Many thanks to Montaña Rodriguez, IMBA 2014, Monelias, for her review of the trip!

Tuesday 4rd of March, we expected today to be very intense and interesting. Three meeting with companies and then an ending in the NY startup event were would see how different startups at NY made their pitch…. Really excited about it…

BETAWORKS “Builder of ideas into products for media”

• Company Betaworks: a startup studio and seed stage venture capital company based in New York from 2008. Betaworks has launched dozens of its own products and invested in 130 startups.
• Speakers Paul Murphy / Nick Chirls Investments

10 am, first meeting on the Tuesday, extremely cold at NY. The company visiting is Betaworks one of the coolest startup studio. An ancient MBA from IE is welcoming us. Paul Murphy, SVP of product. Prior to Betaworks, he was COO of Aviary and was previously chief of staff for Microsoft’s Office product division.  We started the conversation talking about IE how the business school gave him the tools to have an entrepreneur spirit.

He explained us that the startup studio was created 6 years ago and around 600 investments have been made since then. In the studio ideas, people, capital and data are united in an imaginative way that enables the entrepreneurs to create beneficial and transformative products for the socially connected world.

Afterwards another colleague in Betaworks, Nick Chirls, talked about one of the recent projects, Alphaworks that combined both ideas connecting the products from the entrepreneurs with the investors in a single network. Their objective is not replacing VC but adapting the investments to the money capacity of the startups. It provides the startups a great network tool to link people with companies.  Is a crowdfunding platform created for new startups, were they can sell equity, Equity is the most resilience part in investing, to the public. Nick emphasize that they differenced among other crowfunding platform because they are a white label, so companies can host crowdfunding campaigns on their own websites. Now they have a community of 1 million, just used by investors that have became members but over time it will provide everyone a great transparency.

This is just an example of the type of products they build. Innovative that solves social problems at US.

First believe in your idea, and then we help you transform the idea into products. 

“They define themselves as an startup community were once you believe in your ideas can became real products in a short time”

Great start of the day that we all will remember….

WEWORKS “Do what you love” “We want people that live the community”

• Company Weworks: more than a co working space in Chicago, Washington, Boston, and Seattle.
• Speakers Matthew Shampine: Director of Strategic Partnerships

2 pm and after a quick lunch we went to meet the director of WeWorks, a co-working space at the centre of Broadway. WeWorks, company in an amazing building. With people talking around the corners, all having cups of coffees in a very friendly and interactive environment. Never seen this great environmental working space in our life’s… Even before the meeting we all wanted to work there.

Matthew Shampine gave us a quick view of the space, the members and all the events around WeWork. He kept saying this is not a traditional co-working space. All members are innovative entrepreneurs, growing early-stage startups, and successful small businesses that collectively make up an essential part of the emerging economy. Here is a community that helps them all achieve much more together than they could do individually. Connecting people, organizing 4-7 events per week, connecting with companies that later could become partners… imagine doing what you love in the most comfortable and incredible environment….

Prices were also accordingly, 350 dollars per months. So maybe next stop after our cool accelerator at IE Business School could be WeWorks…

“WeWorks is the heaven of any startup in the fantastic Manhattan an opportunity cost-value”

Running late for the next meeting, we all enter into the metro station to go into the next stop OnsWipe.

ONSWIPE “You are better off taking one direction not 100 not sure where to go” “Even if you are wrong recognize and next step will be yours”

• Company Onswipe: is a New York-based tablet publishing company that creates customized mobile sites for web publishers. Easy Mobile publishing.
• Speakers Jeremy Bass: VP. Business Development

Jeremy Bass is also late, in this Manhattan is complicated to control the time. We entered into another super comfortable space is Onswipe. And the people give us the feeling we are as in home All around is for us Chocolate, coffee, Tees, Biscuits…

Jeremy Bass arrived and we can feel his presence in all sense. He is admired by all the people working there. He has an incredible presence and talks in an assertive way really feeling sure about the ideas and values of the company he is leading. Also MBA from Boston University tells us a bit of his background in the music industry. After several years the CEO of Onswipe proposed him to start in the business and he entered into the company. He describes the business as a way to simplify the work of publishers. Offer them an easy platform to work.

He always he’s keeping a watchful eye on the touch industry and working to anticipate readers’, publishers’, and advertisers’ needs.

Is the platform the one open or his character that makes the company vivant and adaptable. The idea is open and the people involved are ready to adapt to a dynamic environment. They have a base, an idea taken in one direction and once they have that they

“The beauty in our business is that everything is open and adaptable to the client’s needs and in a very short time we can build a demo for them”

Next stop…. NY Tech meets up event. The event for the startups at Manhattan.

NY TECH MEETUP EVENT”A dream for start ups, ideas pitches all around…”

• Ny Tech meetup event: 36,500 member non-profit organization that supports the growing NY technology community.
• Speakers: Cofounders from Collaborazim, Peatix, RentHackr, ScoreSync, Sense Health, Shodogg, Verbalizlt and  Ziggeo.

Amazing Event!!!! Once time per month at NY the most famous one after Silicon Valley. People around all with innovative ideas and pitches pitches all around…. Isn’t´ it a fantastic world?

Pitches about ideas that could either became products or companies. All speakers talk with enthusiasm during 15 minutes, show their prototypes or ideas and we could see that even if they had well prepared, the failure of not achieving everything correctly was there…

The startups that took the stage were about everything:

• Collaborazim, a platform to break down the collaboration silos that exist in large communities.
• Peatix is a global event ticketing platform that provides event organizers with powerful tools to create, promote, manage and sell out events of all sizes.
• RentHack a platform to connect with the best apartments before they hit the market.
• ScoreSync: Collaborative digital sheet music that revolutionizes music education, rehearsal, and creation.
• Sense Health: The simplest way to support patients in between appointments
• Shodogg’s patented technology powers the Internet of Screens – connecting digital content to any number of web-enabled screens in the world.
• VerbalizeIt: The world’s first human-powered translation platform
• Ziggeo’s API: easy video recording and playback (just 2 lines of code); add videos to user profiles, feature video comments and messages, include videos in product reviews or come up with any other amazing new use of video.

Interesting when at the middle of the pitches the presenter stopped and told: Now is time to know the person around that you do not know and meet then. Everyone suddenly started to talk to each other some people in the group were quite fortunate and started to talk to angels that were interesting in the ideas to become startups. Others were not so lucky in that sense but meet super interesting people from other domain.

“Our goal is to help build a sustainable technology industry that drives economic growth, leads innovation, and creates positive, high-impact change for our local communities and the world”

The importance is to have your eyes open, observe and talk because your idea could be the one for certain angels that may be around to help

Intensive second day at NY and to end up we all went to have “un par de cañas” watching the great NY show called the comedy night  to celebrate Eliot birthday.

Once again happy birthday Eliot!!!!!!