Inside AlleyNYC earlier this year.

New York City's startup scene is nothing if not symbiotic and self-motivated. So it came as no surprise that yesterday afternoon, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures' founder Charlie O'Donnell had already started organizing a list of available office space under the Twitter hashtag #sandycoworking. Some people will take any excuse to keep working!

Today, even more startups and coworking hubs have opened their doors, like Mirror, a social discovery platform for dating, social and professional purposes, which launched in March. "As a startup founder and CEO, I understand how important it is to be productive. Each day is critical in the life of a startup," Mirror CEO and founder Daniel Mattio said in a press release.

If you end up using Mirror's office, we bet a "Fuck it, Ship It" sticker would make an appropriate thank-you gift. 

New Amsterdam Ideas founder Noel Hidalgo has laid an updated list of potential options in a handy SANDY COWORKING MAP. And PivotDesk has also created an NYCSANDY site listing available desks and Wifi in Long Island City, DUMBO, New Jersey and more.

Here are details and contact information about the open desks, as of press time Wednesday:

MIRROR

28th and Broadway in the Flatiron District

Hours: 7 a.m. ET until 9 p.m. ET.

Costs: FREE!

Desks: "We have plenty of desk space."

Broadband: "Yes it is fully up and running--we have Ethernet and wifi and plenty of power sources."

Computers: Five or six free computers. "We have monitors, keyboards, mouses."

Offer ends: "We will keep it going at least through the end of the week."

Contact: info(at)mirror(dot)com

ALLEYNYC

500 Seventh Avenue, 17th Floor

Desks: "We have room for about 50 more people (give or take)."

Cost: "We are opening up weekly pricing for those who are need of office space." Here is the "Screw Sandy" price list, starting at $50 for half a week.

Computers: There are no computers, but wifi "works perfect."

Contact: Book online.

BITMAP CREATIVE LABS

300 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Desks: Half a dozen available as of press time.

Cost: The rate has been reduced from $35/day to $20/day for those affected by Sandy.

Computers: "We're encouraging people to bring their own laptops."

Offer ends: "The offer lasts at least through the end of the week, possibly longer depending on the state of power/internet service restoration in affected areas."

Contact: nick@bitmapnyc.com

LOCAL RESPONSE

37 W. 28th Street

Desks: Maybe 10. People are coming in today, so space might be limited. "But, they're welcome to do two to a desk if needed! Or always floor space to sit in light and enjoy internet!" PR director Katherine Sprung tells Betabeat.

Cost: FREE!

Contact: katherine@localresponse.com

BAT HAUS

279 Starr Street, Bushwick

Desks: 30 desks are currently available

Cost: $10 day pass

Computers: "No, but the Wifi works perfectly!"

Food: "All the supermarkets, coffee shops and restaurants are open in our neighborhood as well."

Contact: info@batha.us

QUINCY APPAREL

209 W. 38th St (at 7th ave), Suite 1010

Desks: 8 desks available for coworking today and 3 tomorrow. "But anyone is welcome to swing by to recharge batteries and do a quick email check."

Cost: FREE!

Computers: "No, but we have great WiFi."

Food: "Midtown lunch spots are plenty and there's a mini-fridge if you want to bring your own supplies."

Contact: christina@quincyapparel.com

HEADHUNTER LABS

307 West 38th Street

Desks: As one of the first to respond to #sandycoworking, the free desks were quickly snatched up by Poptip.com, TheBasta.com, Readmill.com and Gateguruapp.com ...

Offer ends: ... But there may be availability through the week if there are any no-shows.

Contact: hello@headhunterlabs.com

The offers keep coming in through #sandycoworking. We'll keep updating this post. Let us know if you want to be included: tips@betabeat.com

From left to right: Mr. O'Donnell, Mr. Tisch, and Mr. Penenberg.

New York University's premier tech club, Tech@NYU, is in the midst of its annual Startup Week. This year's series of panels featuring familiar faces from Silicon Alley are all organized under the theme "Hacking as a mentality."

