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.