Event Recap: December 2014 NY Tech Meetup
The December 2014 NY Tech Meetup was a great sendoff to a banner year in New York’s hotshot startup scene. Key points were a presentation by New York State Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot about the state’s first website update since 1998, and a typically high-spirited cryptocurrency marketplace pitch. The city’s largest tech meetup is as inclusive, cluttered, and enthusiastic as it’s ever been — there were even lightsabers at the door, courtesy of Rackspace’s Object Rocket.
The startup pitches ran across nearly every buzzy sector: interactive video (Wirewax, which launched a shoppable episode of Cougar Town for TBS last season), social finance (Openfolio), Bitcoin (Celery, which also sells DogeCoin, in case that’s your cryptocurrency of choice), employee learnings (Showd.me), and more. A particularly interesting pitch came from Kinvolved — an attendance management system (“sort of like Tinder, but for kids,” quipped the presenter) for schools to ensure that kids are safely in school, with a built-in reminder technology.
On the content side, Bespoke is a browser that was described as “a holistic ideation workflow for creatives.” In human words, this means it’s a browser with built-in tools for sharing, gathering, and editing content. The content can be organized into books for easy collaboration. Think You is trying to pioneer a “wearable social network,” but will probably have obstacles as long as its QR-dependent programming fails to scan during live demos. Trying to pioneer revenue model for musicians was appLOUD, an Instagram-meets-Indiegogo app that syncs live video with links to tip an artist, or buy their music.
It’s not always a hit parade at the NY Tech Meetup, but that’s part of the fun — at an event featuring everyone from a New York official to a 3 day-old startup, the enthusiasm will carry us over into 2015.
