As the New York startup community continues to mature and evolve, so has InSITE. This year we worked with startups in an unprecedented number of industries, broadened our services to serve increasingly later-stage companies, partnered with Sony and IBM to host the Always Be Closing event series, established the InSITE Research initiative, and launched several other special projects.

All of this hard work was on display last week at the InSITE Spring Pitch Event. The Event is our semester-capping showcase that brings together our Fellows, companies, venture capital partners, and other members of the New York startup ecosystem to share InSITE’s work and solicit investor feedback.  This semester’s Event highlighted the breadth of InSITE’s work. Featured companies ranged in maturity from pre-launch and prefunding to 6 years old and thrice funded.  They included fashion technology companies, medical hardware breakthroughs, social media apps, and everything in between.

The following list provides a snapshot of the companies that presented this semester.

·      Threadmatcher: a social fashion recommendation platform that enables users to discover and purchase new gear without fear that they’ll show up to a party wearing the same outfit as their friend.

·      BioDigital: a producer of state of the art biomedical visualization systems that improve training, communication, and the interpretation of medical information.

·      Brevity: a video technology company that enables production studios and creative enterprises to dramatically reduce video data transfer and transcoding speeds and costs.

·      Bug Labs: a machine-to-machine networking company that provides hardware and software solutions that power the “internet of things.”

·      ColdSteel Laser: a medical technology company pioneering and commercializing a minimally invasive endoscopic laser surgery hardware and software solution.

·      Social Bicycles: a bike sharing network featuring GPS-enabled bikes that riders can find and unlock using their mobile phone.

·      Lifedots: a cloud-based solution to collect, organize and connect the cherished moments of your life anywhere, anytime, in a visually dynamic way.

These entrepreneurs received feedback from a panel of early stage investors including Brian Hirsch, Founder & Managing Director at Tribeca Venture Partners, David Aronoff, General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, Jordan Elpern-Waxman, Senior Associate at Genecast Ventures, and Zach Schlidhorn, Vice President and Director of Operation at Lux Capital.

The Event also featured a recap of many of the special projects that Fellows worked on this semester.  Featured projects included an InSITE Research deep dive into online video, consulting to startups in the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and project analysis for AOL Venture’s rapid prototyping shop QLabs.

For the Fellows, this variety translated to a rich, wide-ranging and challenging learning experience.  Listening to this semester’s entrepreneurs pitch, it was clear that the past few months have been a rewarding learning experience for them as well.  We’d like to thank all of the companies, panelists and attendees who made the Spring Pitch Event such a success. This has been an exciting year and we’re looking forward to continuing to work to help InSITE and the broader New York startup community reach new heights in the future.

This post was written by Zak Schwarzman, Columbia Business School Class of 2013.

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.

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

InSITE’s Spring 2010 companies presenting were:
ProtEquity
Bandvest
modos
Klickable
Active Locations

A distinguished panel of senior venture capitalists and entrepreneurs provided invaluable feedback on each pitch. These included:
Jason Finger / Founder of Seamlessweb and EIR at Bessemer Venture Partners
Will Porteous / General Partner at RRE Ventures
Morgan Rodd / General Partner at Milestone Venture Partners

Other venture firms present were InSITE Sponsor Greenhill SAVP, Rose Tech Ventures and Tipping Point Partners.

InSITE is tremendously thankful to our sponsors for supporting us through another outstanding semester:
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati
Canaan Partners
Contour Venture Partners
DFJ Gotham
Investor Growth Capital
Greenhill SAVP
Kodiak Venture Partners
Milestone Venture Partners
RRE Ventures

InSITE also thanks Cooley, Godward and Kronish for hosting our Pitch Event for the fourth semester.

We captured brief interviews with several participants in this Klickable video: