Mr. Williams, Mr. Peretti and Mr. Miller.

The elevators to the BuzzFeed office are magnificently slow. Each fits about six people comfortably, and they trundle and groan up to the 11th floor, where the company's ops, tech and marketing people sit. "Considering how fast the company moves, it's amazing how slow its elevators are," quipped one dapperly dressed man as we all awkwardly waited for the doors to open.

Betabeat was visiting the BuzzFeed office for the first time to attend a real-life roundtable. Hosted by Branch cofounder Josh Miller, the event included beers and mingling among some of New York's prolific tech reporters and entrepreneurs, as well as a discussion with Twitter cofounder Ev Williams and BuzzFeed's own cofounder Jonah Peretti.

Before the group settled into white plastic chairs in an event-type space outside the kitchen, Betabeat spotted several tech scene staples, like Paul Ford, Anil Dash and Rick Webb. Scrollkit's Cody Brown and Kate Ray, along with Digg CTO Michael Young, made an appearance. Reporters and writers were also out in full force: Pando Daily's Erin Griffith, The Awl's Choire Sicha and Business Insider's Alyson Shontell all nabbed seats towards the front to listen to the talk. TechCrunch coeditor Alexia Tsotsis sauntered in towards the end in a silver sparkly top.

The event was formatted like a real-life Branch, a conversation platform popular among the tech elite that seeks to "empower people to talk about the world around them." Mr. Miller, who has established himself as a prominent NYC tech entrepreneur in the year since he dropped out of Princeton, proved a confident interviewer, though it probably helped that he is close with Mr. Williams and Mr. Peretti, who both advise him on Branch. The trio sat in tall chairs, not unlike the ones you'd see scattered around a Hollywood set, with the Branch banner hanging behind them.

Soon into the talk, it became clear that Mr. Peretti and Mr. Williams--though clearly comfortable with each other--hold a handful of opposing views. Mr. Peretti is disarming and affable, while Mr. Williams is decidedly more staid, his humor held closer to the vest. It was an interesting juxtaposition to see two successful serial entrepreneurs with visibly different interviewing styles forced to come together and interact for a crowd.

Mr. Williams' new project is Medium, which is currently open to a few select users in private beta. Medium allows them to create valuable content that is categorized not by how new it is, but by how good it is.

"We want to get away from the obsession with newness," Mr. Williams said. "I think an obsession with the new overvalues its importance. Whatever you're looking at in Medium, you see the best stuff first, not the new."

Mr. Williams also argued that a person's social circle doesn't validate content or automatically make it interesting. "Valuable content can come from anyone," he emphasized.

Mr. Peretti, whose own website relies heavily on quickly spotting and posting or reframing the new, pointed out that Mr. Williams' distaste for newness is amusing given his history as the cofounder of Twitter.

"Isn't the prioritization of newness all your fault?" he joked. "You're solving a problem you created."

Mr. Williams, for his part, didn't let Mr. Peretti off the hook either.

"I'm not a big fan of aggregating content," he said a little later. The irony of him saying that while sitting in the BuzzFeed office next to Mr. Peretti was not lost on Betabeat.

To be fair, Mr. Peretti does have some rather controversial ideas. For one, he calls the reframing of someone else's scoop a “conceptual scoop,” which is sure to make journalism students bristle. "On social, nobody wants to pass around the rewrite," he argued. Instead, a lot of what BuzzFeed writers do is come up with a new way to frame an existing scoop. He gave the example of a collection of cat pictures, which doesn't mean anything given the Internet's scope of cat pictures. But when framed as "Bet You Can't Get Through This Post Without Awwing," old material becomes new.

Whether you think that counts as an actual scoop probably depends on how much you value breaking news.

Towards the end of the discussion, the topic turned to Twitter and how it serves as a vehicle--"like a railroad," Mr. Peretti emphasized--to deliver news and information. Mr. Williams agreed, but with a caveat; "Most tweets don't have links," he said, and so it's come to serve another niche. "I think it's the best standalone platform for witticisms," he added, making the audience chuckle. "That's a funny word," Mr. Peretti said, sounding ever-more like the pleasantly silly "accidental" entrepreneur he is.

As BuzzFeed first reported (shocker!), Mr. Williams also suggested that a new way to measure a Twitter user's influence could be in the works. Because many Twitter followers are actually fake, perhaps your follower count isn't an accurate way to gauge your influence. Instead, he stated, "The dream metric is how many people saw your tweet."

As Twitter continues to revoke API access and court Hollywood bigwigs, we won't hold our breath: seems like the company has some more serious issues on its hands these days.

Even though both Mr. Peretti and Mr. Williams have impressive track records as serial entrepreneurs, towards the end of the discussion both expressed that running a company is still a lot of work.

"It's still hard," said Mr. Williams. "There's always new stuff to screw up."

Zach Sims (Photo: Twitter.com)

With UPenn making moves on the title of "Stanford of the East" and Eric Schmidt advising Cornell on the evolution of its new tech campus, NYU doesn't want its students left behind in the college tech revolution. Hence the school's new partnership with Codeacademy. Students in the Steinhardt School’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC) can now opt in to a ten-week course where NYU professors and Codecademy instructors will teach them how to code.