Hence last night's event starring Charlie O'Donnell, partner of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, and David Tisch, the former managing director of Techstars NYC was dubbed, "Hacking the Future."

Moderating the panel, hosted in the auditorium of NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, was NYU professor Adam Penenberg, who also happens to be the editor of PandoDaily.

Despite the future-facing title, most of the talk consisted of the two panelists walking the student-filled audience through the history of their careers. Mr. Penenberg asked what they hated to see demoed. Mr. O'Donnell said that he wasn't comfortable with video because "it asks too much of its user."

When asked how his portfolio companies can get his best attention, Mr. Tisch said, “I tend not to sleep, I'm on Gtalk from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. It's the companies awake at that hour that get a lot of attention. I don't have any distractions at that time.”

But the most educational--and surprising--moment of the evening came when the floor was opened up for questions, and the first person asked about pivoting.

"Paul Graham has this philosophy that's like, 'Keep pivoting until you find an idea,'" Mr. O'Donnell said. "I don't know when that became a thing."

At this, Mr. Tisch shook his head in agreement and said, "I don't think you can pivot after raising money. I think you fail."

Mr. Tisch emphasized the fact that some pivots were were incredibly beneficial, particularly in cases where teams live out their passions. He pointed to the Burbn team using their love of photos to create Instagram, the Turntable.fm boys realizing that their love of music was more interesting than the QR codes of Stickybits, and the founders of Fab harnessing their love of design and shortening Fabulous.

It's a different story, he explained, for founders switching to a new idea they care nothing about. In that case, Mr. Tisch said, "If you're thinking about pivoting, you should think about getting a job. That's a pivot."

Added Mr. O'Donnell: "The one thing that doesn't change in a pivot is you. Maybe you didn't have project management skills or sales skills. Maybe there's something you should've learned to be a better executor. Maybe you couldn't close a deal, maybe you should get a job that would make you better at closing a deal."

Nervous students in the audience who thought they could just pivot on their startup idea until they came up with the next Facebook quickly pivoted to an entirely different train of thought.

 This post has been updated to add additional statements from last night's panel.

via Northside Festival

Since 2009, brothers Scott and Daniel Stedman have been hosting the Northside Festival in Williamsburg and Greenpoint as a cultural showcase for emerging indie bands, filmmakers, and other artistic aspirants of what one might call the McCarren Park Kickball Guild. In fact, the Stedman brothers have staked their careers on the better borough. Ten years ago, they launched L Magazine. Their company, Northside Media Group, is also responsible for Brooklyn Magazine, BAMBill and Summerscreen. "Fairly early on," CEO Scott Stedman told Betabeat, "We saw that Brookyn was becoming a national adjective for what's next in the creative community."

But this year, the brothers are doing something a little different with their "discovery festival"--setting aside two days in the week-long schedule to celebrate the newest members of Brooklyn's creative class.

"A few years back, people would be graduating college and launching bands and today we feel as often one roommate will be launching a band and the other will be launching a new app or a new website," said Mr. Stedman. "They'll be living together and hanging out together and they often come out of Brooklyn and identify themselves as New York." Yeah, we think we know the type.

To cater to that crowd, on June 14 to June 15, Northside Entrepreneurship conference will feature more than 40 panels, nearly 100 speakers (like Bre Pettis from MakerBot, David Pakman from Venrock, Paul Berry from Soho Tech Labs) and 20,000 square feet of exhibit space in Williamsburg to cover topics like "Future of Education with Skillshare, Codeacademy, 2Tor, and Grovo" or "The partisan power of digital content." Separate contingents will be devoted to innovation and disruption--is there anything else, really?--in different industries, such as a MusicNOW Summit (featuring Gza from the Wu Tang Clan), Social Cinema Showcase, and Media Makers Collective.

Now that the city has decided to back a second tech campus in downtown Brooklyn, the festival just announced today that it will partner with NYU-Poly to create "Downtown Startup Campus" on June 14 at their Metrotech location where NYU professors will challenge "the innovators they most admire on what drives their creativity."

