Competition.
- Grand Prize Popular Choice Award
- 2nd place Best Overall Application
Full press release here.

Way to go Omar and Aaron! For more on Sportaneous, contact Co-Founders, Omar Haroun or Aaron Royston

SkillSlate helps consumers find individual service providers, such as tutors, dog walkers, and personal trainers, by enabling users to search thousands of business profile pages complete with pictures, prices and reviews. These one-person businesses often provide great service at highly competitive prices, but, until SkillSlate, have been hard to find online. Many individual service providers lack a web presence – and are thus underrepresented in search engines, where 82% of people look for local services. SkillSlate’s technology ensures service providers’ pages surface highly in search engine queries, driving greater web visibility for their services and helping more potential customers find them.

According to Phineas Barnes, Principal at First Round Capital, “SkillSlate will provide value to both buyers and sellers of local services by reducing friction in the discovery and quality assessment process. Their unique approach solves a real problem for both sides of this large and inefficient market.”

InSITE’s commitment to entrepreneurship comes in many forms, and this is just one example of InSITE fellows making an impact on the New York tech scene. Congrats to Brian and the SkillSlate team!

As “Future Angels” we attend and actively participate in all of the angels meetings, and so far, the learning experience has been incredible. I am particularly impressed with the organization of the meetings and I am learning the appropriate questions to ask for understanding the fundamentals of a venture in just a 30-minute meeting—the Angel’s ability to quickly zero in on the critical issues is remarkable. I attribute this partially to the informal format of the meetings: a presentation spotted with Q&A is completely practical. This eases the tension for the entrepreneur and prevents the angels from falling behind throughout the presentation. When an entrepreneur struggles to explain the revenue model clearly or convince the angels as to why their marketing campaign will drive eyes to their website, an Angel immediately jumps in with questions and won’t move on until she understands.

Collaborative forums like New York Angels is a big part of what the venture community is about; as Brian Cohen has said, angel investing can be a tough sport. By coming together, the Angels can consider several potential investments at once, and analyze them with peers to spot the successful entrepreneurs and find ways to fund promising ideas. The Angels create opportunities for themselves by forming long-term relationships with entrepreneurs who have impressive backgrounds, or intriguing ideas.

At last month’s meeting, the Angels heard more than ten pitches. Here are my thoughts on a few that I would consider most promising.

NabeWise Media helps movers find the perfect neighborhood while also providing real estate agents with tools to educate their clients—think Yelp! of the real estate market. Due to the “fair housing” laws, Real Estate agents are not allowed to quote neighborhood characteristics such as safety, demographics, trendiness and noise level to their clients. Now, NabeWise gives these brokers a tool to recommend to their clients for getting that critical information. NabeWise’ success hinges on great scalability and marketing potential. CEO Ann Baldinucci hires interns to write initial reviews of various neighborhoods (i.e.: Tribeca, Williamsburg, etc.), which serve as a jumping off point for customers to research and offer their own unique feedback. Scale exists because the interns can review 100 neighborhoods in a month (as a reference point, New York City’s five boroughs have approximately 300 neighborhoods). On the marketing front, Ann is signing subscription partnership deals with large networks of real estate brokers who have provided positive feedback.

SeatGeek is the first website to both reliably scrape data from online ticket brokers and provide price predictor technology. Co-Founder Zack Groetzinger captured the Angel’s attention, proclaiming SeatGeek to be 82% accurate in it’s forecasting. The forecast uses algorithms that plow through millions of compiled ticket transactions and aggregated factors that influence ticket prices. These algorithms give SeatGeek a current competitive advantage that keeps their product superior to all other ticket aggregators and online broker sites. SeatGeek earns revenue through relationships with secondary ticket markets and has begun signing revenue sharing deals with many content sites. SeatGeek has the potential to become the next Kayak of the ticket world and for now they have gained another customer: me.