This reporter can attest that on NYU's campus, there's a definite attitude that startups are where the jobs are. Students and recent grads are flocking to community manager and marketing positions at startups. Two of our sophomore year roommates made the switch to computer science and both said, "If I know how to code, I'll be fine when I graduate." Tech@NYU, one of the school's fastest growing clubs, now hosts weekly HackDays and DesignDays where members can collaborate on their own products.

The program will cover HTML, Javascript and Python, and students will also be able to attend monthly talks with leading industry insiders. Sessions start next week and run until the end of the semester. Visiting assistant professor Liel Leibovitz will teach the classes with coding instructor David Hu.

“We’re very excited to help NYU teach scores of students to learn to program--it's great to work with a world class institution like NYU that thinks on the cutting edge and wants to teach its students the skills and creativity that the labor market require,” said Zach Sims, CEO and cofounder of Codecademy, in a press release sent to Betabeat.

"It's cool that things like this are around more," said Cody Brown, NYU graduate and founder of Scrollkit. "I imagine it will be as much a learning experience for Codecademy as it will be for the students." He further explained that this would be new for them, because "they are going irl."

In 2011, NYU's journalism department announced a digital journalism concentration designed by Jay Rosen. But the program hasn't really taken off yet, perhaps because it requires journalism students--who already have to have a double major--to take several additional credits.

Besides the Code Academy initiative, the plans for NYU's Applied Sciences Center in downtown Brooklyn are still in motion--which is a good sign for the university. Wouldn't want to get stuck as the plain old "Berkeley of the East," now would we?

(Photo: Brooke Hammerling, Instagram)

Last night, gangs of glammed-out New York techies and science enthusiasts trekked uptown to the Rose Center for Earth and Space to take in a stunningly optimistic program presented by Gizmodo and the American Museum of Natural History. The event was planned and hosted by Gawker Media founder Nick Denton (with the help of Brew PR), who appeared so eager about the "celebration of technology and discovery" that he tweeted about it numerous times prior to the event, published a grandiose blog post on Gizmodo reveling in the glorious achievements of science, and sent out an email to attendees: "This evening should be inspiring and fun," he wrote.

"I've never seen Nick so excited for a social event," one colleague remarked.

And who could begrudge Mr. Denton his excitement? The event was everything he claimed it would be--and perhaps more, depending on how many free cocktails you indulged in. Hosted by Ellen V. Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and Mr. Denton himself, the gathering was as swank and inspiring as expected.

Betabeat arrived to the First Comes the Dream event around 7:30 p.m. and immediately checked in on Foursquare, as tech reporters at Foursquare-branded events are wont to do. As residents of Brooklyn, we were happy to discover we'd unlocked the Far Far Away badge--"Welcome to the world above 59th street!" it exclaimed.

In the lobby of the Rose Center, we were checked in via an iPad by a lovely woman from Brew PR, who handed us a program and directed us to the Hayden Planetarium, where the night's first event would take place. The entry hallway to the Planetarium was packed with eager attendees swigging wine and snacking on cheese and grapes. We spotted Reddit general manager Erik Martin collecting drinks for fellow attendees at the bar and stopped to say hi. He escorted us over to his group, which included Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and Gawker head of ops Scott Kidder, who had just gotten back from a trip to Budapest.

"I'm a daily Betabeat reader," admitted Mr. Kidder. "But you guys should post more." (We're working on it--promise.)

Mr. Martin and Mr. Ohanian could only stay for the first half hour of the event, as they had to get to an Internet Defense League party–complete with a stories-sized projection–downtown.

Notable names gathered at the museum included Gilt Groupe founder and CEO Kevin Ryan, NY1 newspaper addict Pat Kiernan and his colleague Jamie Shupak with New York Times media nerd Brian Stelter, and AllThingsD honcho Kara Swisher, in town from San Francisco. We also spotted NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr., father of RSS Dave Winer, Talking Points Memo deputy publisher Callie Schweitzer, and Business Insider startup reporter Alyson Shontell. A sci-fi themed string quartet scored the evening with Star Trek and Star Wars songs, while the crowd bantered and nursed their cocktails.

Soon we were ushered into the Hayden Planetarium, where we found a seat in front of Branch founder Josh Miller and his mentor, former Twitter VP of Product and current COO of the Obvious Corporation, Jason Goldman. Ms. Futter, AMNH's president, began her opening remarks as Scrollkit founder Cody Brown and New York Times media reporter David Carr snuck to their seats.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. said a few words before deputy mayor for economic development Robert K. Steel took the podium, lamenting the fact that Ms. Futter called the astronaut "cool" but not him. Soon, the lights began to dim and the crowd was treated to a stunning walkthrough of current NASA data displayed on the Planetarium's dome by ANMH's director of astrovisualization, the lion-maned Carter Emmart.

