Note the whiteboard. (Photo: YEC)

It's awfully hard to learn entrepreneurship out of a book, or even out of Hacker News comment threads. Sometimes, you just need to pin down someone who's been there for an answer. But not every newbie has access to a high-powered mentor. That's where the Young Entrepreneur Council wants to help, with its #StartupLab initiative.

#StartupLab is a Facebook application built by the Young Entrepreneur Council in a partnership with Citi, which you can access here. The organization also gives it away to organizations ranging from Junior Achievement to local high school enthusiast groups, so they can embed it on their own pages and distribute to their members. Through, users can access videos, free ebooks, and free lessons.

But perhaps the most exciting prospect is the live Q&As. Every Thursday, an entrepreneur gives up an hour of his time for a live chat. Participants have ranged from Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian to Foodspotting’s Soraya Darabi. You can either ask a question during the chat, or in advance (in exchange for tweeting about it in advance, that is).

When Betabeat arrived at the Contently offices for a behind-the-scenes look at one such live chat, we were greeted by Young Entrepreneur Council founder Scott Gerber and quickly ushered into a small room with a hand-written "Recording in Progress" sign taped to the door. Contently cofounder Shane Snow was already cloistered inside, somewhat nervously reviewing his instructions for the livestream. (He quietly reminded himself to make sure it actually shut off at the end.)

“These are people asking him about what it’s like to be in the day-to-day of a real entrepreneur,” Mr. Gerber explained. “We think that there’s value in that, because peer-to-peer mentorship is pretty powerful for younger folks.” Viewers range from middle school kids to 40-year-old founders.

"Where we can deliver the best of both worlds is getting people who have a certain experience, that are relatable, that are not necessarily just the Steve Cases and the Jeff Bezoses of the world," said. Mr. Gerber. "We can begin to build this bridge that really leads from the zero to sixty moment," he added.

“We’re only a month in, and we’re already starting to see some traction, so I know we’re doing something right,” said Mr. Gerber. The number of views peaked at around 7,000. Mr. Gerber later told us that the average viewer watches for 30 minutes, and the program is growing by 200 percent month-over-month.

Finally, the clock struck 3 p.m. and it was time for the Q&A to begin. First Mr. Snow introduced himself: “I grew up tinkering with computers, tinkering with the Internet when it came to our dialup." At 16 he started his own online greeting card business--and was promptly banned from Internet-based businesses until he moved out, by his parents, who didn't quite buy everything was on the up-and-up and there was no hacking involved.

The questions came quickly after that, from "When do you know when to pivot the business?" to "How do you manage spending your own savings on a business?" to "I'm a newcomer to the startup business, what should I first?" (Mr. Snow's answer: Join a startup, and start seeing how things work.)

In a brief chat afterward, we asked Mr. Snow what had inspired him to take the time out of his day for such a philanthropic endeavor. He admitted that, as a representative of Contently--which, as a platform that pairs publishers with writers for projects like sponsored posts, is very much surfing the content marketing wave--he makes a point of appearing on panels and the like. But it's also part and parcel of a what-goes-around-comes-around philosophy. “Hopefully, I will be at, like, 10 levels higher than this five years from now. But in order to get to that, people will have to help me. So I got to return the favor,” Mr. Snow explained.

As for the future of the program, Mr. Gerber pointed out that, since folks are signing up via Facebook, YEC automatically gets a lot of aggregated information about the people participating. “Imagine if you’re able to create unlimited amounts of personalized tracks at mass scale--that would basically be a bigger opportunity than having any one-to-one mentorship opportunity, because that’s not scalable.”

In the meantime, though, there're questions to be answered. Next at bat: Lucas Buick of Hipstamatic, who’ll be answering questions next Thursday at 3 p.m.

But back in the day, those first 23 companies were all the rage. Like shiny new toys, they were exciting and fascinating. There was even a reality television show about them. So even though their three-month, highly-competitive startup accelerator program has ended, these companies are still around. They didn’t just vanish into thin air. (Well, some of them did).

But all of this begs the question, where are these companies now? How have they fared in the big, bad world? Did they flop? Or surpass expectations?

We didn’t know, so we decided to find out. And it turns out that we weren’t the only ones who were curious about what these companies have been up to.

“When we launched, everything was a concern,” managing director David Tisch told Betabeat in an email. “We were new, a startup.” New York City, he said, brought a unique set of challenges and advantages to these first two classes, but you never how things might turn out. So, Mr. Tisch, what’s the verdict? Have the first 23 New York City companies done TechStars proud?

