A new service launched this week from NYC-based Harvest named Co-op. Harvest is a time-tracking application that we previously reviewed. For small teams, Co-op combines a quick update tool like Twitter with inline time tracking and project management. Rather than directly clone Twitter, Co-op has added features that actually make it beneficial for the office environment. With more teams working virtually, this type of quick status and "what I'm currently working on" tool works well.

There's also a simple daily status tool so you can share what's on your plate for the day with the rest of the team. This is a great way for project managers to keep informed of what everyone is working on without having to ask.

What I'd like to see are export options for the content so the company can keep an archive. It would also be good to have an "emergency" button which would immediately alert the team through their desired channels (IM, Mobile, etc.).

I like their business model as well. Offer the Co-op service for free but to add the time tracking, you need a Harvest account.

This morning I met with Phil Thomas Di Giulio, WellcomeMat co-founder. We met at a Starbucks which I've been using as an interview location for nearly two years. If Starbucks was a recession metric, the economy is clearly booming.

WellcomeMat is a video marketplace which allows you to hire help to create a video for you. Real estate is their most popular section. Other areas include local business videos, weddings and used car listings.

There's a production job board where you can post want ads for help with creating videos. Production help replies with quotes and you can view their ratings and rankings. WellcomeMat has a points system which helps to bubble the best quality talent to the top.

I asked about why a company would choose WellcomeMat over YouTube for video hosting. Phil explained that more of the consumer-focused video hosting sites are removing commercial content. He also explained that their video player has a variety of features that are not found with most consumer-focused video hosting services. They offer a chapter feature which allows you to jump to a specific portion of a video (e.g. Kitchen, Bath, etc.). I sure hope other video hosts add this feature.

WellcomeMat is bootstrapped and has offices in Brooklyn and Boulder, Colorado. There are 5 team members spread across both offices. They use Limelight for the video hosting. We spoke about their business plan which will be a subscription and freemium model. I stressed to Phil not to offer too much for free that users have no reason to upgrade to a paid subscription.

Then there's MatMan which if you've been to any NYC tech events you have certainly interacted with him. He's a space traveler that has a large video screen on his chest showing off the videos created using the WellcomeMat marketplace. While it's partly a gimmick, it certainly gets your attention.

I tried to capture a video interview with Phil but the batteries died. Instead here's Phil's demo from the Web 2 NY meetup earlier this year:

Lunch Time Deals is a new NY-based startup launching next week. The site offers coupons and discounts for local eateries and will launch with a variety of cities including: NYC, Atlanta, Boston and Chicago.

Lunch Time Deals also offers a mobile version which allows you to get the coupons delivered directly to your mobile. Once the coupon is on your mobile device, you show the display to the eatery to have the coupon applied to your meal.

I'd like to see Lunch Time Deals partner with other NYC-based startups who provide restaurant reviews including: Wikipages, Savory Cities and GoMobo.

For Lunch Time Deals to be successful, they need to have enough listings to satisfy both taste preferences and locations. If they can reach a critical mass of both, they could do very well. The service also has to compete with the "super cool menu folder". I grabbed this photo at the Meetup HQ last night. What startup or large company doesn't have a "super cool menu folder"? Lunch Time Deals needs to get companies to drop the folder and replace it with their service.

Angels (people investing their own money) serve an important role in the life cycle of startup - they enable startups to take their first step in product development.  The venture community needs them.

However, the structures of angel investments vary greatly - and the wrong investment structure can make it more challenging for founders to raise venture capital.

In some cases, angels take common stock and in others they receive preferred stock.  At the highest level there are two sides to preferred stock: economic rights and control rights. While the economic rights assigned to angels are always a consideration for VCs, it is the control rights that can most affect a VC’s interest in investing.

Control rights broadly include board seats and the corresponding voting rights. Allocating these rights to individuals that are not professional investors or the management of the company can complicate key business decisions for the company, as angel investors may not have incentive alignment with the other parties. For example, angel investors with preferred stock may be compelled to pursue a small exit that does not maximize the value of the company or meet professional investor return expectations and may leave the founders with a minuscule payout after liquidity preferences are paid out.

It is critical to have proper incentive alignment amongst the members of the board of a company. As a result, entrepreneurs should do their best to avoid granting rights to angel investors that may discourage venture investors from participating.

My company, Kloudshare, is engaging in discussions with venture capital firms regarding a potential fund raising round. As many of you know, my philosophy about venture capital is to not pursue it but to sort of let it come to you. I believe you can spend an enormous amount of time raising money and never succeed if you don't have the right story, plan, and product. By spending time focused on raising money you are not spending time adding real value to your business. And so it is critical to structure yourself in such a way that you can get to market without raising either any money, or without raising money outside friends and family.

