Mr. Cohen.

New York Angels, a loose affiliation of angel investors that hear pitches and conduct diligence together, just announced that vice chairman Brian Cohen will take over as chairman. He replaces David Rose, founder of the group that has invested more than $45 million in the last ten years.

Mr. Cohen is heavily involved in running the organization's small staff and coordinating the Angels' monthly meetings. As chairman, he will "focus on making the New York Angels the hallmark mentor organization to the exploding startup community in New York City," according to a press release. He also plans to expand the group's presence outside of New York.

Mr. Cohen, who was the first investor in the web's social media darling of the moment, Pinterest, is hoping to give the Angels a bit of an update. He plans to increase the organization's speed as well as its reach "to make it easier for aspiring entrepreneurs to get funded faster by smarter angels," according to the release. Mr. Cohen will expand the organization's mentorship and education programs, and hopes to partner with more angel investor groups across the country.

A decade ago, New York Angels was the only game in town. Today, with money flying fast, the Angels network has fallen a bit behind. New York has a growing number of startups, but it also has an increasing number of angel investors interested in seeding them.

New York Angels is not a fund and does not invest collectively, though members collaborate on due diligence. Each member makes individual investment decisions. The New York Angels process includes, as we wrote last year, an online application, a pitch to a screening committee, a meeting to refine the pitch, a second pitch at the monthly breakfast and a due diligence meeting before the interested angels will follow up with the entrepreneurs individually.

The network's sluggishness prompted one entrepreneur, Adam Neary, to call the process "broken." By contrast, the angel group Founder Collective is known for being efficient. And given that a room of 500 investors now has only 24 hours to decide whether to give money to a Y Combinator startup, the Angels have found themselves shut out of a few deals.

Could this be a new era for the Angels? Mr. Cohen has created the OPEL Award for Entrepreneurial Service Leadership in New York City, established liaisons with New York University and Columbia University, and created a “Future Angels” internship program for MBA and finance grad students. New York Angels is also working on its refreshed database, Gust, which is similar to AngelList.

Mr. Cohen also has "made it a requirement for every member of the New York Angels’ Board of Directors to contribute in some significant way to improving the opportunities for bright entrepreneurs in New York City."

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.

Mr. Rose

Now, it seems, Mr. Rose is trying to adapt to these modern times through AngelSoft, the New York company he founded in 2004 to make software for investors to help them manage deal flow and collaborate with investors.

As Bloomberg reports, AngelSoft is launching an online marketplace to hookup potential investors with the right  to entrepreneurs and hoping "financial matchmaking" ensues. Along with the pivot, AngelSoft will change its name to Gust. See, thinking like a startup already.

Bloomberg says the matchmaking function is available to AngelSoft's 150 VC funds and 35,000 angel investors, although it doesn't specify how many of them are actively using the software. The idea is that investors will use the software to seek out new opportunities, track portfolios, and weed through requests. Gust will also have features for startups to privately post their progress and manage relationships with investors.

It's still debateable whether investors and startups will bite, especially considering competition from platforms like AngelList, more closely associated with the current funding landscape and without the cumbersome legacy associations. AngelList founder Naval Ravikant told Bloomberg that 12,000 startups have applied since he launched in February, 2010, including 68 just yesterday. But perhaps the better question might be whether a standardized online platform can compete with the proliferating stream of hackathons, incubators, and accelerators that help expose investors to startups and vice versa. At least according to Compete's numbers, traffic for AngelList appears to be down significantly from last July.

OKAY, OKAY, IF YOU'RE GOING TO LECTURE US... LigerTail, which powers a promoted topics-esque widget, raised $50,000 from one anonymous investor after trundling along for three years. We reached founder Leonid Kozhukh, who did not want to talk about money. "None of these details are pertinent right now. We're focused on getting publisher adoption," he said when Betabeat asked who the investor was and where he plans to direct the funding. "All we want to talk about is the product and the ongoing problems in advertising that we're trying to solve." We scheduled an interview to talk about the idea, which is pretty cool, tomorrow. "Do me a favor and show LT to whoever is in charge of bizdev at Betabeat," Mr. Kozhukh added. We're going to spend the interim sorting out our feelings about indie movie references as start-up names.