“The progress shown so far is very promising,” Mr. Tisch said, “and I expect a few very big companies to emerge. There are some early standouts who have shown progress on the product side, revenue side, and team side.”

In the last year, about half of the companies raised over a million dollars in funding from investors (in addition to TechStars's initial $18,000 in each company) and only two companies failed. A third company, FriendsList, also failed, but its two cofounders shifted gears and transformed into another company, Timehop, a popular app that has since raised $1.1 million.

“I think the quality of the people we funded stands out to me,” Mr. Tisch added. “[And] as I look back at the companies from our first two classes at TechStars NYC, I am confident we have funded some amazing teams who are building big businesses.” -Jess Schiewe

The NYC Startup Job Fair was packed with tons of New York City tech companies and startups on the hunt for that oh-so-hard-to-find tech talent, specifically engineers and developers. Hopeful applicants, some fresh-faced, some not so much, squeezed past each other picking up job descriptions and dropping off resumes and business cards.

All photos by Ben Weitzenkorn.

bring on the advertorial army

Contently, a startup which managing an online marketplace that matches freelance writers with work, has raised $2 million in a series A round led by Lightbank, the firm run by Groupon investor and board member Eric Lefkofsky. Local investors like ff Venture Capital and Consigliere Brand Capital also participated.  

The funding was reported by Ad Age, which notes that the company pulled a small pivot, deciding to help journalists connect with brands looking for editorial content, instead of matching them with traditional media outlets. Having played the freelance game ourselves, this is a way better business model. There is little money in freelance journalism and most editors at these publications already have a stable of writers and tons of pitches to sort through.

Brands, on the other hand, are increasingly discovering the value of having blogs and forums full of editorial content that bring in potential customers and raise their SEO. Contently has worked with companies like American Express, Best Buy, Rackspace, Mint and Elle.

The company currently has six employees including founders Shane Snow Joe Coleman and David Goldberg.

With Demo Day coming up tomorrow, ten out of 11 companies is the number to beat. That's ratio of startups from TechStars inaugural class that got funded. But keep in mind not everyone had a killer Demo Day. For some, funding didn't come till a few months down the line. "It's like the SATs," one mentor told Betabeat of Demo Day. "Some people are good at testing, some aren't."

There's a lot riding on tomorrow's event--the funding environment isn't quite as frothy as it was for TechStarsNY 1.0, and the companies are well aware of that, mentors told Betabeat. "It's a more fragile period of time than last Demo Day," said the mentor. "They realize that they gotta be on their game." As such, companies have been pounding out the decks, practicing demos for each other almost every week.

Perhaps it's because the cameras aren't around, or perhaps because TechStars New York is more established, but there’s less ego in this class and fewer type-A personalities. Investors promise that this Demo Day will still have plenty of showmanship and say this season’s TechStars class is fundamentally very solid. Many companies have partnerships; some have revenue. Almost all have raised money or gotten commitments–several New York VCs told us they had invested in at least one of the startups. Two companies won’t even really be raising money, one mentor said, because they don’t need it."

Curious to know who pivoted and who's already closed their round? Check out our cheat sheet, get your game face on for tomorrow and pick your ponies in the comments.

Update: SideTour announced their funding today on TechCrunch, a $1.5 million round led by RRE and Foundry Group. We noted in the slideshow they already had their lead investors locked down, but it seems unlikely now they will try to grow their round tomorrow.

These are not the blogger you're looking for

It's not a million dollar round on the first day of class, but Contently.com, which just joined the second class of TechStars NY, has raised a $335,000 debt round from Founder Collective.

The start-up has positioned itself as the anti-content farm, helping freelance journalists to manage their careers and big brands to produce editorial content that stands out, all while avoiding the SEO optimized schlock pumped out by Demand Media and others.

Speaking from personal experience, there isn't much money in making freelance journalists your clients. But connecting professional writers with big brands looking for some high class advertorial could be a strong play. A corporation can afford to pay premium freelance rates, since they are chasing pageviews and online engagement, not a return on their dollars via advertising.

“Contently is something that literally every one of our portfolio companies could use," Founder Collective Managing Partner Eric Paley told TechCrunch. “Contently makes content marketing turnkey for it’s growing base of clients."

The danger here is that what makes for really effective content marketing, take the wildly popular OkCupid Trends blog, is an authentic voice and a deep engagement with the subject. Yes, Contently is finding experienced writers to help create great posts. But a freelancer is never going to have the voice and insight of a person who actually works at the company, the path taken by blogging stars like Robert Scoble and Marco Arment.