Mr. Westheimer

Serial entrepreneur Nate Westheimer is something of a renaissance technologist.

Picturelife, the photo startup he cofounded with OMGPOP founder Charles Forman, recently raised a $4 million round led by Spark Capital. Picturelife's concept is timely: the service focuses on backing up, storing, and accessing all of your photos from the cloud. That got the attention of a number of other notable investors, including Crunchfund, Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, Highline Venture Partners, Betaworks, David Karp, SV Angel, and Chris Dixon. Mr. Forman put some of the "way more" than $22 million he earned from OMGPOP's sale to Zynga and former Zynga GM Nabeel Hyatt, a partner at Spark, joined Picturelife's board.

But that venture is hardly enough to keep the prolific Mr. Westheimer, who once penned a sweat lodge manifesto about teaching himself to code, fully occupied. He's also an advisor at Flybridge Capital and has been executive director of  New York Tech Meetup since 2008. (Coincidentally, the last time we made a list of "Insurgents" to watch--all the way back in 2008!--Mr. Westheimer made the cut.)

Today, Mr. Westheimer reached out to announce that he is launching a "small seed fund" called Red Bud Partners that will invest in the New York tech community that he actively helped grow. The fund, which will have an average investment size of $25,000, has already made one as-yet-undisclosed deal, he said.

On his blog, Innonate, Mr. Westheimer explained that the fund, which he launched with his father Dick, will focus on "networked technology."

This idea comes from my observation over the past few years that “information technology” and “web technology” no longer describe everything that’s interesting. “Networked Technology” encompass not only incredible new web and mobile technology, but also the array of new hardware projects which are springing up showing great promise to change the world we live in. We want to invest in all of it.

By email, Mr. Westheimer clarified that the fund "has absolutely no affect on Picturelife being my 24/7 100% job and life," he said. "Now I just have a vehicle to make investments in companies I come in contact with during the course of Picturelife and everything else I do."

Was anyone really worried Mr. Westheimer couldn't multitask? Oh ye of little faith.

• Is Your Dating Site Selling Your Profile?
To keep membership high, niche sites get sly.

• Marissa Mayer on Misconceptions That Hold Back Women in Tech and Why She Doesn’t ‘Believe in Burnout’
"My theory is that burnout is about resentment."

• Branch Cofounder Josh Miller Returning to NYC Because ‘San Francisco is Just Too Nice’
Hard to be heads down in a sweet town.

• OMGPOP Founder Charles Forman Made ‘Way More’ Than $22 M. in Sale to Zynga
If not for Draw Something, OMGPOP might have run out of money by May.
• Language Learning Startup Voxy Raises a $4 M. Round from ff Venture Capital, Contour, and Seavest
A filing says the startup has already closed $2.3 million towards its $4 million goal from previous investors.
• What’s a Little App Between Friends? Venmo Only Cares About You and the People You Split Lunch With
Venmo is processing $10 million in transactions per month and growing 30 percent month-over-month.
• Inaugural Blueprint Health Startups Pitch Investors on Disrupting Health Industry
Nine companies from the health-tech incubator presented to investors in Soho today. 
• Oh, So Here’s Why Kickstarter Lets Projects Get Overfunded
It brings in so many freakin' new users.
• The Startup Rundown: Size That Matters and a New Mobile Music Concierge

• The Only OMGPOP Developer to Say No to Mark Pincus: ‘Zynga Asked For Too Much’
He did it all for the values.
• Meet OkFocus, the PR Stuntmen Behind WhoDat.Biz
OKFocus is also behind Is the L Train Fucked? and Dump.fm.
• 83-Year-Old Grandma Breaks Nose on Glass Door of Long Island Apple Store, Sues for $1 M.
"They have to realize that the elderly generation are their customers, too.”
• If New York City Doesn’t Put Down Its Pom-Poms, We’re Gonna Become a Startup Stereotype
Nasdaq and the city release a video.
• ‘Vaporware Is the New Minimal Viable Product,’ Declares Hype Up Weekend
San Francisco vaporware vaporathon elegantly illustrates exactly how hackathons have jumped the shark.
• Former Facebook Social Design Evangelist Says Facebook Model Is ‘Self-Serving, Egocentric’
The Internet is the Wild Wild West, after all.
• Caught in the Webb: JOBS Act Jitters 

You can also get this review via RSS or as a weekly email by subscribing here.

Mr. Forman (via twitter/charlesforman)

The New York Times got a ticket to OMGPOP's after-acquisition party at the Bowery Hotel last week where they ran into the startup's founder, Charles Forman, who was in such a daze over the $180 million deal with Zynga that he walked into traffic.