And so my philosophy is to raise money by not raising money. I believe the best way to build value is by doing good work, and letting people find out about it.

The point of this preamble is that at Kloudshare we have not directly solicited any investors at all. My view is it is too much work, and will likely not be fruitful. And so the way it has worked is that people hear little bits and pieces about what we are up to and tend to ask questions, or get intoduced to us through other people and then inquire etc.

This process for us has lead to an interesting insight that might not be possible if we had attempted to directly target VC funds. Because we only engaged in conversations with people that initially expressed interest in us, we have been able to organically gauge the types of funds that would be most naturally interested in a company like ours.

The upshot of this process is that we are engaged in discussions with about six venture funds, all of them "a-list" and *none* of them are in our home town of New York. To be clear, the conversations are in various stages, and I am not here to suggest anything is at all imminent. But the fact that there are no conversations at any stage with any New York funds is, to me, surpising, even though it probably shouldn't be.

The point of this is not to bash New York VC funds who are obviously engaged in what they believe to be their own economic self interest. But it is to suggest that if you are an early stage tech company, while New York may very well be the right place for your business, it may not be the right place to raise money. If you are in New York, and you are going to at some point want to raise money, you should be agressively building an out of state network. Otherwise the early stage fund raising odds are radically stacked against you.

For Your Imagination is proud to welcome the NYC Podcasting Association Meetup organized by Douglas Kersten on Wednesday, October 22, at 7:30pm. The meetup will focus on podcasting as a format with Rob Blatt as the presenter. Limiting yourself to audio or video on your site and iTunes or the directories can be limiting. If you think about your show as one of your channel instead of the only method of communication, you'll see more opportunity for growing your audience. Come early, 5pm, for a special screening of Chuck Potter's Youtube documentary, "I Want My Three Minutes Back"!

The Hayley Project is a new 37-episode web series about college sophomore Hayley Winters, who investigates the mysterious and untimely death of her best friend Keira Madison. Producer Andrew Park will introduce the series tonight at Web2NewYork.

Other presenters are:

Devin Balkind, BeExtraordinary.org

Aims to revolutionize how individuals interact with charities by providing a compelling user- generated social experience to its members and a more efficient fund raising system for non-profits. Just launched!

J Crowley, Black20

Black20 is a multi-platform digital studio creating and distributing original programming for the new generation of digital consumers. The company’s serialized programs and viral videos have reached over 50 million viewers since 2007. The content has been nominated for a Broadband Emmy, Webby and YouTube Award. Black20 also produces branded entertainment, having recently secured sponsorship for their late night comedy, “The Middle Show,” reaching millions of New Yorkers though distribution in New York City taxi cabs.

David Lemoine, GoldMic

GoldMic is a social network for the hip-hop community with a strong focus on user-generated content. The company is led by David Lemoine, ex founding partner of Zingy Mobile, which sold for $80M only three years after inception. GoldMic has won the support and partnership of Spike Lee’s ad agency SpikeDDB and is currently looking to close their seed round.

Toffer Grant, PEX Card

PEX Card develops card payment tools that help companies streamline their spending processes. As the prepaid card industry’s first turnkey commercial card program, PEX Card customers apply for, optimize and manage their service online. The PEX Card Service provides visibility into cash flow and corporate spending.

Thanks to Courtenay Stewart from Ning who worked with us, Unype is featured on the Ning blog!

 When employees are granted stock, or more often stock options, they are entitled to shares of common stock. Common stock offers employees access to the economic benefits of ownership, aligning incentives to focus on increasing the value of the company.

It’s worth noting that these option plans do not provide employees with preferred stock for several key reasons.

First, preferred stock is designed to offer its holders unique control over specific aspects of corporate decisions (e.g., sale of the company, compensation of senior executives, etc.). These aren’t decisions that employees are in a position to make as they aren’t always privy to all of the information required to make these decisions.

Second, investors seek preferred stock because it enables them to make the aforementioned decisions. When those decisions need to be made a vote is taken amongst the holders of preferred stock. By giving employees preferred stock investors would own a smaller percentage of the total pool of preferred stock, reducing their ability to control these votes. As a result, the distribution of preferred stock would prevent investors from providing the company with capital.

In sum, employees are granted common stock because it is designed to offer them the incentive to exclusively focus on expanding the value of the company.