Made in NY: Austin

It was nice to see so many of you at our Made in NY: Austin event at SXSW. Over 750 participants enjoyed everything from getting their official “Made in NY” tattoo from Tattly to sewing a pocket square with Etsy to learning some dance moves thanks to Skillshare and John Doyle from Girl Walk//All Day. We were happy to be able to provide over 30 New York startups with an opportunity to showcase what they do to a great crowd of key SXSW attendees.

You can find event photos at:

http://on.fb.me/madephotos

http://bit.ly/madenickyd

http://www.thebos.co/e/made-in-ny-austin

And a HUGE thanks to all of our sponsors who made this event possible! 

Sponsors and Participating Companies

Presenting Sponsor

Gold Sponsors

    

Silver Sponsors

         

Bronze Sponsors

       

      

Startup Partners 

    

 

           

  

       

  

   

Product Sponsors

  

  

Media Partners

 

Wow! Thanks everyone for signing up - our Made in NY: Austin event filled up fast! We’re hoping to be able to open some more spots as the event gets closer, so if you haven’t registered yet, please add your name to the waitlist and we’ll try to get you in. 

We’ve got a growing list of sponsors and participating companies we are excited to have involved: 

Sponsors and Participating Companies

Presenting Sponsor

Gold Sponsors

    

Silver Sponsors

         

Bronze Sponsors

       

      

Startup Partners 

    

 

           

  

       

  

   

Product Sponsors

  

  

Media Partners

 

Event Production By:

Jessica Lawrence and Brian Quinn

We’ve opened RSVPs for Made in NY: Austin - join us! 

RSVPs will open soon…sign up here to get notified. 

We’ve been getting lots of questions about whether New York Startup Meetup will be back at SXSW in 2012…and the answer?

Yup. We’ll be there. And we’re excited. Because in addition to having a lot of the great team back from last year (with NY Tech Meetup taking the lead this time), we’ve got lots of new things to announce too: 

New Event Name: Made in NY {location: austin; event_type:}

New Event Date & Time: Sunday, March 11, 2012 - 6 pm to 12 am

New (bigger!) Event Location: Cedar Door (two blocks from the convention center) 

New Programming:

We’re going to change up the standard demo and networking format a little bit and collaborate with NY startups to find some creative and inspiring ways to show off the tech that is being built in NY. 

In addition, we’ll be showcasing other awesome things that are made in NY…like beer. 

Company Participation & Sponsorship

Gust has already stepped up to be the event’s Presenting Sponsor (thanks Gust!), and we have early support from 10Gen, Startup Foundation, Betaworks and Zemanta as well. 

If you’re interested in sponsoring and having your startup featured, we’ve got lots of different options and would love to work with you - contact Jessica Lawrence at jessica (at) nytm (dot) org. 

Attendee RSVPs

We’ll have more information about RSVPs coming out soon. Want us to give you updates? Sign up here and we’ll let you know. 

It’s been two weeks since SXSW, but better late than never! We wanted to recap the event and send our thanks to everyone involved.

Over 30 of NYC’s finest startups participated, including Meetup, Foursquare, and Etsy. We had over 500 folks attend the event that included demos and presentations as well as tables where attendees could meet the startup teams.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg sent out a great intro the night before over Twitter and Twittersphere was abuzz all day with reports from the event. We were able to get some amazing press coverage, including articles from CNN Money and Business Insider (thanks to BuddyMedia’s Mike Lazerow).

This event would not have happened if it were not for the collaborative and individual efforts across the NYC start-up community as a whole.  How this came together is a story in itself.  In addition to the video recap below, check out various photos of the event.

Thank you to all who stopped by and all of the startups that helped and participated!

SXSW 2011 NYC Startup Meetup from zemanta on Vimeo.

People have been asking us how we put this event together and whether we will be organizing a similar event during SXSWi 2012.  Figured we’d tell the story and share our experience, while it is still somewhat fresh in our minds. What struck us from the get-go, and still resonates, is how the NYC startup community came together to support each other and stand out during a conference that vies for everyone’s attention at all times. So this is a joint narrative from the perspective of Jane Kim, Greg Gortz, and Tin Dizdarevic who brought the NYC circus to Austin and what we learned in the process.

In mid-December the concept of the idea was borne from a Yammer thread and subsequent conversations among USV portfolio companies that discussed pooling marketing resources to create a presence during SXSWi.  Jonathan Basker (Etsy) suggested that the event focus on recruiting technical talent. From there, conversations between Greg Gortz (Zemanta), Jane Kim (Hashable), and several others resulted in a rough outline of an event. An initial outreach to a handful of companies followed to gauge interest and get feedback.  It was estimated that eight start-ups participating at $1000 each, would allow us to secure a bar and hold a recruiting Happy Hour. We wanted this to be an event for NYC start-ups, by NYC start-ups.  And while we did initially reach out to USV portfolio companies - it wasn’t intended to be an USV sponsored event. These companies were the lowest hanging fruit - as we knew them :)

Within 10 days of our initial outreach, we had seven start-ups who committed to the event (10gen, Aviary, Blip.tv, Hashable, Knewton, SquareSpace, Zemanta). That quickly grew to 11, and then jumped to 22 as word spread. We had secured a venue, hoping for fifteen start-ups to participate. Now, we were at max capacity with additional start-ups still interested. We didn’t want to turn anyone away, so we offered a lowered price point to ensure anyone who wanted to participate, could. In the end 37 start-ups partook in the event - 22 providing kick ass demonstrations.

We secured sponsorship of NYTM and WeWork to help defray marketing and participation costs. We believe, with more time, we could have made a concerted effort to secure a larger sponsorship. Ultimately, NYTM and WeWork made the financial contribution that we asked of start-ups, manageable.

