A standing room only crowd of 500 came out last night to see Hulu, Move Networks, Boxee, MediaMerx and Visible Measures demo their latest products (and drink) at the June installment of NY Video 2.0. Thanks to everyone for some of our best presentations and Q&A yet.
In a our live SMS poll, Boxee, a new open source social media center built on XBMC stood out as the crowd favorite. Here’s the result of the poll:
And here’s why. They promised NYV2 members invites to their private alpha testing program here.
A friend recently sent this link to me. Seems a while ago, a “people’s choice” list of silicon alley’s favorite 100 industry folk was created by open nominations and voting. I didn’t even know about it, but am honored to be on the list alongside some much more deserving local heros (e.g. Clay Shirky, Seth Godin). Thanks to whoever nominated/voted me!
If you’re in NYC and involved with or just love online video, join us at the Hilton tonight at 6:30pm. Over 600 NY Video 2.0 members are meeting to showcase and discuss 5 of our brightest local startups. I’ve got a little surprise for the startups as well. Details here: www.nyvideo.org. See you tonight.
Last Wednesday was a special night for the NY Israel Tech group. Not only were we celebrating the feverish entrepreneurial spirit that built one of the world’s greatest countries in only 60 years, but we welcomed students from Herzelia’s IDC University’s Zell Entrepreneurship program to present their stealth startups to our group. We were impressed, to say the least, by how polished and professional our young guests were. Israeli hi-tech is in good hands. We surprised the three startups chosen to present by Zell board member Yaron Galai with an American Idol style live SMS poll after the presentations. The 130 members that attended were asked to vote whether Joongel, Wizario or IDARU were most likely to succeed. Here are the results:
Congrats to all the startups that presented and to Wizario for coming out on top by 1 vote! Here’s a mobile video shot of the live SMS voting. Thanks to Sarig, co-founder of Flixwagon for the clip.
It’s nothing less than astonishing what a country the size of New Jersey and in a perpetual state of survival and hourly radio “hicon” has been able to produce in 60 short years. The Israeli high tech community is a shining beacon of our tiny country’s tenacious entrepreneurial spirit and it has become the breeding ground of many of the world’s leading talent, technologies and companies.
Next Weds, May 14th at 6:30pm at the Chrysler building offices of Blank Rome, 150 NY Israel Tech members are gathering for a special event. The current class of IDC Herzelia University’s prestigious Zell Entrepreneurship Program is coming from Israel to share an evening with our group. Three of the top student startups; Joongel, Wizario and IDAREU, will present their stealth projects to the group. Attendance, as always, is free thanks to our sponsors, Sunshine Suites and Blank Rome.
This Friday the Pandos and blip.tv crew met on the hallowed fields of High Velocity for a friendly death match of Paintball. Pics here and here. (Cheers Hiro & Angus). Some healthy pre-match trash talking was followed by some mid-match stake raising; Losing team has to finish up an upcoming integration (hawt) between the companies. Paint flew, dogs and beer were devoured and bruises remain. Don’t be fooled by the smiley faces, the shit hurts ya’ll. I look like I have over-sized chicken pocks. At the end of the day, and after some last second controversy (something about grenades and surrender), the blippers pulled off a stinging victory, aided by three Pandos that had to switch sides, including yours truly, in order to balance out the teams. Good times friends. Good times.
This week I was featured in a documentary by Oshrat Kotler on Channel 10 in Israel. The documentary looks at the alarming trend of Israel’s brightest talents leaving to pursue their dreams and careers abroad. I don’t exactly fit that mold in that 1) I’m not that bright and 2) I’m Israeli but grew up in the US. I was interviewed for founding Pando and supporting the Israeli high tech community by facilitating experience sharing of high tech entrepreneurs outside of Israel so that we can birth and build successful global companies in Israel. The growing “brain-drain” in Israel is very troubling. Many leading GDP countries create strong incentives for their talent to return. Israel needs to step up as well or risk losing our most precious asset. As Israeli entrepreneurs we can take the lead by bringing our experience back home.
Last week Scott Heiferman, Meetup.com’s founder and CEO invited me to talk to his company about my experience building NY Video 2.0 and NY Israel Tech, the two meetup groups I organize. I’m not only a fan of Scott’s, Meetup.com as a company is inspirational to me, so I gladly accepted the invitation. We spent a couple of hours together but the gist of my message to the 60+ team at Meetup.com is that what they’ve built is something that I aspire to; a technology platform that brings people together for a common greater good. Meetup.com leverages the inherently linked nature of the web to facilitate offline human contact. How right. In the case of my groups, we bring together entrepreneurs to help each other by sharing their dreams and experience. There is no way we would have grown to over 2,000 peers without Meetup.com. Thank you Scott and crew.
Today was a special day, a day of firsts. It feels like I’m having many of those lately. What a great feeling. Today was the first board meeting of Aprigo, a new startup headed by a long time friend, Gil Zimmermann. It was also my first board meeting as a Director. I’ve always sat on the entrepreneur’s side of the table so this is a great new experience and enlightening perspective for me on the dynamics of a board meeting. Dorin Miller of Cedar Fund rounds out our Board of Directors.
Gil handled the meeting with the precision, poise and confidence of a seasoned CEO. You wouldn’t know it was his first time. This guy is going places. I first met Gil back at BackWeb where he worked for me as a Product Manager. You could tell back then the kid had potential, but I’ve been repeatedly surprised by the professional trajectory he’s on. I’ve met a handful of executives that possess the deep business, product and personal acumen necessary to move mountains. Gil, at only the beginning of his CEO career, is one of them.
Aprigo is a winner and I’m honored to serve on its board. Stay tuned on their blog or at www.aprigo.com.
I’m Yoav’s Dad and Orly’s man. For a living I build companies that harness the power and promise of the Internet to better people’s lives. Most recently I co-founded Pando Networks. I'm a veteran of 6 startups including Register.com, BackWeb and Zend. For fun and inspiration I bring together creative thinkers at NY Video 2.0 and NY Israel Tech. I advise startups, matchmake at Tevel.org and serve on the Board of Directors at Aprigo. This is my blog.