"When I started my company, everyone wasn't aspiring to become an entrepreneur," recalled Mr. Stedman. "It was that old-fashioned, oak-panelled word. I mean the word itself has changed in two years. When I graduated college, it was like that's what Henry Ford was. It was the longest, dumbest word ever. Now it represents innovation and creation. It's exciting and it's what young, interesting people are aspiring to be identified as."

Mr. Stedman is not short on hope for New York City as an innovation capital. "It's creating a new kind of entrepreneurship economy that is systemically different from any kind of entrepreneurship community that has ever existed and it will eventually change everything and touch everything," he said. Well, don't hold back or anything.

But if you ask Mr. Stedman, the epicenter is happening a little further East than one might think. "Even in Union Square and Flatiron, all the engineers--half the people there are coming out of Brooklyn. Even if it's hard to define in words, the zeitgeist is fairly intuitive: the spirit of Brooklyn is driving innovation."

Here are some of the panelists:

Charlie O'Donnell                        Brooklyn Bridge Ventures
Alexis Tryon                                    Artsicle
William Etundi                           Artistswanted
Jim Spanfeller                           The Daily Meal
Shane Snow                                      contently.com
Kellan Elliot-McCrea                     Etsy
Chad Phillips                            Fab
Elias Roman                                    Songza
Lauren Indvik (moderator)           Mashable
Michele Madhok                           SheFinds
Whitney Hess
GZA                                              Wu Tang Clan
Anand Giridharadas (moderator) NY Times
Ayah Bdeir                                        LittleBits
Bre Pettis                                       MakerBot
Duann Scott                                     Shapeways
Nora Abousteit                           kollabora
Andrew Toy                                      Enterproid
Jeff Fernandez                           Grovo
John Katzman                             2tor
Mike Karnjanaprakorn             Skillshare
Avner Ronen                              Boxee
Seth Frader-Thompson             EnergyHub
Neil Patel                                       KISSMetrics
Andrew Rasiej                            Personal Democracy Forum
Eli Pariser The Filter Bubble
Brian Schechter                          HowaboutWe
Evan Frank                                       Onefinestay.com
Brett Martin                                     Sonar.me
Rafat Ali                                             Skift
Paul Berry                                       CasaHop
Steve Cohn                                       Irrive
Paul Lightfoot                           brightfarms
Britta Riley                                     Window Farms
David Pakman                             Venrock
Jessi Hempel (moderator) Fortune
Nicole Davis                                     Brooklyn Based
Billy Campion                            The Bogmen
Brandon Mason                            Juxtaposed Music
Camille Hackney                          Atlantic Records
Corey Maass                              Gelform
David Weiss                                      SonicScoop
Dez Dickerson                            Pavillion
Donald Woodard Esq.              Gordon & Rees
Erik Masone                                      Deep Freeze Music
Howard Han                                      Reverbnation
Jake Simon                                       BMI
Jason Boner                                     The Dharma Body
Jason Herskowitz                         Tomahawk/Official.fm
Jessica Weiner                           Ultra International Music Publishing
Jon Maples                                       Rhapsody
Kevin M. Wilson                          ESPN
Laura Wilson                             World Cafe Live
Leah Joy Malberg                         TicketWeb
Lynda McLaughlin                         LYVA Music
Neeta Ragoowansi                         Sound Exchange
Paul-Anthony Surdi                       Crowd Control Music
Richard Slatter                          WeAreHunted
Seth Hillinger                           Music Tech Meetup
Troy Hansbrough                          Sonicbids
Valerie Gurka                            Knitting Factory
Christy Tanner                           TV Guide
David Larkin                                     Gowatchit
Mike Knowlton                           Murmur
Aina Abiodun                             Story Code
Blaine Graboyes
Mark Harris                                     Broadcastr.com

via itsasickness.com

A week after we wondered whether Dumbo has hit maximum capacity--cobblestone streets, now in limited supply!--venture capitalists have arrived to big ups the borough.

