This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of Gary's Guide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Hi folks,

The Worldwide Investor Network (WIN) is organizing a first-of-its-kind two-day event on November 13 and 14, bringing together global ecosystem in which 10 top overseas accelerator graduates and exceptional startups will be engaging and pitching the New York venture community. If interested in applying, here's the link (the deadline is October 18). And for any local entrepreneurs who want to attend, use the promo code "win2012" for 30 percent off (valid until October 31).

The good folks at Taap.it are providing startup founders with free iPhone 5 cases custom engraved with their names and those of their startups. Nice! Interested? Go sign up here.

The NYC Next Idea business plan competition, now in its fourth year, is open for applications. Cash prize is $35,000, and the deadline for registration is November 9. Ideas pitched last year included smart vending machines in NYC taxis, intelligent clothes-sizing applications, and real-time marketing analytics platforms.

If you're a fan of robots, you don't wanna miss two awesome upcoming events -- The Future is Robotics + Software this Thursday (it's going to be all about robot operating systems and flying robots) and the Software Engineers Job Fair next Tuesday (which is going to have robots on patrol taking pictures!).

This Friday, October 19, is the agency edition of Walkabout NYC, where you get to go around and check out some of New York's top digital agencies such as Fueled (kickass offices!), Carrot Creative, Area 17, Campfire, Mint Digital, Attention and others. It's free, but spots are limited so make sure to RSVP soon.

It's also Social Week, and a bunch of events are part of it including PivotCon, NY Beta, BlogHer, Mobile Gaming Summit and Glimpse.

And now let's see whats going down in the Alley this week...

Reinventing Engineering Education in the 21st Century
Panelists include Jason Goodman (founder and CEO, 3rd Ward Brooklyn), Debra Sterling (founder and CEO, GoldieBlox), Max Whitney (NYC Resistor) and moderated by Daniel Pianko (partner, University Ventures).
Monday (Oct. 15), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

Entrepreneurs Roundtable 52
With Akihiko Okamoto (CEO of Recruit Incubation Partners)
Tuesday (Oct. 16), 6 p.m. @ NYU Stern Room 2-60, 44 West 4th Street

EdTech Titans of Industry
A discussion with Jose Ferreira (CEO, Knewton), Greg Gunn (entrepreneur in residence, City Light Capital and cofounder, Wireless Generation), Harold Levy (MD, Palm Ventures) and Laurie Racine (founder and MD, Startl).
Tuesday (Oct. 16), 6 p.m. @ Knewton, 100 5th Avenue

Future of Fashion Emerging Startup Series #3
Presenting companies include Perch, D'Marie, ClothesHorse and HandShake. Panelists include Christina Mercando (VP of product, Hunch / eBay) and Veronika Sonsev (CEO and founder, InSparq and cofounder, Women in Wireless)
Tuesday (Oct 16), 7 p.m. @ Projective Space - L.E.S. , 72 Allen Street, 3rd Floor

October Grow Hack Meetup
Detailed growth hacking case study and demo from Patrick Ambron (cofounder and CEO, Brandyourself.com).
Tuesday (Oct 16), 7 p.m. @ AlleyNYC, 500 7th Ave, 17th Floor

Google StreetView Behind the Scenes
A look at some of the challenges and a peek at the Google Street View project from behind the scenes with Luc Vincent (engineering director, Google).
Wednesday (Oct. 17), 5:30 p.m. @ Google NYC, 111 8th Avenue

October NY Enterprise Technology Meetup
Demos by SevOne, AnyPresence, EidoSearch, GoodData, and StoryDesk.
Wednesday (Oct. 17), 6:30 p.m. @ Cooley, 1114 Avenue of the Americas

Queens Tech Meetup 4
Featuring Dean Daniel Huttenlocher (founding dean, CornellNYC) and Greg Pass (founding entrepreneurial officer, CornellNYC and former CTO, Twitter). CornellNYC is a $2 billion project to build an engineering campus on Roosevelt Island and expected to create up to 120,000 tech jobs. Meet two of the guys driving the bus.
Wednesday (Oct. 17), 7 p.m. @ See Exhibition Space, 25-25 44th Drive, Long Island City

The Business of Food E-Commerce
Demos by Ordrin, Blue Apron, Chop Chop Go and Farmigo.
Wednesday (Oct. 17), 7 p.m. @ 4food, 286 Madison Avenue