(Photo: American Museum of Natural History, Instagram)

We craned our necks back to take in the dizzying site: Data captured just yesterday danced across the screen as Mr. Emmart zoomed in and out. He took us to the international space station, and then out further to the moon, where he focused in on some craters before taking us out further still, to Mars. Next we were viewing our entire galaxy, and then out as far as possible so that the millions of galaxies scientists have documented twinkled like pinpoints of light on the vast darkness of the unknown. There was much oohing and aahing. When Mr. Emmart remarked that his time was up, one person in the audience actually yelped: "Awww!"

The presentation was easily one of the coolest things Betabeat had ever seen. We weren't the only ones. "I don't know what to do about how much I love space," tweeted New York Times reporter Jenna Wortham.

As the lights came back on, the crowd shuffled into elevators and down to the Cullman Hall of the Universe, where drinks and hors d'oeuvres were served and the string quartet cleared from the stage to make room for i09 editor in chief Annalee Newitz and renowned physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Mr. Tyson, who skipped a pre-screening of The Dark Knight Rises to attend, was arguably the biggest attraction of the night. At the mere mention of his name by Ms. Futter earlier, the crowd burst out into spontaneous applause. The director of the Hayden Planetarium since 2000, Mr. Tyson has risen to cult status in recent years, thanks to a combination of blatant genius and a wry brand of humor that lends him a personability untouched by most physicists. To the crowd of science geeks and Redditors on the Internet, Mr. Tyson is basically a god: memes have been carved in his name for years.

The energy in the room was palpable as Mr. Tyson took the stage and the crowd erupted into wild applause. Ms. Newitz proved a deft interviewer, easily matching Mr. Tyson's impressive wit. He spoke of his dream plans for NASA ("I want aliens to be proud of what we've done"), of why we need to rekindle our space-race era love for science, and how much he loves Star Trek. At one point, while answering a question about his ideal space program, he referenced a ship that could be outfitted with various "strap-ons." The audience giggled nervously. "That's... not the right word," he admitted, chuckling, before moving on, while patches of the audience muffled their guffaws.

Soon, program wranglers were giving Ms. Newitz the cue to wrap it up, and Mr. Tyson closed the session with remarks about how to get inspired about science again. Hungry and tired, we ducked out of the event and trotted to the exit, where we were handed a First Comes the Dream-branded moleskin and wished a pleasant evening.

All of this talk about space just made us want to go up to the stars. Luckily, we ran into the one person perhaps best enabled to allow us to reach our goal: tech investor (and former journalist) Esther Dyson. Ms. Dyson is on the board of XCor, a private corporation aiming to bring sub-orbital flight to the general public, or as general a public that can afford a $95,000 per-flight ticket. Ms. Dyson told us that she was recently trying out spacesuits for the company - she's planning to be on the last flight before the company opens it up to the masses. We eagerly asked when we could join in on the zero-gravity fun. "A few years," she told us, reassuring us that, while she would be getting a preview to the experience, she would be going up after they test it thoroughly: "When they get it right."

Though we typically bleed skepticism, we found ourselves uncharacteristically moved by the event as we crossed the park to catch a cab. The air was thick with summer, the musk of trees momentarily eclipsing the normal exhaust fumes that blanket the city. We felt filled with the vastness of space the way we always do after leaving the planetarium (we are embarrassingly regular guests there), aware again of the knowledge of just how tiny our lives, our planet, even our galaxy are.

"First comes the dream," we thought.

It was probably just the wine.

Ms. Ray and Mr. Brown

If Wife Swap is one of your guilty pleasures (ahem), then you might get a kick out of Founder Swap, a project created by the makers of Scroll Kit, Kate Ray and Cody Brown, [Editor's note: along with Jonathan Basker of Betaworks] which aims to inject fresh talent into startup teams. On June 1st, New York-based early-stage startup founders will swap places with the hope that the project will help foster new ideas among the participating companies.

According to TechCrunch:

Founder Swap hopes to mix and match founders for one day, basing the swap in part on the strengths and weaknesses of the founding teams. It’s aimed at very early-stage startups, those with just two or three people working together, and is designed to provide a fresh perspective on the things they’re building.

When you're heavily into a certain project, it's easy to put blinders on that can keep you from even the simplest of innovations. Perhaps participating in events like Founder Swap can help break you out of that funk.

Also, if you're of the Michael Lazerow belief system that you should "sleep with your cofounder," June 1st is apparently your lucky day.

Now that they've got your attention, they decided to have some fun with it, by putting the DIY back in Valentine's Day love notes.

The most—or least—of one's worries.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, ON A SUNDAY MORNING, the startup world woke up to that rare stripe of news which quietly sends shockwaves reverberating throughout an entire culture of people: Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 22 years old, had passed away. The cause of death "appears to be a suicide," noted a San Francisco police officer who spoke with CNN. A forthcoming coroner’s report will make a final determination. Mr. Zhitomirskiy was one of the four co-founders of Diaspora*, once breathlessly hyped in a May 2010 New York Times article as a “cry to arms” against Facebook, in a story that employed a classic tech narrative: four brilliant young men, on the verge of changing the world, subsisting on ramen and pizza.