Will Porteous, general partner at Manhattan-based RRE Ventures, tells peHUB that Brooklyn may just be the best place to launch, pointing out that eight RRE portfolio companies call Brooklyn home. Err, make that "were." Drop.io and Hot Potato were acquired (or acqui-hired, depending on who you ask) by Facebook in 2010, but that still leaves HowAboutWe, MakerBot, Pontiflex, and more for serious street cred.

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O'Donnell, formerly of First Round Capital, does Mr. Porteous one better, wondering if Facebook will even be able to make devs happy from its stodgy Midtown perch. Estimating that "50 percent of people who work at venture-backed startups live in Brooklyn,” Mr. O'Donnell thinks the exodus has already begun.

So what's all the fuss about? According to peHUB, Mr. Porteous seems particularly taken with Brooklyn's creativity-inducing environs--and the sunbeams--going as far as claiming it's better for humans, basically.

“Software development and entrepreneurship are creative endeavors, and Brooklyn is synonymous with creativity,” says Porteous. More, he notes, “The quality of life is incredibly high in Brooklyn, relative to what it costs to live [in Manhattan]. Certain kinds of basic, human needs are abundantly met over there” including “just the light alone.”

Mr. O'Donnell, meanwhile, pegs it as more to the growing pains of New York tech:

“I was 25 or so” when the scene in New York began taking off again in 2005, explains O’Donnell. “But my peers are now in their early 30s. People are doing the marriage and kids thing, and they’re moving into South Brooklyn, Prospect Park, Cobble Hill, Carol Gardens. [The neighborhoods] are far more affordable [than Manhattan], and they’re places that are conducive to family life, as opposed to [Manhattan], where you’re falling over each other to get your kids into private schools.”

Look, we are all for headlines like "A VC Portfolio Grows In Brooklyn." We moved to Brooklyn five years ago and we're never looking back. Having an office closer to where you live also sounds like nice work, if you can get it. But let's not pretend that Brooklyn is any more preternaturally creative (we hear some very nice books, movies, code, etc. have come out of Manhattan as well), humane, or even immune to rising rents or the excruciating New York pressure of scrambling to get your kid into a good (public) school. As long as we can avoid overselling it, we're good. Otherwise, you know, it's a slippery slope from here to "Portlandia."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg with Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley. The mayor declared April 16 NYC's official 4sqDay. (Ben Weitzenkorn)

2x2^2. April 16 is officially 4sqDay in New York and over a dozen other cities around the country. The fan-created social media holiday's official celebration will begin at 7 p.m. at The Caulfield. Check out the community blog and RSVP here.

CAPITAL IDEA. General Assembly is bringing back “Assembled Capital,” an all day event dedicated to getting startups funded. The $200 (plus a $4.97 fee) to get in is a bit steep, but breakfast, lunch and booze are totally included! The event will include talks, panels and plenty of elbow-rubbing time with the like of Squarespace's Anthony Casalena, TechStars NYC's David Tisch, Charlie O'Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Shane Snow of Contently and many others.

AIRbnFREE. Airbnb is teaming up with Thrillist and sponsoring Tour de Thrillist, a bicoastal race to discover all that LA, Vegas, Austin, Philly and of course NYC have to offer. Up for grabs is a five-destination trip and free Airbnb accommodations. Cross your fingers and enter the sweepstakes here.

SELL, SELL, SELL. New York-based Goodsie, a platform that allows anyone to setup their own store and sell pretty much anything, just announced the rollout of a host of new features to help merchants make smart business decisions including an integrated email marketing system, sales analytics and mobile optimization.

FIT FIGHT. Fitocracy, the fitness game that uses points and milestones to keep us motivated and moving, is now available on iOS. Users can see what their friends are up to and add and log new exercises right from the palm of their hand. To accompany the mobile app launch, Fitocracy has revamped their website, making it easier to see friends' updates, browse achievements, check scores and see how many points away from the next milestone they are. Slimkicker, a similar app, also made its iOS debut on the same day.

