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.

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

Specifically, Sony Electronics is interested in connecting with New York media and technology startups focused on the areas presented below, and will select a handful of companies to come to Sony’s U.S. headquarters in New York to present their products to its business development team in front of a live audience, including select members of the VC community.

Areas of interest include:

MEDIA
• Recommendation/Personalization tools to navigate large content libraries
• Cross-device advertising
• CRM/Customer behavior analytics
• Video streaming/”one-to-many” upload broadcast technologies
• Socialization/Game-ification engines

TECHNOLOGY
• Cross-device data synchronization (cloud synch)
• Voice/facial recognition
• Text-input and on-screen UI navigation
• Consumer-oriented mobile and Home Health/Wellness/Fitness-related technologies
• Smart Home (A/V control, Home Security, Home Control, Home Energy, Home Health)

Applications are being accepted through October 31 at http://insiteny.org/SonyABC

The 2011 New York Venture Summit
- Where Innovation Meets Capital -

July 20th – 21st, 2011 | Digital Sandbox |New York City

Friends,

Whether you’re a startup seeking capital and exposure or an investor seeking new deals, The New York Venture Summit™ presented by youngStartup Ventures – is one event you won’t want to miss.

A highly productive venture conference, the New York Venture Summit is dedicated to showcasing early stage VCs, Corporate Investors and Angel Investors committed to funding early stage and emerging companies.

This exclusive summit will feature a distinguished line up of more than 40 VCs on interactive panels, presentations from more than 50 Top Innovators seeking funding and high-level networking opportunities.

Partial List of Venture Capitalists confirmed to Speak:

John Albright, Co-Managing Partner, BlackBerry Partners Fund | Managing Partner, JLA Ventures
Omar Amirana, MD, Partner, Oxford Bioscience Partners
Steve Brotman, Managing Partner, GSA Venture Partners
Don Butler, Managing Director, Thomvest Ventures
Bill Coleman, Partner, Alsop Louie Partners
Richard Dale, Principal, Sigma Partners
Dixon R. Doll, Co-founder and General Partner, DCM
Jon Edelson, M.D., Venture Partner, Ascent Biomedical Ventures
Scott English, Senior Vice President – Strategic Investments, Hearst Interactive Media
J. Skyler Fernandes, Associate, Centripetal Capital Partners
Tony Florence, Partner, NEA
Teo Forcht Dagi, Partner, HLM Venture Partners
Nikhil Garg, Vice President, Black Coral Capital
Matthew Garratt, Vice President, Battery Ventures
Jay N. Goldberg, Senior Managing Director, Hudson Ventures
Wally Hunter, Managing Director, EnerTech Capital
Jay Jamison, Venture Partner, BlueRun Ventures
Michael Katz, Partner, Greener Capital
Stephen Knight, M.D., Managing Partner, Fidelity BioSciences
David Lane, Partner, Onset Ventures
Albert A. Lauritano, MSc, CLP, Director / Business Development, BD Technologies
Charles R. Lax, Managing General Partner, GrandBanks Capital
Mary Lincoln Campbell, Managing Director, EDF Ventures
Mark MacLeod, Partner, Real Ventures
Douglas Lind, Managing Partner, GBP Capital
Brad McManus, Director, Panasonic Venture Group
Lucy McQuilken, Investment Manager, Intel Capital
Jeffrey B. Moore, DPhil, MBA, Vice President, MP Healthcare Venture Management
Diana Propper de Callejon, General Partner, Expansion Capital Partners
David Rubin, Director, Merck Global Health Innovation Group
Gary Rubinoff, Managing Director, Summerhill Venture Partners
Reese Schroeder, Managing Director, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital
Jim Sledzik, Partner & President, Energy Ventures US
David J. Sorin, Co-Managing Partner, SorinRoyerCooper LLC
Miles Spencer, Founder and Chairman, Vaux les Ventures
Alexander B. Suh, Founding Managing Director, California Technology Ventures
Jeanne M. Sullivan, Co-Chair and Founder, StarVest Partners
Eileen M. Tanghal, Investment Director, Applied Ventures
Ralph E. Taylor-Smith, General Partner, Battelle Ventures
Dr. Markus Thill, Managing Director, Robert Bosch Venture Capital
Wal van Lierop, President & CEO, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital
Medha Vedaprakash, Principal, Rho Capital Partners
Daniel Wagner, Director, Investments, Connecticut Innovations
Tom Whiteaker, AVP, Hartford Ventures
Ryan Ziegler, Principal, Edison Ventures

InSITE has made special arrangement for startups and investors in our network to receive a special discount of 25% off the current registration rates.

To inquire about group rates, register by phone or for more information contact:
Rivka of youngStartup Ventures at 718-447-0009

This exclusive Venture Summit brings together over 400 Top-tier venture Capitalists, Private Investors, Corporate VCs, CEOs of early stage and emerging growth companies and strategic service firms; features more than 40 leading VCs on interactive panel discussions; presentations from more than 50 Top Innovators; and high-level networking opportunities.

A partial list of VCs confirmed to speak includes:
John Albright, Co-Managing Partner, BlackBerry Partners Fund | Managing Partner, JLA Ventures | Omar Amirana, MD, Partner, Oxford Bioscience Partners | Steve Brotman, Managing Partner, GSA Venture Partners | Don Butler, Managing Director, Thomvest Ventures | Bill Coleman, Partner, Alsop Louie Partners | Dixon R. Doll, Co-founder and General Partner, DCM | Scott English, Senior Vice President – Strategic Investments, Hearst Interactive Media | Wally Hunter, Managing Director, EnerTech Capital | David Lane, Partner, Onset Ventures | Charles R. Lax, Managing General Partner, GrandBanks Capital | Mary Lincoln Campbell, Managing Director, EDF Ventures | Douglas Lind, Managing Partner, GBP Capital | Lucy McQuilken, Investment Manager, Intel Capital | Jeffrey B. Moore, DPhil, MBA, Vice President, MP Healthcare Venture Management | Diana Propper de Callejon, General Partner, Expansion Capital Partners | Gary Rubinoff, Managing Director, Summerhill Venture Partners | Reese Schroeder, Managing Director, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital | Alexander B. Suh, Founding Managing Director, California Technology Ventures | Jeanne M. Sullivan, Co-Chair and Founder, StarVest Partners | Eileen M. Tanghal, Investment Director, Applied Ventures | Gaurav Tewari, Principal, Highland Capital Partners | Dr. Markus Thill, Managing Director, Robert Bosch Venture Capital | Ryan Ziegler, Principal, Edison Venture Fund.