Business / Startups

Manish Chowdhary , Founder & CEO of GoECart , said that he bases his way of hiring on Daniel Pink’s studies . Manish Chowdhary Pink, author of The Truth of Motivation , researched behaviors to figure out what really motivates employees. “He was trying to dispel certain myths that people have,” explained Chowdhary. “What he arrived at is that the three things most people truly value is Autonomy, the ability to direct their own lives; Mastery, you want to do something really

by Lauren Keyson Raj Dandage , along with his partners Ash Nadkarni , and Anagha Nadkarni created AppGuppy , a way to let anyone make their own mobile app within five minutes and five steps, and to distribute it outside of app stores. He was one of the presenters at NY Tech Meetup that had a great success story, but he shared his thoughts about dealing with mistakes at a startup to help others that may be facing the same difficulties. Raj Dandage “You are making mistakes

Adda Birnir , co-founder of Skillcrush , chooses misery over boredom. For the last two years, she has run a client services company along with her partner Jennifer McFadden . She talked about her experiences with startup failure, just before she went on stage at NYU’s Skirball Center to demo her product before a NY Tech Meetup . “We actually created a little startup called Balance Digital Publishing Company. It was a tablet publishing company. That was a total failure. Fa

by Lauren Leyson When Jennifer Shaw went to her first NY Tech Meetup , a 25,000 member non-profit organization that supports the growing New York technology community, she felt displaced. While several thousand of the members, the managing director Jessica Lawrence and the NYTM’s co-founder Dawn Barber are all women, she felt that she wanted to know people at the event before she got there, and she felt like some other women might feel the same way. “I think that every ent

by Lauren Keyson Andrew Wong , a startup entrepreneur-organizer , said that starting NY Business Entrepreneur Network changed his life. “It allowed me to interact with so many people and I learn new things every day. These things changed my personality, changed career path." NY Business Expo Now he is taking his entrepreneurism to the next level by organizing his first annual New York Business Expo 2012 to be held at The 69th Regiment Armory on November 14th from 1 pm to

By Jim Tousignant The reality is that you can’t be an entrepreneur without being positive -- you would never take the risk. If you’re not positive you won’t even start, you won’t live up to challenge and you won’t believe you can do it. You won’t believe you’re successful. You have to have a positive attitude just to start it. Tom D’Ambrosio On Negative Bias We believe the world is a negative place. For years there has been a natural negative bias in the media that’s been gr

The Hardwired Brain Your brain is hardwired from a hundred thousand years ago. You had a fight or flight syndrome back there. Your brain is hardwired to sleep, eat and produce, try to survive, and keep your lineage going. Evolutionary-wise your brain doesn’t want you to take risks. It has become a self-reinforcing negative because it doesn’t want you to take risks -- and entrepreneurship by definition is insanely risky. There is the pain and frustration of not being able t

By Lauren Keyson During NYC Entrepreneur Week, the founders of Vanity Photo Booths demonstrated their new game-changing photo booth by steering people into one of them at Public House in midtown . “Within the session of taking photos, guests have the opportunity to upload the photos they love to their Facebook page or email it to themselves,” said Vanity Photo Booths' founder Ken Carrion . “And we are in the process of adding Twitter and other social media.” Phil Santisi ,

Haig Kayserian , founder of KAYWEB Angels and John Buckman , the general manager, consider themselves disruptive angels because they created a NYC seed investment startup company unlike other VC firms; it provides technical development and mentorship to startups in exchange for equity. Since creating the firm in February 2011, he has invested in six companies, taking stakes between 15 to 45 percent. “We felt there was a gap in the entrepreneurial space; there were a lot of i

Interview by Lauren Keyson We met up with Jonathan Gottfried at NY Tech Meetup , to find out what he has been up to since Lemonade Stand, his lauded mobile simplified version of Craig’s List, started and ended in 2011. Jonathan Gottfried LK: What happened? JG: We created it initially on the Startup Bus, which was a three-day hack-a-thon. We had an eight-person team, which was pretty large for a hack-a-thon, and after the event, we went back to our normal lives, and it fiz

Take the Interview , a video interviewing product, took the top spot followed by USeed, a crowdfunding platform, then Brooder, an invention seller, at Ultra Light startups' Investor Feedback Forum and Pitch Showdown held late last week at Microsoft headquarters in midtown. Phineas Barnes of First Round Capital won audience choice for "Best Panelist". David Carlos, Ultra Light’s host, kept the pitches to a strict three minutes, and all but one of the nine companies pitch

By Lauren Keyson At Entrepreneurs Roundtable 43 we asked Bernie Leone, partner at the regional accounting firm WithumSmith+Brown , about how accounting affects startups. He has several clients that are considered disruptive tech businesses, including Tumbler, GetGlue, and Codecademy, and says that several of the things that entrepreneurs like them have to face include business model reviews, tax issues, finding financing, and help to prepare for investor and equity structure

Avi Muchnick is the co-founder and CEO and Israel Derdik is the co-founder and CTO Israel: Aviary is a photo editor that can be embedded inside other developers’ applications – so if you have an android app or a website, you can embed our code inside your own site and have photos that get uploaded or accessed-- and you can apply filters, crop, and things like that. Avi: Way back in 2002, I ran a website called Worth1000.com – a site where artists would come and compete and m

Jeff Thomson, Prodideo and Graham Lawlor, director of Ultra Light Startups At the Ultra Light Startup’s Investor Feedback Forum and Pitch Showdown in January at Microsoft in midtown, the room was packed. At about 240 attendees, it was probably the largest audience yet. Graham Lawlor , the founder of Ultra Light , said that they are receiving more applications from startups that want to pitch at their event so his organization has become more selective in choosing the entrepre