THERE'S ANOTHER MAPP FOR THAT. This week, MyCityWay, a mobile app that combines reference app information with city data, won the “Best Travel App” award at this year's Appy Awards. The app can be used for anything from job searches to driving direction to ordering Chinese food.

DEEP IMPACT. The next installment of the NYU Series on Impact Investing will be on April 9 at Vanderbilt Hall in Room 210 at 6:30 p.m. on the NYU campus.  The panel discussion will focus on legal and policy issues and how they impact investments.  This and future installments will focus on "issues related to the measuring of impact, the key regulatory questions raised by impact investing, and the role that development finance institutions play in impact investing." More information is available here.

STARTUPS 101. Last night, LEAN301 - Advanced Startup Metrics for Founders, the advanced version of the most popular class on Skillshare, held its first class. The class is taught by Lean Startup Machine founder Trevor Owens. Classes are limited to 12 students and future dates can be found here.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. Quotiply, a business app that connects companies and helps them collect, rate and assess offers from providers, just came out of beta last month. The app has profile, messaging and address book features built in and will even make suggestions to help members find good business partners. Quotiply is currently based out of Paris but CEO Paul Dupuy is currently in NYC with the team until the end of April. The company plans to move to NYC as soon as possible.

VIEWTUBE. Some pretty noticeable people including Hank and John Green, and Michael Aranda are using VYou, a video blogging platform, to answer questions and communicate with their fans. Annie Barrett of Entertainment Weekly uses the platform to do show reviews. Daily Candy has a channel where editors answer questions from the audience.

TECH SIDEKICK. Code for America needs a “Gotham Brigade Captain,” whose job will basically be to help bridge the gap between tech and government.  The job will involve high-visibility and a firm grasp of the complex relationship between government, the law and technology. It sounds like a tough job but we really need someone to do it.

WHISTLE... Shapeways is looking for a community manager with at least four years of experience to synthesize and advocate for user needs as well as a software engineer proficient with PHP, Apache, MySQL, HTML and Java. Beyond NYC, Shapeways is hiring all over the world. Lifebooker needs a lead software engineer and architect with at least five years under their belt, excellent OO skills and proficiency in at least one programing language. Submit your application here. Conductor, Inc. has put out a call for an entry-level QA engineer with a bachelor's degree and sharp analytical and communication skills. Development operations engineers are needed at 2tor to manage and monitor their hosted server infrastructure. QA internship opportunities are open at Aviary and BetterCloud, 2tor is looking for PR, tech and development interns, Foursquare needs a community intern and ZocDoc has internship openings in design, marketing and IT.

Judging time!

This morning, Hustler VC Oren Bennett pointed Betabeat's attention to a list of judges and emcees for the annual SXSW Accelerator, a competition sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark that culminates in awards for four lucky startups. Not as coveted a prize as the Breakout Award--which helped catapult Twitter, Foursquare, and then GroupMe to fame, financing, and an acquisition--perhaps, but a nice trophy all the same.

We already introduced you to the four Made In NYC companies that will be competing, but here's a look at who's deciding their fate.

Although not a judge, per se, MC Hammer is named as one of the contest's emcees. If that comes as a surprise to anyone, they probably can't remember as far back as TechCrunch20 in 2007, when Mr. Hammer was invited to join the actual judging panel at the techie smackdown. (That same year, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington invested in DanceJam, the since-shuttered social network for dance enthusiasts, who wanted to "show off their moves online."

New Yorkers making the Austin pilgrimage should also recognize a number of other names.

Union Square Venture's Brad Burnham joins Mr. Hammer as one of the event's emcees. Meanwhile, David Aronoff of Flybridge Capital Partners joins Charlie O'Donnell, repping his new firm Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, and David Rose of Gust, among others. Have fun, guys. We promise not to block you if you start live-tweeting. Well, we promise to at least try.