Several things enabled us to grow quickly and gain momentum:

1) Asking VC’s to reach out to their portfolio companies – Gary Chou (USV), Lawrence Lenihan (First Mark Capital) Charlie O’Donnell (First Round Capital)

2) Getting larger companies to participate. The larger, more established, start-ups (Buddy Media, Etsy, Foursquare, Meetup, SecondMarket) leveraged their brand power to draw attention to the event.

3) Getting marketing and community managers involved.  They have a lot of friends within the startup community and love to get everyone involved.

The ensuing weeks required a lot of coordination and deliverables. Given that we had day jobs at our own start-ups, we quickly lost bandwidth. Fortunately, several people stepped up to help out:

Gary Chou (USV) championed the event and leveraged his connections among companies and other VC’s to spread the word.

Tin Dizdarevic (Zemanta) provided the organizational backend and was the point of contact for all start-ups.

Adriana Gascoigne (SecondMarket) organized wristbands and t-shirt design

Abby Ricarte (Knewton) designed marketing materials and posters

Anna Frenkel and Susan Loh (Foursquare) pushed several sponsorship opportunities

Nate Westheimer (NYTM) plugged the event at the March meetup

Everyone else provided community support by spreading the word through the usual social media/blog outlets, ending up with 935 registered attendees.


The morning of the event was filled with a frenzied two hours of preparation from the venue staff and the participating companies.  At 11:30, Greg kicked off the event, introducing our sponsors, Nate Westheimer (NYTM) and Jesse Middleton (WeWork). Albert Wenger (USV), our featured VC speaker, followed with his positive and enthusiastic outlook on the NYC tech Startup scene.

We launched into demos immediately after, running through 5-6 presentations, followed by 25-minute networking breaks. This format (borrowed from NYTM), initially worked well. As the day continued and drinks consumed, it became progressively harder to get the audience to focus on the demos. But while observing the crowd, you could see that the engagement level was very high.  We scattered the startups all over the venue, so you couldn’t take a few steps without running into someone who was willing to tell you about their company.  All of the companies did a great job with their presentations, and were incredibly patient with some of the technical glitches.

At the end of the day, after the last demo, a packed venue of people stayed to continue their conversations and drinks and enjoy the company of new friends. With a dozen t-shirts from various companies in hand, we had a shot of tequila and headed out for some hard-earned celebrating. We left feeling good about the success and efficacy of the event

Looking back we would do a few things differently to make the event more successful:
1) Assume a larger participation rate and plan for it accordingly
2) Secure sponsorship early and often
3) Split the venue into two areas – one for demos, the other for networking (drinking)
4) Lock down the Wifi
5) Use an Event planner (we used Red Velvet Events, a local Austin event company that did an awesome job for us)
6) Don’t forget to reach out to the press (side note - we had planned to do press outreach, but just ran out of bandwidth - although the CNNMoney article tells us that if you bring the right people and companies together, the event will attract the right kind of attention)
7) Ask for help - people will rise to the occasion, the NYC start up community is full of energetic entrepreneurs.


People have asked us if were going to do something like this again in NYC (Entrepreneur Week, Internet Week, random week).  The answer is we’ll see. We think NYTM does a great job showcasing NYC startups and has a fantastic member base.  That said, there is an opportunity to build off of this event and keep the focus on bringing talent to NYC.  The more we can leverage the network that we have, the more things we can do together.  We’d love to see the participating companies reflect on the event and start thinking about other ways that we can continue to draw attention to what should and will be the new high-growth job sector in NYC.

Thanks again NYC!!

Jane, Tin, Greg

Photos from NYC Startup Meetup

We’re only four days away from the event and can’t wait to see you all there. As we’re getting closer to the event, we’re finalizing the lineup of folks that will be showcasing their startups.

Check out this amazing lineup of presenters:

• 10gen/mongoDB - Nosh Petigara - Director of Product Strategy - @noshinosh
• Aviary - Michael Galpert - Co-Founder - @msg
• blip.tv - Dina Kaplan - Chief Operating Officer - @dinakaplan
• BuddyMedia - Patrick Stokes - Chief Product Officer - @patr1cks
• BuzzFeed - Jonah Peretti - Founder - @peretti
• foursquare - Naveen Selvadurai - Co-Founder - @naveen
• Harvest -Danny Wen - Co-Founder - @dannywen
• Harvest - Karen Schoellkopf - Community Manager - @kgunette
• Harvest - Sri Vemuri - Marketing Manager - @sriandthecity
• Hashable - Teddy Jawde - VP of Product  - @tjawde
• HowAboutWe - Aaron Schildkrout - CEO - @schildkrout
• HowAboutWe - Brian Schechter - CEO - @bschech
• Kaltura - Jason Levitt - Director, Developer Network - @kaltura
• Knewton - Ashley Miller - Software Engineer - @knewton_ashley
• Lot18 - Philip James - Founder - @philipjkjames
• Lot18 - Adam Gotterer - Chief Architect - @adamgotterer
• Meetup - Greg Whalin - Co-Founder/CTO - @gwhalin
• Pixable - Andres Blank - Co-Founder/COO - @andresblank
• SecondMarket - Dominic Preuss - Chief Product Officer - @deesix
• Shapeways - Peter Weijmarshausen - CEO - @weijmarshausen
• Solvate - Meghan Paul - Product Manager - @megabucks11
• Solvate - Michael Tarullo - Director of Client Services - @tarullo
• YipIt - Vinicius Vacanti - Co-Founder/CEO - @vacanti
• Zemanta - Bostjan Spetic - CEO - @igzebedze

Visit our Eventbrite page to RSVP and find out more about the event.