NYTM Review: Bloomberg, BigApps, and Gust

New York Tech Meetup; Launching a Startup? NYC Wants to Help.

Last night at the New York Tech Meetup, startup founder (and Mayor) Mike Bloomberg kicked off the NYC BigApps 3.0 competition and made the case that New York City is the best place for startups to launch and thrive. Recounting his own experience launching a tech startup in the early ‘80s (soldering Bloomberg terminal circuits himself in the days before PCs), Bloomberg reminded the young crowd of technologists that he was one of them and that the city was behind them.

“There is not a room anywhere in the city that has as much creativity and talent as this one does,” the mayor said. Then, before introducing city initiatives to assist startups, he also took a crowd-pleasing shot at Silicon Valley. “We certainly can’t sit here and let Silicon Valley be bigger than us at anything. I mean, there is nice weather, but New York City is the intellectual capital of the world… This is where the best and the brightest are.”

With this in mind, Bloomberg praised the work of Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Steel and Economic Development President Seth Pinsky and introduced the Mayor’s Council on Technology and Innovation. Chaired by Steel, the Mayor’s Council is dedicated to fostering innovation and assisting small business development in the tech sector. Council members include well known innovators such as computer scientist Hilary Mason, TechStars director David Tisch and John Borthwick from Beta Works.

The mayor then announced the launch of this year’s NYC BigApps competition, one of the city’s most popular tech initiatives. Managed in partnership with local startup ChallengePost, the competition rewards developers who tap into the city’s growing trove of datasets to create new mobile apps for citizens, tourists and public servants. From parking spots to health code reports, city data is being used in a variety of mobile apps, many of which were developed because of the BigApps initiative.

Kristy Sundjaja of the NYC Economic Development Corporation and Girish Chhugani from the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications also took the stage to announce both greater awards and greater resources for BigApps 3.0. This year’s contenders can take advantage of more than 230 new sets of public data made available this year, giving developers public APIs for almost 750 datasets. With a growing pool of public data readily available, many apps developed for the competition are expected to benefit citizens, tourists and public agencies — and hopefully launch a few new companies as well.

If you are a developer interested in competing for $50,000 in prizes and the chance to launch a startup with your app idea, go here to sign up.

Another major resource for startup founders was introduced in a presentation by Silicon Alley legend David Rose. As founder of the AngelSoft investor network and a leading champion of New York startups, Rose’s enthusiasm could hardly be contained as he took the stage to unveil Gust.

A new and improved release of Angelsoft, the platform offers startup founders a private network to present their company to potential investors by confidentially sharing financial data, documents, slideshows and more. Because Gust includes all of the AngelSoft membership, the system offers equally detailed information about investors. Founders can use the platform to discover, research and interact with potential investors they may otherwise never have found. Once founders have connected with investors they want to work with, Gust helps manage those relationships, even tracking who is viewing the company pages and how often.

With an intuitive interface, trusted platform and a deep network of over 125,000 users, Gust is an incomparable resource for young companies. Founders can learn more and create a free profile for their companies at Gust.com.

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