Y Combinator’s Hacker News link to the item racked up pages of comments, many devoted to shouting down those who wanted to have a discussion about depression in the technology and startup community, noting it as an inappropriate moment for that topic. One user noted that a breaking news thread announcing Mr. Zhitomirskiy’s death was “a terrible place to have a discussion about ‘the stresses of life … related to tech.’”

Another disagreed: “We don’t talk about suicide in society very well let alone within the startup community. Founders find themselves in extremely stressful situations and living lifestyles that exacerbate the effects of this stress.”

This second comment read in contrast to the first, whose final suggestion on the matter was to “have that discussion inside your head” for the time being, and then go talk about it some other time.

IT'S FRIDAY NIGHT at New York City's startup workspace-cum-mecca General Assembly, and it’s YouAre.TV founder Josh Weinstein’s 25th birthday. A crowded party with a sufficient supply of pizza and beer warms up in the main hall. Mr. Weinstein, however, is found quietly typing at his desk in the South Wing, isolating him from the Startup Weekend New York kickoff raging outside the door.

As we find a place to sit, a few people regard him with quick back-slaps and Happy Birthdays. Another colleague working nearby is surprised to hear of the occasion, quickly offering the same. Along the way, he nods to a nearby colleague, “Chris,” to accompany us as we search out a quiet place to speak; the unannounced third party is joining, Mr. Weinstein explains, because he—another 25 year-old startup founder—has much to say on the topic, the both of them having experienced some stripe of professional failure and the depression that comes with it.

[“Chris” agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity not because he doesn’t want to publicly speak about depression, but because his startup is trying to avoid press in its early stages.]

Mr. Weinstein and Chris sat with Betabeat in a couch-filled cubicle, and immediately begin firing off insight on depression among their contemporaries with the enthusiasm one would expect to be reserved for a particularly fascinating segment of code.

SOPA Opera: The Craziest Congressional Quotes About Online Piracy >>

“I’d be really surprised if you could find a founder who—if you asked them about their emotional state—hasn’t been through depression,” Chris explains. As a computer engineering student working at a startup at a prestigious college, and then as an entrepreneur going it alone after he graduated, he’s experienced in sparring with his own mental health.

“That’s why I asked Chris to come,” Mr. Weinstein explained. “We’ve gone through it at different times. We talked about it; it’s a club. It’s good to have that support network. A lot of people don’t ask for help.”

The World Health Organization cites depression as affecting 121 million people worldwide. The Center for Disease Control estimates one in every ten American adults are suffering from some form of clinical depression. In the 18 to 24-year-old age group, that number goes up to 11.1 percent. To Chris, the startup world is even more susceptible.

“It’s not ‘if,’ it’s ‘when’ it happens,” he sighed. “I’d almost say if they aren’t going through depression, you’re probably not actually pushing hard enough, or taking on enough risk, because that’s just an inherent part of owning something.”

In a phone interview a few days later, angel investor and TechStars managing director David Tisch—who once acted a mentor to Mr. Weinstein—corroborated this theory. “When you as a personality are able to take the risk to start a company, in making that choice, you have to consciously understand that you are rebelling against the easy path,” he explained. “That’s not a foreign concept to the people I work with.”

Mr. Tisch illuminated this with a story he rolls out to young founders on their first day of TechStars that his friend—Thrillist co-founder Ben Lerer—once told in an interview: for the first two years in founding the company, after every important meeting, they’d inevitably take the elevator down to street level, and on the doors closing, jump up and down, laughing hysterically. Or start crying.

“That’s fucking crazy!” Mr. Tisch observed. “In reality, that will screw up anybody. Think about a startup experience like that. Unless you’re emotionally and psychologically tough enough to withstand that roller coaster, you are going to go through [those emotions].”

Jerry Colonna, a venture capitalist turned business and life coach to Silicon Alley royalty, has seen the pressures founders (and particularly young founders) can face. Often. “Every. Single. Day,” Mr. Colonna said in a phone call with Betabeat. “Ten times a day. These pressures are not just unique to this age group, but they are exacerbated in the entrepreneurial community.”

In this tightly knit community, he continued, the factors unique to young entrepreneurship can add up. “When you layer status against the pressure cooker of, say, Broadway between 23rd Street and the Village, that whole corridor”—where General Assembly is, of course, located—”what you end up with is a sort of high school [scenario]. Who are the cool kids? Who aren’t the cool kids? Whose popularity is rising, sinking? You get this incredible pressure on people.”

Mr. Colonna illustrated a scenario that isn’t all too uncommon these days, specific players aside: “Imagine that you’ve just raised a million and a half dollars from Fred Wilson. Exactly. Scared shitless. Oh, and by the way, you’re worried that everybody’s going to find out that you have no fucking clue what you’re going to do.”