TimesOpen 2012: Bigger Data and Smarter Scaling
Speakers include Andrew Montalenti (CTO, Parse.ly), James Boehmer (manager search technology, New York Times) and Allan Beaufour (CTO, Chartbeat).
Wednesday (Oct. 17), 7 p.m. @ The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 15th Floor

Glimpse: the Social Discovery Conference
Panelists include Greg Tseng (Tagged), Brett Martin (Sonar), Jared Hecht (GroupMe), Brian Schechter (HowAboutWe), Anna Thomas (LooseCubes) and others.
Thursday (Oct. 18), 6 p.m. @ Bloomberg Headquarters, 731 Lexington Avenue

MeetMoi + Social Exposure Media Present: The Venetian Masquerade Ball
A seductive celebration of the fall, new beginnings and new people. Venetian inspired cocktails, gift bags and an alluring surprise.
Thursday (Oct. 18), 8 p.m. @ Parlor New York, 286 Spring Street

Mobile Gaming Summit 2012 NY
With Chieh Huang (Zynga), Nihal Mehta (Eniac Ventures), Adam Ludwin (RRE), Alex Betancur (JumpRamp Games) and others.
Friday (Oct. 19), 9 a.m. @ Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place

Ladies Who Code Conference
Keynotes include Molly Holzschlag (Open Web Evangelist), Vanessa Hurst (Developers for Good), Emma Persky (Google), Tracy Pesin (Bit.ly) and others.
Saturday (Oct 20), 10 a.m. @ Bloomberg, 731 Lexington Avenue

More events on the horizon...

Future of Web Design (FOWD) NYC on Oct 22 @ New World Stages
New York Software Engineers (NYSE) Job Fair on Oct 23 @ AlleyNYC
Apple vs. Samsung: What The Case Means to Software Development and UX Design on Oct 23 @ Morgan Stanley
Legal Essentials for Startups: Organizing the Entity on Oct 25 @ Anchin
Protect Your Code | IP Law + Founders Experiences on Oct 25 @ AlleyNYC
All Things D: Dive Into Mobile on Oct 29 @ The Ritz-Carlton Battery Park
#Startupfix at Culturefix - Oct 30 on Oct 30 @ Culturefix
Daniweb Presents: Publishers meet Advertisers Cocktail Mixer on Nov 07 @ Highland Park
Funding The Best In Global Innovation on Nov 13 @ SNR Denton
AngelHack Fall 2012 New York City on Nov 17 @ The AlleyNYC

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of Gary's Guide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

K-pop singing sensation Psy's "Gangnam Style" video (you know, the one with the horse dance) just blew past 250 million views and recently set a Guinness World Record for most-liked video on Youtube--and yet it shows no signs of slowing down. So some of my Silicon Valley friends decided to join in on the fun and create their very own "Gangnam STARTUP Style!" version :)

This West Coast reinterpretation stars Ben Parr, Dave McClure, Danielle Morrill, Seth Bannon, Kate Click, Chris Saad, Heather Meeker, Amy Higgins and a whole bunch of folks. Highlights include Dave McClure wearing a giant bowtie and a skirt (or is that a kilt?), David Hornik's cameo appearance on a bicycle and the inimitable Ben Parr channeling Psy (outside Google's Android building) so well he just might have a new career on his hands!

Missed the ERA demo day last week? No worries! Betabeat has you covered with a round-up of the latest class of startups, including Bizodo, Jetaport, Juniper & Trade, VidRocket, Houdini, CaterCow, AngelPolitics, SaleMove, Healthy Chic and mxHero.

A couple of my friends, Charlie Kemper (Revel Partners, ERA) and Shai Goldman (Silicon Valley Bank), are organizing a two-day kiteboarding event on October 6 and 7, bringing together entrepreneurs and founders for a great mix of kitesurfing and networking in the Hamptons. Interested? Go check it out!

Don't forget, next week is Advertising Week, with a ton of panels and parties happening all over town.

Peter Bell (SVP engineering, General Assembly) with my friend Kathryn Minshew (founder and CEO, The Daily Muse) will be doing a free livestream this Friday at 3:30p.m. on the topic of How To Create A Great Presentation.

