Yesterday I attended the NYTM in NYC for the first time in the while. This is one of the largest meetups in the country with over 10,000 members who all come together on the first Tuesday of every month to watch some of New York’s most prominent and popular start-ups demo and launch their products. Nate Westheimer’s is the coordinate and man of the hour who runs the show. While his style is a little unorthodox and crude he gets the job done.
This week there were 4 companies that had 5 minutes demo their products. It’s a short amount of time that leaves you with a lot of questions…
SpeakerText – “Read my clips” This company focuses on syncing the dialogue of any video precisely with the time that it is spoken. Upon further investigation you will find that the company actually doesn’t use any proprietary information to do this but merely outsources the operations which is kind of a concern. If you can get over that tiny problem, it can actually be of use if you want to embed a video in your blog/website and not waste time searching for one specific moment. Still not sure who it is geared towards besides bloggers in general.
BlazeTrak – “Getting You Closer” A very interesting concept that isn’t revolutionary but still unique in it’s approach of trying to help the small guy. They have partnered with a few of the larger record label producers who are willing to listen to anyone’s music for a nominal fee to try and get them signed. Soon to be cashflow positive which isn’t easy to do, so congratz to them. No questions asked, this one for definitely for an aspiring artist.
UDorse – Another company trying to find power in communities to endorse almost anything hence their name. There is definitely some potential behind the idea if it catches on, the only problem is that I’m not sure who will use it. Everyone was definitely impressed by the visuals and design of the site with some nice AJAX to run the feeds but I think that was all.
Artlog – This is NYC, and 2010 brings us our first art/tech start-up – In my opinion it is just a glorified art blog that is not a company. I could have missed something in the short time that they had, but I think the rest of the crowd was with me on this one. Please verify for yourself and get back to me
I hope that everyone can make it to the next NYTM as I will continue to try and critique as many start-ups as possible.
