NYConvergence ORIGINAL

Last night, representatives from four NYC-based startups shared their experiences building their businesses here and participated in a panel discussion on the subject of being an entrepreneur with Mashable's Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow.  The event was hosted by Mashable and held at the 92YTribeca in Manhattan's TriBeCa neighbhorhood.

The startups were:

• Snooth, the "largest pure wine site" which makes the inventory of 10,500 stores available online.  They offered some advice, including focusing on closing the deal and how you can use tricks like posting your open-source code modifications in online forums to drive traffic, potential customers to your Web site.
• SavvyAuntie, a source of gift ideas for "aunts, godmothers, and women who like children."  Notkin spoke about her inspiration for the Web site, how she has done her own PR (promoting herself to Senior VP for the company on stage) by building her own brand online, and how she's one of the few late-night host Jimmy Fallon follows on Twitter. 
• Aviary, an open-source Web site which allows you to manipulate images a la Photoshop without needing Photoshop.
• Behance, a Web site which fosters collaboration online among creatives.

After their individual presentations, the startups participated in the aforementioned panel discussion.  Interesting takeaways were that it's easier to find good people here in NYC than it is in Silicon Valley, the technology community here is still really small, and there are about 600 venture-capital firms investing in technology in the Valley as opposed to 15 here.

As we get more and more users, we have changed our name from Unype to Centrl to reflect the wider userbase we are going after.

After receiving funding late last year, we have been working very hard around the clock and in March we have released our iPhone app along with our completely redesigned website and a brand new scalable backend running on Amazon EC2.

Today a new version of our iPhone app with virtual gifts and extra useful layers (like Yelp and Wikipedia for starters) became available on the App Store: http://itunes.com/app/centrl

We are very excited about our iPhone app and thanks to the easy feedback system that my co-founder Eric Redlinger has put in place in our iPhone app, we are getting great, live, very useful feedback from all of our users. So we hightly recommend to make it very easy for your users to give you feedback inside your application, not just as a ‘email us your thoughts’ line.

Our Android and Blackberry apps are also coming out in the coming weeks and we are looking forward to seeing you in Centrl where you can easily connect with your friends, share and discover places and events, get a lot of useful data on our layers and get special money-saving offers from our partners.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

While attending Digital DUMBO Drinks #4 last night in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood last night, NYConvergence was alerted by L magazine staffer Andrea Rosen that their Web site had just hours earlier completed a major facelift (Apparently, we didn't see the item about it on Twitter.).  The L magazine is a free events and city guide available downtown and most easily and obviously not far from the L train.

If you're interested in learning more about what the new site has to offer, their editor talks about it in a blog post where Rosen chimes in and you can see if for yourself here.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

Digital marketing agency HUGE hosted the fourth installment of Digital DUMBO Drinks last night at the DUMBO Arts Center in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood with an assist from fellow neighborhood and digital businesses Carrot Creative, The Jar Group, and Outside.in.

Although the DUMBO Arts Center was devoid of any art, there was a brief and humorous presentation by one of the four founding partners of HUGE about DUMBO before and after gentrification.  When the event concluded at 8:30, guests were encouraged to attend the afterparty at ReBar, the original home of the event down the street.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

The members of the NY Video 2.0 meetup gathered at New World Stages last night in Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood to network and hear four presentations from Internet video startups Boxee, KickApps, Diversion Media, and Mogulus, which broadcast the entire event using their new Procaster tool.

The presentations were:

• Diversion Media showed off HD cloud which allows video to be distributed "in the cloud."
• KickApps showed the attendees how to use their tools to create customizable video players which could even be embedded in Facebook profiles.
• Boxxe's Avner Ronan, who was briefly broadcast on the live feed from the waist down, talked more about Boxee's latest upgrades and why traditional broadcast and cable networks feel threatened by the technology.
• Mogulus debuted Procaster, an application that allows users to easily set up their own live stream from a computer with a Webcam attached and incorporate "special effects" like Apple's Steve Jobs' keynotes.

We've heard several unconfirmed reports today that there have been mass firings at TheLadders in NYC. There are also several comments on Twitter including from one employee who posted some comments from the actual conference room where the notices were given.

Product Manager Derek Tumolo notes that at least 8 people were fired and what we've heard is that the total number is much higher. Many were visibly angry out on the street. We are also hearing that there are security guards stationed outside their headquarters building.

I have calls and emails into as many of the staff at TheLadders as I could find. I have not heard back yet but will update this story once I do.

If you are new to TheLadders, they offer a job board exclusively for jobs over $100,000/year. They earn revenue by charging employers for job postings and applicants for searching and applying. Here's a video demo I captured with CEO Marc Cendella.

Brooklyn-based Pontiflex has announced a new $6.25 million Series B round of funding led by RRE Ventures today. The company previously raised $2.5 million.  Existing investors New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP also participated in the round. Pontiflex notes that the new funding, "will be used to strengthen the company's flagship Pontiflex AdLeads product that makes online lead generation simple, effective and transparent."

Pontiflex describes their service as, "offering advertisers the opportunity to purchase high-quality customer leads via brand-specific banner and direct response ad units. These 'marketing leads' generated via the Pontiflex platform represent potential customers who have voluntarily opted in to receive advertisers’ messages."

David Kaplan at PaidContent has more on the transaction. David discusses the difference between marketing leads and sales leads and spoke with Pontiflex CEO Zephrin Lasker regarding transparency and the company's opt-in methods.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

The NYC-based social media services provider is moving.  Purchased by Gannett late last year, the company has expanded and, as such, needs room for its additional employees and the employees it expects to add in the coming year according to Director of Marketing Chris Kieff.

In the same e-mail to NYConvergence about the move, Kieff also informs us that their new office at 520 Eighth Avenue is "quadruple" in size to the one they are vacating in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.

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