hackNY’s 2011 class of 35 Fellows completed internships with a diverse group of New York City startups.
Click on the map to learn more, and toggle the double arrow in the map’s top left corner for the full list of companies.
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This guest post is from class of 2010 hackNY Fellow Tal Safran
This weekend, I hacked (and won) at the foursquare global hackathon with my good friend Max Stoller. Our hack, “how ______ are you,” takes your foursquare checkins and crosses them with publicly available census data to give you demographic information about the places you go to.
winning
For example, it told me that I’m “62% single” since among the places I go to, 62% of the population is single. In NYC, the Meatpacking District is the most single (77%) while Soho is the least single (57%). Our hack won and now we’re competing for the global title — a championship belt.
It’s always a blast hacking with Max, and this is the fourth hack we’ve built together. We actually became good friends at the first hackNY hackathon, after using the Aviary API to add mustaches to people. We also did the hackNY Fellows program together, which was an unforgettable experience.
We dedicate this hack to hackNY, keeping the kids off the street.
hackNY’s 2011 Summer Fellows Program concluded with the DemoFest on July 28th, but several Fellows were still around working on independent projects and attended the August 2nd New York Tech Meetup.
NYTech Meetup August 2011 from NY Tech Meetup on Vimeo.
Although this month’s NYTM didn’t have an official theme, some of the startups presenting had some similarities. There were personalization engines such as Brom.ly – an event activity recommender, and Dibsie – a shopping site that recommends deals based on your preferences and on-site activity.
There were also social tools like want! – a mobile app that lets you share photos of things you spot in real life you’d like to own, and KnowAboutIt – a service that highlights the most personally relevant content shared in your social streams. Voyurl privately tracks your web usage, offering recommendations and showcasing unique and insightful data about your own browsing habits through a variety of interactive charts. Apparently the founder, Adam Leibsohn, went homeless to finish building the product.
StockTouch brings slick stock visualization to the iPad, and Zaarly lets anyone post what they want and how much they’ll pay for it, allowing those affected by the data presented by StockTouch to quickly earn a few bucks.
Finally, two apps that emerged from personal needs were also demoed: A productivity tool called Idea Flight syncs presentations across a roomful of devices, and 110 Stories, which shows pencil sketches of the Twin Towers where they used to be via augmented reality, emerged out of Brian August’s self-described obsession with the buildings.
In this post 2011 hackNY Fellow Sameen Jalal describes the hackNY Summer Series lecture by Barry Silbert.
On July 27th, Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Second Market, spoke to us. Silbert was a previous investment banker at Houlihan Lokey and a graduate of the Goizueta Business School of Emory University.
All the hackNY fellows are technically strong but not many of us had business expertise, well at least I didn’t. As Silbert got into the nitty gritty details of the business world, I found myself engaged with not only keep up with the terminology but with how much I was learning!
He told us about the humble beginnings of the now not-so-small company; Going from start-up to successful company in such harsh times made an incredible story. The most valuable part of the experience was the new perspective I gained and the motivation I received to create my own story. I am definitely inspired to further delve into the start-up world!
In this post 2011 hackNY Fellow Akarshan Kumar describes the hackNY Summer Series lecture by the partners at Union Square Ventures.
On Monday, July 25, 2011, the hackNY fellows were hosted by Union Square Ventures in their swank new office on Broadway. We got a chance to speak to three of the firm’s partners, Brad Burnham, Fred Wilson and Albert Wenger, and also spoke to Gary and Christina about their experiences working with USV. With investments in companies like Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and Etsy, Union Square Ventures is one of the best VC firms in the country – we were excited to be there.
The partners spoke on a variety of topics – like what the firm looked for in prospective investments, the importance of a good team (as opposed to just a good idea), and what, according to them, were the characteristics of a good pitch (“A pitch is like a party” – Wilson).
Gary and Christina hung out with us later, and it was nice to hear their take too. Gary, having worked in a number of different environments, shared his perspective – “You should follow what you genuinely love doing… If someone doesn’t like what you are doing, it’s their problem, not yours.” Christina talked about her career-path post college and how (and more important, why) she left the Boston Consulting Group to come work for USV.