A number of tech companies, including Hype Machine, Wanderfly, Mobile Roadie and Uber are already working out of the space, as well as a few startups still in splash page mode, like Gander TV and Spotflux. Somewhere between 60 to 70 percent of The Yard's residents are techies, although that wasn't exactly the owners' intention. "We knew there was a need in Williamsburg/Greenpoint for something like this, but we didn’t realize the tech scene was happening here and that that was the direction it was going to go," Mr. Levy told Betabeat by phone.

Now that the startup syngery is under way, however, The Yard has been "planning strategic alliances" with angel investors whose portfolio companies might be interested in working there. For example, Mr. Levy said he's currently in talks with Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder and First Round Capital alum Charlie O'Donnell, who launched a Kings County-centric seed fund last month.

And what about the name? "Um, I dunno, it’s where you work, 'I work in the Yard.' It’s a space to work, so that’s what we call it," said Mr. Levy, whose thick Brooklyn accent would not sound out of place in a Goodfellas remake.

Mr. Levy said he and Mr. Beyda got the idea to open a coworking space after looking at the possibility of working out of one of Manhattan's suddenly-ubiquitous office-sharing arrangements. The same day he crunched the numbers, Mr. Levy happened upon the location, at 33 Nassau Avenue. "Being developers, we kind of overdid it with our Internet," he said, referring to The Yard's 100 megabit-per-second pipe. "A lot of people in other places were experiencing problems with their Internet and you know if you’re an Internet business, you can’t have an outage, so we have a lot of bandwidth here."

We first heard of The Yard from from Simily and vReddit founder Brandon Root, who wrote us a tip emphasizing The Yard's  "potential to become something like Brooklyn's General Assembly."

"I certainly looked at GA when I was trying to find some office space, and certainly would consider it in the future, but I found it to be a bit...pretentious?" Mr. Root,  who works out of the space, explained by email . "Unlike its Manhattan-based cousins, I've found people at The Yard to be just as talented but far more approachable. Maybe I'm just more comfortable with the Brooklyn vibe than the highly-caffeinated Apple-everything crowd in the city."

"I don't mean to be unfair to GA, they have accomplished something incredible," he continued. "But The Yard struck me as more practical and comfortable."

Although The Yard has been hosting events, like the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club, the General Assembly comparison seems far-fetched for now. "I’m a firm believer in not trying to be anything other than what you are," said Mr. Levy. "As far as I’m concerned we’re done and the place is humming."

Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin actually signed up as a tenant before construction on The Yard was complete. "We were looking for space in the fall (our first office ever, in our 6 bootstrapped years!) and I happened to see the new sign while cycling through Greenpoint as it was still being built," Mr. Volodkin said by email. "Turned out it was an upcoming coworking space inside a beautiful industrial space, much of the great textures were preserved, so the place is modern while retaining bits of the old character.  Many of us live around here, and there are lots of good coffee places around."

Before The Yard, Hype Machine's seven-person team worked from home or in coffee shops with the "occasional 'office days,' where we'd all meet up in my living room in Williamsburg," he said.

Unlike the typical open floor plan, The Yard has about 100 offices to offer more privacy, although we're not sure if that takes the "co" out of coworking. The space also offers 24-hour access. Mr. Levy said he is "on the selective side" in terms of what kinds of companies or workers he allows in to The Yard, but is open to anyone who could be who would identify as creative. "Some of my competitors are like, 'If you’re not tech or a nerd, you can’t come in,'" said Mr. Levy. "We’re not that harsh."

via BrooklynBridgeVentures.com

On his blog this morning, New York City tech stalwart Charlie O'Donnell announced the creation of a new seed investment fund called Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Mr. O'Donnell, who used to bike the 9.2 miles from his home in Bay Ridge to his last job—principal at First Round Capital in Union Square—says his is the first venture capital fund based in Brooklyn and that the borough "has the potential to be the very best place in the world to start a technology business."

Business Insider's sources say Mr. O'Donnell's fund will be $10 million. Betabeat has heard somewhere in the range of $10 million to $20 million and that Quotidian Ventures might be his first big LP, although Mr. O'Donnell would not return earlier calls to confirm. We have reached out to Quotidian and will update the post when we hear back.