Mr. Forman, who left the company in 2011, but retained his stake, told the Times he made "way more" than $22 million from the sale, adding, "It’s the kind of money where I’ll be wearing whatever I want when somebody invites me to a wedding."

We never really thought to measure "fuck you" money in terms of prescribed wedding attire, but godspeed to any groom that wants Mr. Forman as his best man.

As the Times notes, although Mr. Forman and CTO E. J. Mablekos created OMGPOP's first drawing game, a web-based attempt called Draw My Thing that put a timer on guessing the word in the picture, Draw Something was created after Mr. Forman left the company.

In fact, two former employees told the paper that OMGPOP, which raised $17 million since 2006, was on its way to running out of money by May and likely would have shuttered if not for CEO Dan Porter and the team of five behind Draw Something, which took the game mobile and eliminated time limits and the idea of assigning a winner and loser.

While Mr. Forman, who is currently working on the stealth startup Picturelife with Nate Westheimer, may now feel entitled to forgo a suit at your wedding, it looks like he's playing nice with his new benefactors. Shortly after the conference call announcing the sale, Mr. Forman tweeted his thanks to Mr. Porter and investor Bijan Sabet, whose firm Spark Capital participated in OMGPOP's Series A and Series B rounds, but took a more snide tone towards Zynga and CEO Mark Pincus:

That tweet has since been deleted from Mr. Forman's account, leaving just two updates on his Twitter profile: one about Draw Something being the #1 free app on iTunes and his first message to the world from May, 2007, "im pooping."

Draw Something (originally the edgier "Draw My Thing").

With $ZNGA raking it in and SNAP Interactive's booming stock price, why anyone would ever do a startup for something other than social gaming is beyond us. Soho-based OMGPOP just had another hit with "Draw Something," an app that hit a million iPhone and Android downloads in only 10 days, as the company told TechCrunch.

The game has at least $10,000 in revenue per day, CEO Dan Porter told the blog, due to ads and premium upgrades.

OMGPOP, started by Charles Forman of Valleywag fame as iminlikewithyou, raised more than $10 million last year and reportedly brushed off acquisition offers. Draw Something is its second blockbuster mobile game (the first was Puppy World). Mr. Forman, however, has shifted his attention from the addictive gaming startup to a stealth photo storage startup with NY Tech Meetup's Nate Westheimer.

Meanwhile, OMGPOP has its eye on the (virtual) prize. "We want to be the #1 competitor to Zynga with friends and eventually pass them," Mr. Porter said. OMG, IPO?

And indeed, Mr Westheimer started following OMGPOP projects and developers on Github as early as May, around the time he put Ohours up for sale. OMGPOP, which recently raised $17 million, was hiring for a data engineer--we're doubtful that Mr. Westheimer, a fairly green coder, has got that job, but maybe he's helping bring puppies to your iPhone, for example. We pinged Mr. Westheimer to ask more, but he was OMGAFK. Wait! He's back! But did not confirm or deny a virtual puppy Ohours. "I follow lots of people on Github!" he protested.

VENMO IS HERE. We rumormongered last month that Venmo was Venmo-ving to New York. "We may, will let you know if so," founder Andrew Kortina told Betabeat. The start-up was not one of the portfolio companies to move in with investor Lerer Ventures, however; coder Shreyans Bhansali is mayor of Venmo at 289 7th Ave. (26th St.) on Foursquare. Ahem, Betabeat welcomes Venmo to New York--let us know about that parking meter thing.

PITCH.FM. All those jokes about pitching investors on Turntable.fm? Charlie O'Donnell is hosting DJ hours there. "Each week at 1:30 on Friday, I'll be DJing in an open room where people can come by, say hello, ask startup questions, pitch, or just listen to the music. Swing by!"

GRITTED TEETH. Foursquare's new lists feature potentially put a lot of start-ups out of business, including DreamIt's just-pivoted-and-things-were-going-so-well Pictour and the long-struggling-but-we-hear-already-pivoted Dinevore and the long-time-awkwardly-competitive Foodspotting.

TAKING THE STAIRS. GroupMe's long-complicated relationship with elevators--the lift in its first home in Soho trapped a fellow officemate--has manifested as a gossipy Twttr in the vein of the Conde Elevator. So far the account has overheard "Nubile Designer: 'Photoshopped a dick on my cats last night,'" and "Rage-filled Temp [to hungover co-workers]: I'm learning Rubies on Rails. Gonna change the world."

BOO TWITTER. Twitter finally pushed the last of its users onto the new multimedia version of the Twitter.com client, and some people are still struggling with the change. "TWITTER, Y U NO LET ME GO BACK TO 'OLD TWITTER?'"