SOPA Opera: The Craziest Congressional Quotes About Online Piracy >>

Cody Brown, the 23-year-old co-founder of NYU Local and the recently-launched Scroll, corroborated this point by phone from his apartment in Bushwick. “The fact of the matter is: there are a lot of people in their early 20s being handed thousands of dollars, multimillion dollar checks, and having this self-imposed pressure,” which is in addition to the pressure of trying be a normal, young, 20-something. Like, for example, “trying to find a girlfriend,” he laughed.

He went on to point out a distinct irony for those like him in this specific moment in technology startups: “It’s funny how many help enhance that feeling of stress. Like, foursquare! Oh, god. I really don’t need to know every party that I haven’t been invited to, routinely and beautifully laid out on my phone!”

Even the most cursory of looks reveals young startup founders living lives that are potential incubators for depression. If that’s the case, we offered, then why have many of the people we’ve spoken with felt that the past week is the first time a discussion concerning tech startups and mental health has happened at a significant volume? After all, these are the same scientifically and socially progressive creative types brought together by the mandate to bring the world new and improved ways to hack everything from their workweek to their own bodies, let alone socialize.

Back at General Assembly, Chris sighed: “In the startup community, there’s a real stigma to depression. Every time someone comes around and asks ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ you’re always like”—and here, he vamped a disposition familiar to anyone who has ever had a discussion with a startup founder—”‘Best day ever, man! Killing it! We’re crushing it!’ You have to do that, because your job as founder is, to some extent, to create the Steve-Jobs-Reality-Distortion-Field.”

As conversations about mental health and depression in startups stay at hushed tones, the idea that anybody else is going through a common experience is a difficult prospect to embrace. “There’s no way you can talk about it, because you feel like you’re in this alone. You feel socially vulnerable when in reality,” Mr. Weinstein kicked his feet up on one end of the couch, in what one could have easily been mistaken for a therapy session, continuing, “everyone else is going through the same thing. The pluralistic ignorance is a big problem. You can talk to your friend, and be like, yo, I’m depressed, and they’re like,” and with this, he smiles: “‘Yeah, I’ve been seeing a psychologist for the last year.’ And you’d be like, really? And they’re like… Yeah.’ Nobody talks about it!”

Mr. Brown echoed this sentiment: “Founders don’t want to discuss this,” he explained. “They want to have the public appearance of always being in control, and always being on top of their game.”

A 24-year-old female startup founder was at first reluctant to speak at all, noting over an email that it “makes me nervous as a young company to admit ever wavering.” She finished: “I feel like you might run into other entrepreneurs who might decline [speaking out] for fear it’ll make their investors look twice at them.” We did. She eventually relented, explaining her own experience with the problem over an instant message:

“Sometimes you get run down and depressed because your product is fucking awesome, your team is great, and you can’t stop yourself from working ’round the clock on it because you love it. But, your body rebels against that. Makes you tired unexpectedly, makes small problems inflate. And then you freak out, thinking that one off day is going to set into motion many, many more. So,” she finished. “You keep it inside.”

But, we asked her, wouldn’t it befit all parties involved to make this an open dialogue? Founders could get the help they need and investors could be satisfied with knowing the full condition of their investment. The idea was roundly rejected, one Gchat ping at a time:

“No
I don’t even think it would help
I think I’d get replaced”

IN A SITUATION so obviously built for so many involved to experience some form of depression or anxiety, be it mild or severe, one could reasonably assume the venture capitalists handing over money to these bright young things would have trained themselves to see it coming in their founders, and actively intervene. Some, Mr. Tisch argued, do: “The best investors out there get to know the entrepreneurs to the point where they’re there as a friend. It’s a very honest relationship that gets built. The best VCs pay attention to these things,” but, he qualified, “like in every industry, not everyone’s the best.”

“I don’t think [these issues] are getting brushed under the rug, but,” he concluded, “It’s probably something we can all do better in exposing.”

SOPA Opera: The Craziest Congressional Quotes About Online Piracy >>

Of course, the first and most rudimentary answers to these problems are as obvious as they are readily available:

“Stay focused on that self that exists outside of work,” Mr. Colonna explained. “Make sure you are dissipating the anxiety through physical exercise, eating right, all the things our mothers taught us.”

Mr. Tisch’s advice was more philosophical: “Understand where you are in the process. Consciously understand that you are rebelling against the easy path,” he suggested.

Chris noted: “Be comfortable having others know about it.” He nodded at Mr. Weinstein: “You have to identify people you can talk with about it.”

Mr. Weinstein agreed that so much of dealing with the emotional rigors of startup life was simply a matter of battling the character traits that helped those like him get there in the first place.

“Depression is so common, especially with people who are Type A,” Mr. Weinstein shook his head. “When you’re wired to execute and accomplish, it’s a challenge that you need to overcome. If you don’t recognize it yourself, or talk to people about it, it’s not going to be fun.”

Earlier that evening, when we first found out it was Mr. Weinstein’s 25th birthday, we couldn’t help but ask him:

It’s Friday night. It’s your birthday. You really going to stay here coding all night, or are you doing anything for it?