It was inspiring to see the entire team up close, and it was the perfect talk to begin our final week of hacking in New York.
In this post 2011 hackNY Fellow Cole Diamond describes the hackNY Summer Series lecture by Steven Baglio.
Steven Baglio brought an interesting perspective to the Summer Series Lectures with his legal acumen and wealth of experience. Although lectures from venture capitalists in the realm of start-up fund-raising provide crucial information for the fiscal survival of a fledgling company, legal statutes governing the start-up community are just as – if not more – pertinent. Take Napster, for example. Although Napster created a file-sharing revolution and drew millions of users to its platform, Napster eventually disintegrated because Sean Parker et al. flagrantly overlooked the glaring legal limitations. Clearly, legal restraints have a pivotal place in the world of start-ups. To that end, Baglio pointed out remedies for some of the most common legal dangers that often arise in the early stages of start-up fund-raising. One such common pitfall Baglio described is the non-committal co-founder. To illustrate this problem area, let’s say three starry-eyed Zuckerberg hopefuls sign paperwork issuing a three-way split of their new private company stock. One of the co-founders bails six months later because he found a better opportunity at a different company. Should he still have a 33% equity cut in the company? Of course not. Baglio described that a vesting strategy in which equity is doled out over a period of time can be used to counteract the risks of premature co-founder departure.
Perhaps the most heated topic covered during the lecture was the infamous “Non-disclosure agreement.” Any and every technologist caught in the frenzied mob of “entrepreneurs” and business-types gunning to implement their ideas has had experience with the dreaded document. Since technical co-founders can be hard to come-by but seemingly everyone has an idea for “the next facebook,” engineers and tech-savvy folk are needlessly swamped with proposals to work on such grandiose ideas in exchange for equity in non-existent companies. Due to the fact that the product itself can only be implemented through the talent of the developer and not the proposer, the visionaries are essentially helpless. What is to stop the engineer from stealing the idea, implementing it him or herself and then solely reaping all the rewards? When it comes to idea theft, the NDA comes to the rescue of the computer illiterate. Although a not entirely foolproof method, the NDA legally binds the developer from neither disclosing nor stealing an idea presented in confidence. However, this notion too sparked a debate amongst the fellows because it is often the implementation and execution of an idea rather than the idea itself that composes the true value of a start-up.
As per usual with the HackNY Summer Series lectures, Baglio concluded his lecture in answering open-ended questions posed by the fellows. All in all, Baglio provided an interesting and different perspective into the oft-overlooked but incredibly salient sphere of start-up law.
In this post 2011 hackNY Fellow Kelsey Lee describes the hackNY DemoFest
At the hackNY fellows DemoFest, the fellows were invited to present the work they did at their startups or on their own time in front of hackNY and its many supporters. From the Kinect Fluid Dynamics demo to the interactive game play of OMGPop’s Dudez to the examinations of site and user analytics, a broad range of topics and skills were featured. Although the fellows were initially focused on showcasing their most innovative work, the DemoFest ended up becoming an opportunity for the students to support their peers. These presentations are the perfect platform for audience members to become inspired to pursue new ideas, collaborations, and projects.
The hackNY Fellows are truly the next generation of hackers. As a hackNY alumna I can’t thank hackNY enough for everything I learned over the course of these 10 weeks from working at a groundbreaking startup, hearing from an amazing group of speakers, and interacting with 34 new friends. DemoFest attempts to capture everything that is special about hackNY within a 2.5 hour block of time, and what can’t be articulated in that time hopefully shines through in this video that the class of 2011 came together to make:
In this post, 2011 hackNY Fellow Aaron Marks describes the lastest student workshop, in which Fellows teach each other tips, tricks and skills they know and are learning through their internships.
This past week a group of the 2011 hackNY fellows gathered for the fourth hackNY workshop, a series of events organized by the Fellows to teach each other skills, technical or otherwise, which they are qualified to give short talks on. This week’s workshop saw Fellow Grant Kot give an introduction to the world of HTML5 animation. Using the Javascript library Gee.js, Grant got the fellows up and running in minutes, animating basic spinning circles and Pacman-like figures with HTML5’s Canvas support. Fellows were quick to play around with and hack the basic commands Grant introduced, producing interesting animations to everyone’s delight.