For the past two years, Mr. O'Donnell, who founded Path 101, has been working at First Round, first as an entrepreneur-in-residence, and then, in November 2010, as a principal at the fund. On his blog, First Round's managing director Josh Kopelman said his one-year term was extended "after witnessing Charlie’s hustle and energy firsthand." He was particular critical to the firm, says Mr. Kopelman, in expanding its presence in New York as well as sourcing seven deals including GroupMe, which was acquired by Skype.

According to both Mr. O'Donnell and Mr. Kopelman, building his own investment firm has long been a goal.

"In fact, it’s what Henry Blodget told me I should do the first time I met him--back in May of 2007 during a pre-Business Insider lunch at Coffee Shop.  Josh Kopelman said the same thing to me about a year ago and we’ve talked a lot about firm building in my time at First Round."

At Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the plan is to lead or co-lead seed rounds and helping with recruiting, PR, and product management. When we spoke in July about the tech talent crunch in New York, Mr. O'Donnell said he spent about a third of his time recruiting for First Round portfolio companies.

Another hallmark of his new fund? A Brooklyn state of mind. The Bensohurst native writes:

"Given that many of the companies I work with don’t even have offices yet, and that many of their founders and future employees live in Brooklyn, I won’t be surprised of the majority of the fund winds up being invested in Brooklyn startups.  It’s a great place to build a business--creative, less expensive, flexible, etc.  However, my goal is not to geographically limit the fund but to help create and leverage an ecosystem that connects and attracts talent and knowledge in such a way that people all over the city want to be a part of it.  I want to erase the barrier to attending a Meetup in Brooklyn and make building here a bigger part of everyone’s consideration set.  I’ll fund deals elsewhere for sure, but I hope to convince folks that you won’t want to be elsewhere."

Any doubts about his street cred, just check out the urban brick background to his new website. Or this inspirational video:

Made In Brooklyn from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures on Vimeo.

Mr. Wanamaker.

DIVERSITY. Black Techies Meetup is tonight. "This meetup exists because I was damn tired of being the only black person at other tech meetups," says Tumblr dev Kyle Wanamaker. "We aim to be a network of developers in NYC interested in becoming better, learning from each other and networking. Developers of all skill levels are welcome, from experienced hardcore, neckbeard hackers, to n00bs. If you want to be awesome, or more awesome, I hope you can find yourself at home here." 7 p.m., at Tumblr's HQ.

HOLIDAY GIVING. "Reqoop, an NYC-based startup that enables shoppers to share discoveries they make from brick-and-mortar stores, while they’re out shopping, and earn rewards for sharing their finds...  just kicked off a campaign to help raise funds for goods for good, a NYC & Malawai-based organization that takes excess and surplus goods, like fabrics and school and health supplies, and creates opportunities for communities in Malawi (goods4good.org). The campaign is called "Snap for Good" and it's pretty straightforward: for every style find that shoppers snap using the Reqoop app while they're out shopping in December, we will donate $1 to goods for good. We're hoping to raise $2,000."

UPDATE. General Assembly-based Bubble has made some updates to its app. "We're taking Bubbles (hashtags) and attaching them to interests to let you follow them in a different way, by discovering what everyone is sharing about that interest," founder Lee Hnetinka wrote to Betabeat in an email. "So maybe you like Dubset? Join the Bubble for it and whenever someone shares a song they're listening with the hashtag #dubset, you'll be able to discover it."

TRACKIN UR MEDIAS. "Adaptly helps companies advertise on social networks not just for clicks, but to increase engagement. Today it unveiled its new standard for how that is measured. Adaptly Momentum tracks over 160+ interaction criteria across all major social networks so its clients can measure the effect of paid, earned and owned media."

