Check Out Our New Web Series The Pitch

It all starts with the pitch. Thousands of new tech startups will be founded in New York this year. Hundreds will be funded. Only a few will persevere to create a lasting business.

To get funding, a company has to catch an investor’s eye. The format for finding those backers, more often than not, is the pitch, Read More

Episode Two of The Pitch: Olapic – Don’t I Know You?

Last week we premiered our new web series, The Pitch. This week you get to meet the first startup, Olapic, and watch them pitch Lerer Ventures.

The process of finding and choosing startups took several months and none of the companies in this series were chosen by Lerer Ventures. But New York can be Read More

The Pitch, Episode Three: PlayAPI – Gamification Nation

Welcome to the third episode of our web series, The Pitch. The latest installment introduces Julie Fredrickson and Philip Bjerknes, co-founders of PlayAPI, who originally met through their respective blogs. “It was very 2005.” Together, they founded Coutorture, a fashion blogging network that eventually sold to Sugar Inc.

The pair went on to gain Read More

The Pitch, Episode Four: Markover – Growing Up Startup

It’s time for the fourth installment of our first original webseries, The Pitch. This episode features Markover, a startup founded by Kelsey Falter, who is making her way in the New York tech scene and finishing her undergrad at Notre Dame to boot, completing a degree in graphic and product design.

Ms. Falter grew up in Read More

The Pitch, Episode Five: WanderPlayer – Get Your Game On

Like the personal computer before it, smartphone usage is booming around the globe. In this episode, we meet WanderPlayer, a company that transforms a smartphone into a mobile controller for video games. It features Ayo Omojola, co-founder and CEO of WanderPlayer,

Both Ayo and his brother Femi, a co-founder on WanderPlayer, share the entrepreneurship gene. Read More

The Pitch, Episode Six: Get-A-Game – Toying With Your VCs

Born and raised in New York City, Dan Tashman has always been on the hunt for good pick-up games. After spending a decade working in the toy industry, he left to try his hand as an entrepreneur. And he decided to follow Paul Graham’s maxim: To solve a problem he’d faced himself.

Get-A-Game is Read More

The Pitch, Episode Seven: Yumety – A Social Network For Your Subconscious

Startups entrepreneurs are often dreamers, passionate about an idea that they believe will change an industry, or perhaps the world. But the co-founders of Yumety, a social networking platform for dreams, are passionate about what people’s sleeping minds produce, the fantasies, nightmares and daydreams that speak to our biggest wishes, fears and hangups.

The Read More

The Pitch, Episode Eight: Dibsie – Browsing for a Big Idea

Dibsie is a dynamic shopping catalog that learns users’s tastes and then surfaces products based on that data. It was founded by Garren Givens, Dylan Fareed and Scott Poniewaz, who previously worked together on CampusDibs, a daily deal site aimed at the college market.

Learning a user’s preferences in order to recommend him or her Read More

The Pitch, Episode Nine: Salido – Investing in People, Girlfriends as ‘Props’

There is nothing Shom Chowdhury likes less than getting stuck with more than his fair share of the tab. Salido, the next generation point of sale service he created with his brother Shu, is meant to address that through tablets and smartphones. If you show up late to a meal and missed a couple Read More

The Pitch Finale: Olapic, Dibsie and Markover Compete For The Big Prize

After seeing pitches from eight New York startups, Lerer Ventures narrowed it down to three finalists: Olapic, Dibsie and Markover.

In this episode Ben Lerer and Steve Schlafman, a principle at Lerer Ventures, sit down with the finalists to get a sense of how they have progressed over the month since the first pitch. “That’s Read More