MOAR RAISES. FanBridge raised a zillion dollars from 12 investors! Wait. Co-founder Noah Dinkin talks us down. "Just a delay in filing the form" from their January raise.  Consmr, which launched today, will be raising funding soon. "I'm going to take a day to relax, and then we'll start raising," founder Ryan Charles said.

SOFT, BUT NOT SO ROSY. Angelsoft, the VC-centric deal flow management platform co-founded by fading New York Angel David Rose, has moved out of the Rose Tech Ventures space on 23rd St. into 5,000 sq. ft. on 29th. Further indication that Rose Tech, which booted entrepreneurs when it closed down its incubator about six months ago, is defunct? "Rose Tech is pretty much adrift at sea," a source said.

STEAMY, BUT NOT SO SEXY. The New York Technology Bathhouse Meetup is getting together for its third sweaty Russian and Turkish bath techie talk fun times. Five relaxed techies are going. At least they it's not a bait-and-switch like the Startup GarageTalk meetup, which happens in restaurants.

ALL RED EVERYTHING. Check out the guest list for tonight's Red Tie Affair, hosted by Gary Sharma, a man with a red tie, and sponsored by Pepsi. Dave McClure, Jennifer 8 Lee, Brian Stelter, a buncha VCs, Jason Calacanis and some guys who started a company called Foursquare will be there.

“There is a pretty small group of us, really young guys, who are in the fortunate position to be making investments in tech,” Mr. Wohlstadter said, grabbing a seat in an oversize armchair. Ivy League handsome in a white Oxford shirt unbuttoned a few notches below the neck, he bounced his smart phone from palm to palm, flagged down the waitress and ordered a Brooklyn Lager.

“What do you think of Hashable?” Mr. Wohlstadter wondered, name-checking one of his investments.The Observer related our score on the application, which gives users a way to track meetings and awards points for each connection. “Oh, man,” Mr. Wohlstadter laughed. “You need to get out more.”

Mr. Wohlstadter, 23, began funding entrepreneurs a year and half ago—just a few weeks after graduating from Harvard. A friend, Eliot Durbin, also in his 20s, was the driving force behind the creation of Penny Black, and brought Justin on to help source deals and manage investments for a wealthy Wall Street pro. The project grew from there. “A bunch of his friends saw what we were doing and asked to get in,” Mr. Wohlstadter recalled. “Bankers, attorneys—it became sort of an investment club.” In the wake of his early success Wohlstadter joined up with a formal fund, BOLDstart, and a young venture capitalist was born.

“There are a lot of people that want to get involved in all the cool innovation that is going on right now but don’t have the time or energy to do so directly,” Mr. Wohlstadter explained. “That’s where I come in.”

Mr. Wohlstadter isn’t the only young gun pumping money into the Silicon Alley scene these days. David Tisch, Ben Lerer and Josh Kushner (kid brother of Observer owner Jared Kushner), all under 30, have emerged as some of the most prolific investors in town. Each can claim, to varying degrees, experience as a Web entrepreneur, a bond they share with the young founders they fund.

Despite their high profiles, though, it’s still too early to say which, if any, of their bets will pay off. “We’re all just two years in doing this, so for us to have ‘exits’ is rare,” Mr. Tisch, 29, acknowledged. “You can’t be judged on that, so your status comes from the perceived quality of the deals you have done.”

“Young guys are close to the deal flow, the technorati, the hackers,” noted Roger Ehrenberg, an investment banker–turned–angel–turned–venture fund manager.

These investors are working principally at the seed stage, the wobbly early moments of a company’s lifespan when it’s often little more than an idea. Few of these investments, which range from $25,000 to $250,000, will pan out, but they can mean a tremendous windfall in the rare event that the fledgling company turns out to be the next Facebook or Twitter.