Wix Lounge invites you to apply for their Design-a-Wix-athon, a contest pitting fifty designers against one another to see who can build the most face meltingly awesome website using Wix.com in just one hour. (Plus, there's a cash prize of $500.)

And in totally random (but awesome) bit of news, here's a snapshot of two Starfleet captains--Kirk and Picard, specifically--complaining about their cable service on Twitter.

And now let's see whats going down in the Alley this week...

Social Entrepreneurship Party
With Reshma Saujani (former deputy public advocate and founder, Girls Who Code), Nihal Mehta (cofounder & CEO, LocalResponse), Dave Kerpen (cofounder & CEO, Likeable Media) and Caroline Ghosn (founder & CEO, Levo League).
Monday (Sept. 24), 6 p.m. @ Likeable Media, 240 W. 37th St., 7th Floor

Muck Rack's #MuckedUp in NYC with NBC News
Muck Rack cofounder (and Shorty Awards co-creator) @Gregory Galant will lead a conversation with the amazing NBC News Social Media Team.
Monday (Sept. 24), 6 p.m. @ NBC News, 30 Rockefeller Plaza

NYC Data Business Meetup #8
With Dwight Merriman (CEO & cofounder, 10Gen), Arnab Gupta (CEO and founder, Opera Solutions) and K Young (CEO and cofounder, Mortar Data).
Monday (Sept. 24), 6 p.m. @ Bloomberg LP, 731 Lexington Ave, 7th Floor

Coming To America: Immigration Entrepreneurship & the Economy
With Congressman Michael Grimm (introduced the Startup Act into the House in May), Robert Greifeld (CEO, Nasdaq OMX), Liz Elkiss (U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service), Kate Hipwell (Regional Director of the Americas, UK Border Agency) and Dario Mutabdzija (cofounder & President, Blueseed).
Monday (Sept. 24), 6:30 p.m. @ New York Law School, 185 W. Broadway

Personal Democracy Media Presents: An Evening with Steven Johnson
Author Steven Johnson discusses his new book, Future, Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age. Other speakers include Beth Noveck (first US Deputy CTO and founder, White House Open Gov Initiative), Tina Rosenberg (New York Times) and Clay Shirky (bestselling author and NYU Professor of Interactive Telecommunications).
Monday (Sept. 24), 7:30 p.m. @ New York Law School, 185 W. Broadway

Enterprise Insights: Go Big (Data) Or Go Home
Panelists include Edouard Servan-Schreiber (director for solution architecture, 10gen), Richard Daley (founder & chief strategy officer, Pentaho), Patrick Angeles (solutions architect, Cloudera) and Kathleen Rohrecker (director of marketing, Revolution Analytics). Moderated by Andrew Brust (big data blogger for ZDNet and CEO, Blue Badge Insights).
Tuesday (Sept. 25), 6 p.m. @ Microsoft, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor

Open Hardware Summit 2012
The world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware, a venue to discuss and draw attention to the rapidly growing open-source hardware movement.
Thursday (Sept. 27), 8:30 a.m. @ Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St.

Entrepreneurs Roundtable 51
With guest speaker Raju Rishi (Sigma Partners).
Thursday (Sept. 27), 6 p.m. @ NYU Stern, 44 West 4th St., Rm 2-60

Fast Company Event at Aloft Harlem // Destination Design
With Geoff Cook (Base Design New York), Kelsey Falter (PopTip) and Chris Paik (Thrive Capital).
Thursday (Sept. 27), 6 p.m. @ Aloft Harlem, 2296 Frederick Douglass Blvd

Queens Tech Meetup 3
Presenters include Amol Sarva (Founder of Virgin Mobile USA, Angel Investor and Founder, Cfund), Sonar (a mobile social discovery app), Storybox (a social collaging tool) and Rukkus (an event ticketing platform).
Thursday (Sept. 27), 7 p.m. @ Hunter's Point Plaza Rooftop, 47-40 21st St., 10th Floor, Long Island City

Startup Grind NYC
With Scott Kurnit (founder of About.com and Keep.com). Scott led About.com as CEO through IPO and its growth to a public market value of $1.5 billion.
Thursday (Sept. 27), 7:30 p.m. @ The Alley, 500 7th Ave

NYC Startup Job Fair
Connecting qualified students and recent graduates with exciting and innovative New York-based startups.
Friday (Sep 28), 1 p.m. @ World Trade Center 7, 250 Greenwich St