SpyderLynk creates a “snaptag”—a company’s logo with a unique (bar) code ring—that allows the consumer to interact with a company through a new marketing channel. Using mobile devices, consumers take a picture of a snaptag, which is strategically placed in a magazine or other advertisement, and then send the picture to the sponsor company. In doing so, the consumer enters into a game, wins prizes or receives coupons—the marketing and branding possibilities are endless. SpyderLynk reminds me of stickybits, in the way that both companies are creating connections between the physical and digital worlds. SpyderLynk has created a new way to build a brand, however, its success depends on (1) signing branded companies and (2) a smart marketing campaign to educate and attract customers who want to use the posted snaptags. SpyderLynk has a few name brands signed up, but for what seems like a trial, so I do not know how strong their biz dev and marketing campaigns are. This startup may be a concept that needs further development before finding investors, but for now, the angels have remained in contact.

-By InSITE fellow Jonathan Cooper

Funding came from Meakem Becker Venture Capital (interestingly, whose Managing Director Glen Meakem is the brother of InSITE Board Member and Kodiak Venture Partners Managing Partner Chip Meakem – all roads lead back to InSITE).

Read the full article at Techcrunch.

– Rich Powell, InSITE Board Member

Alex Cohen, InSITE Founder and GC and CCO for On Deck Capital
Andrew Moss, InSITE Alumni and Founder of BuyWithMe
Ben Lilienthal, InSITE Alumni and Founder of Vapps
Bronson Lingamfelter, InSITE Alumni and Associate at Rose Tech Ventures
Dan Lifton, InSITE Board and COO at Quality of Life Labs
David Pashman, Legal Team Leader at Meetup
Dawn Barber, InSITE Board and Founder of NY Tech Meetup
Josh Spodek, InSITE Alumni and Founder of Submedia
Karl Alomar, InSITE Past President and CEO at China Export Finance
Mac Lipscomb, InSITE Board and Operating Partner at InSITE Sponsor RRE Ventures
Mark Davis, InSITE Alumni and Associate at DJF Gotham Ventures
Matt McCooe, InSITE Alumni and Managing Partner at Chart Venture Partners
Molly Siems, InSITE Alumni and Account Manager at Fly Communications
Pete Karlen, InSITE Board and VP at EarthWater Global
Robyn Soto, InSITE Board and Director at Tishman Speyer
Sacha Ross, Associate at InSITE Sponsor Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Vic Singh, InSITE Alumni and Co-Founder of NearVerse
Vinay Jain, InSITE Board and Associate at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom
Zubin Canteenwalla, InSITE Alumni and Associate at NGEN Partners

InSITE presented several special awards:

Fellow Achievement Award: Shirley Xu
For special service as a first year InSITE Fellow, including leading our first VCAP Special Project Team and volunteering to serve as Special VP for Alumni Companies to survey their funding success, which showed that InSITE Companies had raised more than $215M in venture financing since 2000.

Alumni Achievement Award: Andrew Moss
For extraordinary accomplishments in entrepreneurship since graduating from InSITE (and NYU Law in 2001), particularly founding BuyWithMe in 2009 and raising a $5.5M Series A round.

First Annual Inductee into the InSITE Hall of Fame: Paul Tumpowsky
For guiding InSITE through 10 highly successful years as Chairman of the Board including developing the organization’s core program and relationships with sponsors, startups and supporters throughout the NYC venture community.

A full list of InSITE honors is available here.

Current InSITE Fellows and Board Members elected ten new executives to run the organization in 2010 – 2011 and two out-going Fellows to serve as Young Alumni Board Members:

Lastly, InSITE thanks the outgoing Class of 2010:

Christian DiCarlo, Columbia MBA
Duncan Welstead, Columbia MBA
Geetika Agrawal, NYU MBA
Godfrey Powell, Jr., NYU MBA
Haley Boruszak, NYU MBA
Jane Kang, NYU JD
Jeff Hui, Columbia MBA (who will stay on with InSITE as a Young Alumni Board Member)
Jennifer Gootman, NYU MBA
Justin Heyman, Columbia MBA
Kesha Cash, Columbia MBA
Max Eckstein, Columbia JD
Jane Kang, NYU JD
Ricky Opaterny, NYU MBA
Rob Schneider, Columbia MBA
Roy Simkhay, Columbia MBA
Ryan Orton, Columbia MBA
Shawn Khazzam, NYU MBA
Tony Leotti, NYU JD/MBA
Vinay Ganti, NYU JD/MBA

– Rich Powell, NYU JD ’10, signing off as 2009-2010 President; thanking all the past Execs, Team Leaders, Alumni and Supporters for another great year; and wishing the best of luck to the stellar 2010-2011 Execs

After graduation, he did tech deals at Wilson Sonsini in Palo Alto. From there, he left to work in-house—first at Micron, then for Microsoft and now as the lead in-house counsel for Lab126, the wholly owned subsidy of Amazon responsible for developing the Kindle.