“Yeah,” he smirked, “we’ll be fratting our brains out at happy hour.”

As it turns out, Josh spent the rest of the night working.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Scroll: Making the web look more like print.

Cody Brown and Kate Ray graduated from NYU in 2010, taught themselves to code and built Kommons--a platform for crowdsourcing questions through Twitter and attempting to peer pressure an answer from public personalities. It didn't, as they say, get traction. So they built another thing, "Nerd Collider," a platform for hosting text-centric discussions between experts on the web, sort of like the New York Times's Opinionator blog. Their latest product, Scroll, is a simple single-page HTML editor that allows publishers to lay out a fancy-looking page that mimics the flexibility designers have for formatting on the printed page. Bonus: the web page is automatically-formatted to look as good on the web as it does on the iPad.

Now, the two-person company is announcing some funding scared up over the summer. "We've raised $220,000 in seed funding from The Knight Foundation's Program Related Investment Arm," Mr. Brown told Betabeat. "We're part of Knight’s recent initiative to support for-profit startups that help to promote informed and engaged communities."

Scroll is targeting media companies such as The Wall Street Journal, but anyone who wants to publish on the web can use it. Ms. Ray tests the app by making LOL-cats (unfortunately, it looks like Cheezburger scooped that angle today). The pair estimates the app's "time to LOLcat" is somewhere around two minutes.

The money is being used to pay themselves modest salaries and hunt for a third team member. Mr. Brown heads up design, business development and Twitter relations; Ms. Ray is the engineer on the backend. The pair are roommates and work at standing desks on the mezzanine of their sunny Brooklyn apartment. Music is prohibited; Ms. Ray prefers to work with her headphones plugged in but no music playing, she told Betabeat, in order to feel connected to her computer.

Mr. Brown has been interested in new media since he took a journalism class at NYU (he originally wanted to be a filmmaker) and was inspired to launch the online-only student news blog NYU Local, which is still operating four years later. "I actually still love the taste of ramen," the 23-year-old told Betabeat. "I bought a 20-pack yesterday."

Scroll MKR Demo from Cody Brown on Vimeo.

Steve Jobs at MacWorld, New York City, July 17, 2001

After the news about Apple founder Steve Jobs death broke last night, Betabeat reached out to a few members of the New York tech community and asked them to share their thoughts and impressions of the ultimate CEO. Here's what they had to say:

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures:

Steve Jobs is the iconic entrepreneur of the information age. He impacted everyone and everything. It is a great loss.

Marc Cendella, The Ladders:

We’ve lost our Jobs. Life

swipes by, fingerprints reveal:

He adopted us.

David Tisch, Techstars:

When I sat down with the 60 entrepreneurs in the TechStars program last night, we had a moment of silence… No one even blinked. As I addressed the group, the message was simple: Steve Jobs created things people dream of, he changed the world in ways people can only dream of, he impacted each one of our own dreams. As you embark on your journey to create something, I can only hope each of you strive to impact the world in a profound way.

To know that for the next 100 years, companies will be inspired by what Steve Jobs has created, will care about design and user experience, will focus on the customer… that is an impact. It is an impact that every child growing up will inherently and unknowingly feel, as they use his computers, phones, and what's yet to come. My first computer was an Apple IIGS. My computers today are all built by Apple. Hopefully my last computer will be an Apple, too. Only visionaries can impact the future and leave it a better place; he did. I hope we can also make a "dent in the universe", or at least dream to.

Dina Kaplan, blip.tv:

When I think about Steve Job's legacy for entrepreneurs, I think about two things. First, your product has to be good. So good people are excited to use it and feel happy interacting with it. When you're managing a start-up you're juggling a number of glass and rubber balls--some of which can drop and survive, but others which have to always be in the air.  Thinking about what Steve Jobs accomplished at Apple focuses your mind on the importance of a strong base for your company, which is always product.

Second, I remember hearing him say that the Apple Store was the best marketing the company ever did. I love that. Build a great product and showcase it in a wonderful way, and your hard work is done. It's simple, clean, inspirational and motivating.

Scott Heiferman, Meetup:

A friend I haven't heard from since 1990 just tweeted: "@heif Heard the news. Became teenager again. Heard you preaching the gospel of Jobs."

Obviously, he was a lifelong hero.

Chris Dixon, Hunch:

My entire life has been shaped by computers and from the Apple II to the iPhone it was always computers invented by Steve Jobs.  Every technology entrepreneur looked up to him as the greatest innovator and entrepreneur we'd ever seen - and will likely ever see again.  His passing is just an incredibly sad day for the tech world but most importantly his family and friends.

Bre Pettis, Makerbot:

My family had a software company called "Software Productions" that made children's software for the Apple II+. The programmers that worked on the software were 17 and 18 year old hackers and as a 10 year old, these guys programming software for the Apple II+ were magicians that could make the computer sing. Those programmers were my childhood heroes. I daydreamed that I would be as cool as them when I grew up. I remember being in school and there was an Apple II+ in the classroom and I was so proud that I knew how to make it work and could edit the hex code and hack it to make my characters in the game wizardry have 10 million gold pieces. That computer opened up the world for geeks like me in the 80's and inspired a generation of young people to understand technology and use it creatively.