Following Grant’s presentation, Aaron Marks (your humble author) gave a talk on a less technical matter: Email productivity hacks. Specifically, instruction was given on how to be a Gmail power user, taking advantage of keyboard navigation, email address hacking, and filters. Hopefully the fellows will combine both skills from the workshop and use their newly freed up time to code some neat animated HTML5 websites using canvas!
attention all members of the student-hacking population:
save Oct 1-2, 2011 for the fall 2011 hackNY student hackathon.
sincerely yours,
-Team hackNY
hackNY is a nonprofit which aims to federate the next generation of hackers for the New York innovation community. Co-organized by faculty from NYU and Columbia, and with a board of advisors which includes educators, technologists, and entrepreneurs, hackNY organizes the summer Fellows program and student hackathons during the school year in order to create and empower a community of student-technologists.
The summer Fellows program for the class of 2011 is in nearing its close: 35 Fellows from across the US and Canada are working at NYC’s best startups during the day, including 10Gen, Aviary, Boxee, BuzzFeed, Etsy, foursquare, Gilt Groupe, GroupMe, Hunch, Rent The Runway, Tumblr, and Yipit. At night, they’re learning what they need to know to join or found their own startups, with lectures from NYC’s top technologists, designers, investors, and journalists, including Chris Dixon, Whitney Hess, Chris Poole, Joel Spolsky, Fred Wilson, and Jenna Wortham. In addition, the Fellows lead technical workshops to teach each other from their complementary skill sets, and are helping hackNY foster the next generation of technology innovators for NYC’s startup ecosystem.
With the summer nearing its end, it’s time to turn to making sure that next year builds on this success for the 2011-2012 academic year and beyond. And for that, we will need a full-time General Manager. Thanks to a generous outpouring of support from startups, foundations, and investors, we are hiring. Our hope is to hire an General Manager who, unlike the two current organizers, can work full time on the hackNY mission.
In conversations with our advisors, we’ve pictured someone interested in startups, nonprofits, technology, and education. We’re looking for someone who would enjoy being plunged into the heart of NYC’s vibrant and growing startup ecosystem.
The General Manager must be able to coordinate outreach to the student-hacking population both for the Fellows program and for the spring and fall semester hackNY student hackathons; to keep our community updated; and most importantly must share our vision for educating students about NYC’s fantastic startup ecosystem and empowering students to join (or found their own) NYC startups.
The specific responsibilities include:
* outreach to students nationally
* outreach to alumni and coordinating alumni events
* maintaining communications with the community online (via our blog, twitter, and whatever tech next year brings…)
* organizing hackNY’s fundraising
* organizing financial reporting to supporters
* organizing hackNY events (e.g., hackathons and the dinner-lectures during the Fellows program)
* ensuring timely and high-quality execution of the application process for the Fellows program
* running day-to-day operations of hackNY (e.g., event planning, coordinating scheduling, communication with service providers)
An ideal candidate should:
* Value mentoring
* Enjoy meeting people and helping building community
* Possess technical ability sufficient to manage spreadsheets, wikis, blogs, etc.
* Possess communication/expression ability sufficient to keep our community updated with coherent concise text
* Be comfortable with a job requiring the diversity of high-level and low-level tasks described above
* Be very, very, very organized
Our most important requirements will be sharing the values of our existing team and cultural fit. We work closely and care deeply about the long-term success of the hackNY mission and demand the same of our team. You should be reliable, honest, and genuine. We’re hoping to build something that benefits NYC on a decade-long time scale, and can be an emulatable model for other communities. We are primarily looking for someone who shares that vision, not for someone interested in today’s buzz in the startup scene.
If you’d like to be considered, please contact us via hackNY.jobscore.com. Please share your LinkedIn profile and use the “cover letter” to provide links to your online identity, accomplishments, and, if appropriate, pointers to any portfolio or prior accomplishments.
If you have any comments on the post, suggestions about the role, or for people we should reach out to, please do let us know at search (at ) hackNY.org .
best,
Chris+Evan
coorganizers,
hackNY.org