What did you take away from your experience with InSITE?

A few things: First, if you can’t convince yourself that you, your ideas, or your business will be successful, you can’t convince anyone else. Whether it’s a job interview, a pitch to a VC, etc. you need to believe and tell a compelling story to others that gets them excited about you, your ideas and your opportunity for success. To do that, you need to be able to boil your ideas down to their essence, to describe them in a precise and succinct way. It doesn’t matter the business, it could be technology, law or selling shoes, you have to be able to tell a compelling story. Second, working to start InSITE and with our first groups of companies and sponsors, I learned that my interest lay in a more business-oriented area of the law, not in patent prosecution, corporate securities or M&A, but in helping companies as they crafted the deals that created technology and monetized it.

What was the difference between working for a law firm and working in-house at a company?

Law Firm

Working for a law firm allows you to represent many clients across many industries. At the law firm where I started (Wilson, Sonsini), I worked with companies across technologies from file-sharing to consumer electronics, biotech, semiconductor equipment, and semiconductor manufacturing (to name just a few). I also represented companies at various points in their lifecycle, from start-up through sale, IPO or even bankruptcy. However, as an attorney at a law firm you’re an expensive consultant, and rarely have the opportunity to spend the time to engage deeply with the business. Hours are also long and scheduling can be very unpredictable.

In-House

Working in-house allows you to engage deeply with all areas of one business. I don’t mean to suggest that working in-house is limited though. There are issues across the board to consider—environmental, software, export, FTC, licensing, regulatory—but the issues surround one device or category. The in-house opportunity probably gives you more opportunity to sink your teeth into the initial conception of an idea through putting that product into the customer’s hands.

There are significant differences between working in-house at a start-up and working in-house somewhere like Microsoft. Working in-house for a bigger company is more like a law firm since there are so many resources and people. It’s often good for someone more junior to start in-house at a larger company since it will be more structured. At a smaller company, you do a lot of the research yourself, you don’t have an assistant, you don’t have the resources to call in experts for every issue. It might mean more work, but you become more of an expert and become more involved in the various issues instead of passing them along.

What advice do you have for students looking to get into venture capital and/or entrepreneurship?

The best thing you can ever do is to try areas that you don’t have much experience in. I took a number of jobs that broadened my skill set. For example, I worked doing biotech deals for a year. If you’re at a law firm, I also think doing some M&A and bankruptcy work would be useful.

What advice do you have for law firm associates?

Keep your eye on deals coming down the pipeline. At Wilson Sonsini, there was a daily deal sheet showing the new clients and matters opened by partners across the firm. I would get to work really early and scour the upcoming deals. When I found something I was interested in, I would approach the partner on the deal and offer my help. I would suggest that you be as engaged as you can. You can go to work and push papers and get the hours that come your way, or you can take a step outside your office and find opportunities.

What is the best part of working at a start-up?

The best part of working at a start-up is that there are no established ways that things have to be done. The pace is quick and there are always interesting issues that may be similar to ones you’ve seen before, but are new twists that require you to think on your feet. It’s never boring.

As Chief Counsel for a start-up, how involved are you in business development?

Very. In-house counsel is usually involved from the conception of ideas to the eventual development of the product and beyond. The level of involvement depends a lot on the size of the company and the level of the attorney, but it’s generally much more involved than outside counsel.

What advice do you have for students and other young people beginning their career?

Treat people well, not just those that you think are in a position to help you enhance your career. While it’s not certain that this will lead to more career opportunities, it will lead to a much more fulfilling life.

– Colleen Honigsberg, AVP Communications 2009-2010