WHO IS HIRING. Charlie O'Donnell seeks an intern for his newsletter, This Week in the NYC Innovation Community, which he sends out every week. He imagines about five to seven hours a week. "It will be paid, but not terribly much," he writes. Go work at betaworks! Bit.ly seeks a "sales research associate," and News.me seeks a senior iOS developer and Python engineer.

The Coffee Shop in Union Square, located on the bustling corner of 17th St. and Union Square West, is famous for several things: the waitresses are models, it turns into a Brazilian dance club on the weekends, was voted Best Bar for Modelizers in the Village Voice, and New York says it boasts a "high risk of poor service and unpleasant encounters with attitudinal (but often pretty) people" but praised the crayons and puzzle place mats for kids. This noisy, WiFi-less den is famous for something else within the tight-knit community of Silicon Alley: it serves as the de facto meeting place for VCs and founders such as Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson and IA Ventures' Roger Ehrenberg. "Pitch your startup to First Round Capital here. They're right across the street," says the Foursquare tip left by Charlie O'Donnell. 

But it seems that after years of fealty, New York's nerdiest investors are moving on. This morning Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, who checks into Coffee Shop at least twice a week, declared he'd had enough. "First day of #coffeeshopboycott (@ Friend of a Farmer w/ 2 others) [pic]: http://4sq.com/sE6vu3," he tweeted, inspiring a flurry of queries. In answer to Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, Mr. Wilson explained: "I can put up w/ mediocre food & bad coffee but when they disrespect one of their most loyal customers its time for #coffeeshopboycott." Mr. Wilson did not respond to an email asking him to elaborate. A few founders voiced their support for the boycott on Twitter.

As it turns out, Charming Robot's Dan Maccarone said he's been boycotting Coffee Shop for five years; Steve Schlafman of Lerer Ventures actually quit the Coffee Shop just last week. "Because New York values convenience, people will put up with mediocre breakfast food," Mr. Schlafman said. "Also, people like being seen there. I was kind of fed up with it."

He independently decided to start taking meetings at Friend of a Farmer, the only Union Square eatery with a worse name than "Coffee Shop," a few blocks away on 18th and Irving. The place fits his hippie sensibilities, he said. "Before I was trying to be more stealthy about it," he said. "It's all kind of a joke. My only concern is that after everyone starts going to Friend of a Farmer, whether [the restaurant] will even be able to handle it. It kind of sucks that Fred tweeted about it."

As for Coffee Shop, he says good riddance. "Look, that place is so overplayed," he said. "It's just convenient and it's kind of one of these things that stuck. New York is a place that values innovation and doing different things... I guarantee everyone will be going to Friend of a Farmer in two weeks."

Betabeat called The Coffee Shop to see if the restaurant was aware it had burned a few super users. Charles Milite, one of the owners, got on the phone right away. The cafe's not-so-active Twitter account followed in the voyeuristic tradition of power lunch spot Michael's by tweeting about which bold names were in the house. "British siren Rachel Weisz and Director hubby Darren Aronofsky having lunch at Coffee Shop with adorable son Henry Chance this afternoon," was the last tweet, in August. But Mr. Milite had never heard of Mr. Wilson or the boycott.

"I wasn't aware at all," he said. "I know that we have a lot of these young guy techie types. It's such a busy place and such a diverse clientele here that no one particular segment would completely hit us in the face. It's a pretty big place and its pretty active."

Indeed, there was cacophony in the background when we called around 2:30 p.m. in the waning hours of lunch, and of the 19,095 check-ins and 149 tips on Foursquare, less than a dozen pertain to the restaurant's critical role in Silicon Alley's economy.

"We don't like to hear that we're giving bad service," Mr. Milite said. "But I'll have to look into that and find out. He could have just had a bad experience."

We read him the tweet, which indicated a string of bad experiences.

"Interesting, okay. Well I don't know," he said. He said he would ask the general manager, Renee, who might know more.

In the meantime, Friend of a Farmer has started racking up the check-ins. Will Silicon Alley's finest be satisfied with the "cozy, country cafe," or will Friend of a Farmer (3,673 check-ins) fail the founder test?