Often such investors are referred to as “angels,” a term originally applied to wealthy New Yorkers who risked their money backing Broadway plays. “An angel, in the original sense, was the kind of person who would bet on a dream,” explained David Rose, who began funding tech companies during the heady dot-com days and helped found the early-stage investment group NY Angels. “It’s much more professional now, but there is still an element of that.”

Mr. Tisch, who spends his days running Techstars NY, an incubator of select start-ups from around the nation, prides himself on his swift reflexes. Unlike Messrs. Lerer and Kushner, who invest through formal funds, and thus have to answer to their limited partners, Mr. Tisch is free to jump on any fresh project he finds promising. “In a lot of the deals I do, maybe I didn’t lead the round, but I was the single first person to say, ‘Yes, I’m in,’” he told The Observer. “I can use my gut. I don’t need to answer to anybody. That’s my freedom as an angel.”

The flood of early-stage money has made for a certain giddiness among young entrepreneurs. “I felt like a kid in a candy store,” said Vin Vacanti, recalling how he raised money for his company, Yipit, using Angel List, a online network that matches investors and start-ups. “I was browsing through all these names I had heard of, investors whose blogs I read every day.” Before he knew it, Yipit was being offered more money than he knew how to spend.

For the creators of Greplin, a California-based start-up, the enthusiasm of the local angel scene was almost dizzying. “I flew here to meet Chris Dixon, and he liked the company, and he cut me a check,” founder Daniel Gross recalled. “The next day I get a call from Jordon Cooper at Lerer Ventures saying he heard about me, and then they cut me a check. Less than a day later I get a call from Josh Kushner, saying he’s heard about me from Dixon and Cooper, and then he’s cutting me a check. It was incredible.”

“There’s a lot more interest in seed-stage investing now, from people who really know the sector, and that’s great for local start-ups,” Mr. Dixon, an investor and entrepreneur, told The Observer. “There is a class of older angels here who have built tech companies, and can really add a lot of value to young startups. What screws up New York is all the random rich people from Wall Street and real estate who know nothing about tech but still want to invest. It’s the same network that keeps new restaurants opening.”

For the more experienced angels—those with battle scars acquired by launching their own tech companies—the flood of seed money can be grating. “These founders are talented, and there’s no doubt they have the ability to create a great business,” said Josh Reznick, who built and sold an online marketing company before becoming an angel investor. “But 20 minutes into the conversation, when they should be asking for $50K, they’re talking about $1.5 million, and I’m just flabbergasted, ’cause we’re talking about an idea on a cocktail napkin. There is frankly way too much money that wants to be invested.”

It’s a complaint that offends some of the younger dealmakers. “It pisses me off that people are complaining about the number of angel investors that have entered the market,” Lerer Ventures’ Mr. Cooper, who founded the start-up Hyperpublic, wrote on his blog. “Personally, I welcome anyone who wants to cut a $50K check to support a new product and pull a smart mind out of Wall Street or advertising or any other industry that is not pushing the limits of what can be,” he continued. “I’m not saying all these companies that are getting funded deserve funding or the valuations they are raising at, and many of them will die, but I’d rather see a slew of dead carcasses on the side of the road with a single world-changing product leaping over them on the way to victory.”

Back at the Ace, Mr. Wohlstadter scanned a text message from his girlfriend and fired back a response. “She hates it when I say I’m working and then it turns out I’ve been writing on my blog,” he said.

“There are certain advantages,” he went on, “not having a family yet, just being able to pound it out all hours of the day or night. I am at every single party, every event, and I’ll take a call from a founder at 3 in the morning to talk about a bug in the software.”

He’s also heading down to Austin for SXSW to promote his companies. “I am an evangelizer; I mean, I will talk about this stuff nonstop.”

The lobby was filling up. The Black Keys were on the sound system. A row of figures was pecking away at laptops along a wooden table, faces washed in the white light of their screens. “The angel craze means a lot more funding for new ideas,” Mr. Wohlstadter said. “But often that becomes a sort of tragedy of the commons, you know. All that money, and no one to guide the entrepreneur.”

Disclosure.