Those early computer experiences have led me to start a 3D printer company called MakerBot to bring 3D printing to average person and to the classrooms of the world so that young people can have that same rush that I felt with the Apple II+. Every creative project I've ever done was done on hardware that Steve Jobs had a hand in. The beautiful style and the focus on user friendly interfaces changed the face of computing and made it easy to use for people to be creative. His work is an inspiration and he was taken too early and will be missed by everyone who has ever appreciated an Apple product..

Charlie O'Donnell, First Round Capital:

I teach a course called Intro to Tech Ventures at Fordham.  I don't really care too much if they write a winning business plan or build an app that gets a million downloads.  I want them to walk out of the class thinking that they can change the world driven by passion for quality, caring about customers, and being resilient--and that's what Steve Jobs did.  He went from being some kid in a garage to changing the way we live and how we interact with each other.  It's probably the second greatest story ever told.

Avner Ronen, Boxee:

Like many other entrepreneurs I am an Apple fanboy. Standing in lines to get the latest device. Hitting 'refresh' on my browser reading a "live" blog covering their latest product announcement. Jobs have changed the world for the better in numerous ways. He challenged and inspired everyone else to build better products. He made users expect more. He is responsible for spreading joy among millions of people.

His commencement speech from 2005 has been an inspiration on a personal level as well. Like many others I will share it with my kids when they grow up. It is sad he died at such a young age, but it seems he lived a full and great life, true to his principals and leaving behind a legacy that will live on for generations.

Mike Brown, Aol Ventures:

I remember buying my first iPhone and thinking to myself, 'wow, this is a truly unique user experience and what an amazing device.' It was a surprise and delight moment that I'd only experienced once before in my life when interacting with a consumer product [the other being flying on a Virgin Atlantic plane]. He really entrenched my belief that the true winners are those that make beautiful and highly functional experiences for consumers. Overall, his legacy will likely be unmatched and he already serves as an awesome inspiration to me and others who aspire to be the next generation of Jobs, Branson, etc.

Ricky Van Veen, College Humor:

Like many now, the way I tend to hear about notable deaths is via text message. And my reaction is usually "Oh, that's too bad." With Steve Jobs, it was different. I didn't even know how to respond. And that's how I felt when I read it--a full-body visceral reaction to the news. I then realized what a subtle and odd tribute it is to a technology innovator to have the news of his death carried by a product that was his brainchild.

Few things upset me more than unrealized potential. Steve saw industry after industry for what they *could* be, and not for what they are, and then made them better for everyone. He unlocked their potential. And I think about that in terms of Steve's life. Even with all he accomplished in his unfairly short time here, I'll still always wonder what else was bound to come out of that curious and brilliant mind. For people in the technology industry, yesterday we lost more than an innovator. We lost a role model, and a paragon of excellence. An example to the rest of us of how good we could be -- if we could just be Steve Jobs.

Apple Store on 5th Avenue, with a tribute to Steve Jobs spray-painted on a temporary construction barrier. October 5, 2011

Anil Dash, Activate:

The lesson I take from Steve Jobs' life isn't about any products or software, but much more about the channeling of ambition. Many, many people are driven and have lofty goals, but he made clear that you can only really capitalize on grandiose ambitions by channeling the energy of lots of other people towards that vision, and that's an amazingly powerful skill.

It's akin to James Brown; He's enormously influential on even the music we hear on the radio today, but he didn't play the drums or the horns on any of his big hits. He wasn't even that great of a singer. He just knew how to articulate a vision for how things should be in a way that would bring the best out of others.

And Jobs was similar to that, especially in that he recognized he wasn't just making technology, he was shaping _culture_. He acted like that from nearly the beginning of his career, at a time when such a idea seemed ludicrously grandiose. Just as Gates seemed wildly ambitious for imagining everyone would use a computer and use software, Jobs seemed crazy for imagining everyone would use a computer (in perhaps an unrecognizable form) to shape the way that culture is created. But as ever, what seems crazy is often just early.

Lauren Leto, Bnter:

Steve Jobs was a role model for us all in the most true sense of the word, not just a name to repeat as someone you'd like to resemble but an imposing persona to have in mind while we pitch, while we plan, while we provide. The generations before Jobs believed invention came from making objects fancier, adding bells and whistles, Jobs decided innovation was making objects simpler, making them intuitive. It's because of Jobs that our generation is no longer inventing, we're breaking things down.

Cody Brown, Commons Labs:

The first computer I ever owned was an iBook. I was 13, the processor was a blazing 600 Mhz, and my friends and family wanted me to buy a Dell. I could see their points about Apple being too 'niche' but I caved and I bought the iBook and I became a Mac person in the generic way a lot of people become Mac people. I'd spend hours on the MacRumors forums, I'd try to convince everyone I met to switch to Mac, and I repeatedly tried to get my parents to buy Apple stock. They didn't, but my grandma eventually caught wind of this and gave me 50 shares of stock for my birthday. Half those shares were sold this year to keep my company running when it was on the verge of falling apart. I made a long bet on Jobs and he returned the favor.

When I read that he passed last night I got quiet and I wanted to be alone. I never met steve jobs, I never even emailed him but I feel like he's been with with me and he's been a friend since I bought my first mac 10 years ago. There is nothing more anxiety inducing than the constant creation of new technology and Jobs, for so long, has countered this emotion with awe. When Jobs is on stage, Moore's Law and our own potential have always been positively correlated but he's never taken for granted that this happens naturally. I wanted nothing more than to meet him because I, like so many, craved to see what he was like off stage when things are hard and the answers aren't clear. But we don't have that option anymore, we only have recording of his life and his art which we often clutch in the palm of our hands. We've lost our leader in technology and I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't also accept that we lost a moral and religious leader. Jobs spoke with a lucid philosophical clarity that was unmatched by anyone in tech and his endorsement meant everything. Those who had it, no longer can take it for granted and those who tried to get it, now need to think about why. I think we're going to do a lot of wandering now and I think we have a lot of hard questions to ask ourselves that we may have previously ignored. I think he'd say that this is good.

All pictures via Getty Images

"Magnificent coinage from @CodyBrown: 'digitalvegetarianism,'" Jeff Jarvis tweeted recently. If you Googled, you might have thought he was referring to the L.A.-based lifestyle blog and SEO experiment, but actually Mr. Jarvis just got it wrong. The "coinage" is digital veganism, a phrase start-up founder and recent NYU grad Cody Brown has been slinging around since even before his roommate quit Facebook and Twitter in a public huff.

We had heard Mr. Brown refer to the open source, decentralized anti-Facebook Diaspora as "digital veganism" before. But what does it mean? We asked him to explain.

"I see it as sort of a recurring decorum when I talk to people about the internet," he said. "And the decorum strikes me as similar to the kind of conversations I have when I talk to people who are vegan. In many ways veganism is about rejection of certain things. It’s saying I can’t do this, I can’t participate in this because it’s about giving someone power or communicating something you think is unethical. And all of those are totally valid arguments from people they can make in whatever way they want. But it became a kind of lifestyle when it’s dropped in the way of saying, 'I’m not on Facebook. I don't contribute to closed platforms like Facebook.'"

"I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being a vegan or being a digital vegan. But it’s just funny that it’s sort of reinventing itself in this," he said. No one has proved that open systems are philosophically better, he said.

The issue caused friction when his roommate Daniel Bachhuber, until then a prolific social media user, quit Facebook and Twitter on grounds that "open systems need more of my attention, and it’s time to vote with my feet."

"I would get into great fights with him about this," Mr. Brown said. "Him not being on Twitter was causing problems. Because I'd be like, 'Danny, did you see that shit that blew up on Twitter today' and he’s like, 'uh.' Eventually he came back."

Mr. Bachhuber returned to Twitter and Facebook at the end of March, when "pragmatism won out over idealism." "WELCOME BACK," Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Brown and Ms. Ray had been working on Kommons, a site that uses Twitter to pressure public figures to answer questions. You pose a question to a specific person and others "back" it so your target can't ignore it as easily. Of course, this only works if enough people are using Kommons--which right now, they aren't--and the pair has been talking about pivoting the idea.

"We built multiple iterations of a site with a scaling open platform mindset and watched many others in the space," Mr. Brown writes. "What we found was that helping a specific community talk to each other (like the Silicon Valley startup scene) is a manageable challenge with clear objectives—helping multiple communities talk to each other is substantially more difficult because it requires a lot of personal attention.

"So instead of fighting that we’ve created a design that’s flexible—one that allows us to create a unique environment for a particular discussion. We can customize who can participate in a discussion, the weight certain people have in that discussion, the length of time it’s open, the design of the prompt/invites, rewards for specific actions, and contextual data on the people participating."

Nerd Collider is aiming to be a salon, like Quora, but with a few twists. They've put some more thought into how the design can stimulate discussion. The first question includes a quote from Harry Potter and a TED video of MIT researcher Deb Roy talking about he had cameras installed in his house. Then comes the prompt, like on the S.A.T.: "If you could record yourself in the same way that Deb Roy recorded his son, would you do it?"

The site has a couple bugs right now, but the design is simpler and more intuitive compared to Quora, which seems to get more complicated all the time. The creators of the discussion invite specific people to answer, who then have just one vote to cast on a response they like. Quora collects unanswered questions (arguably the site's biggest fault right now), encourages users to spend time on the site and relies on search traffic as well as email notifications to get users on the site, just like all the Q&A sites that came before it.

But Nerd Collider will be a collection of discussions curated by users who will take care of asking the question, finding intelligent people to answer it and nudging the discussion along. "Nerd Collider is a platform-publication hybrid—we’ve built a discussion app designed to be customized by editors," Mr. Brown said.

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