Cleanweb Hackathon NYC
The opportunity to apply web, mobile and social media technologies to resource constraint issues, such as energy, waste, transporation, and water efficiency.
Friday (Sept. 28), 7 p.m. @ AlleyNYC, 500 7th Ave, 17th Floor

2012 World Maker Faire New York
MAKE magazine's 3rd Annual Maker Faire in New York, showcasing creative and resourceful people in the areas of science and technology, engineering, food, and arts and crafts.
Saturday (Sept. 29), 10 a.m. @ New York Hall of Science, 47-01 111th Street, Queens

More events on the horizon...
NYTECH Presents: Content Marketing: Beyond Liking and Tweeting on Oct 02 @ Anchin
Daniweb Presents: Advertising, Marketing and Media Mayhem! on Oct 02 @ Slate Lounge
Feast Conference Hackathon on Oct 04 @ Eyebeam
Growth Hacking with Noah Kagan on Oct 04 @ AlleyNYC
FOCUS100 Symposium and Pitch Bootcamp on Oct 05 @ Ogilvy & Mather
Investor Feedback Forum on Oct 11 @ Microsoft
Talk NYC Presents: 2nd Annual Tech Madison Avenue Conference on Oct 17 @ Crosby Street Hotel
Ignite NYC 15 - Truth is a Moving Target: Oddities Anomalies and Wonders with Data on Oct 22 @ Sheraton New York Hotel
All Things D: Dive Into Mobile on Oct 29 @ The Ritz-Carlton Battery Park
Ad:Tech New York on Nov 07 @ Javits Convention Center

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Join ERA! Climb this mountain with Charlie Kemper!

Well, here we are again: Time to unleash a new class of freshly minted accelerator graduates upon the New York tech scene. This morning investors, reporters and supporters gathered in the Starfleet Academy-like environs of IAC's Chelsea headquarters for Demo Day.

But first, a few facts and figures from managing director Murat Aktihanoglu re: the state of ERA itself. This was the third class of companies to graduate from the accelerator, which launched in 2011. The previous two ERA classes now boast a collective valuation of over $100 million.

But, "we could do nothing without you and the New York community," said Mr. Aktihanoglu, pointing out that the most recent Entrepreneur's Roundtable meetup had more than 1,000 guests, with a line out the door. (Betabeat can attest to this--and frankly, as we left, it looked like the situation was getting testy.)

Perhaps the shining moment of the day, however, was the brief intermission, during which ERA managing director Charlie Kemper told a tale that, while inspiring, should scare off a few would-be hiking partners. He talked several of the ERA CEOs into participating in a three-mile race, called the Spartan Sprint. They arrived to discover it was actually more like 11 miles long, and it was on a ski mountain. The race had to be paused in the middle for a freaking tornado. And every single one of the ERA members finished the course (eventually).

"Perseverance is more than a word on an office poster." Talk about things you don't want to have to learn the hard way!

On to the survivors:

Bizodo

The founders of Bizodo (which we initially heard as "Risotto," by the way) took the stage in matching red sweaters to the strains of Pink Floyd's "Money." But then you've gotta do what jazzing up you can when your pitch revolves around paperwork. It's not a particularly sexy sector, but the concept is promising: Think of the time devoted to filling out a W2. HR sends you the document; you download and print the document; you sign the document; you scan the document; HR downloads and prints the document. It goes in a filing cabinet.

"We are changing the way that people exchange documents online," promised CEO Jonathon Ende (who's also one of the brains behind AlleyNYC). "We are changing the way that business process documents." Their plan: A suite of services enabling users to create, manage and exchange forms--all in the cloud. HR is their initial target market, but the team'll be monitoring what HR does with the tools for new use cases. Data savvy!

They're raising $1.5 million, with the promise that the term sheet process, at least, will be seamless.

Jetaport 

The CEO of Jetaport, on the other hand, strolled out to "Danger Zone," which is not something us nervous fliers want to associate with the travel booking experience. However, Mr. Jason Shames made a strong case: Orbitz and its ilk might be publicly traded and the market may look mature, but these guys have done, basically, jack shit in the way of innovation over the last decade. The biggest leap forward of recent years, he pointed out, has been the metasearch--but Kayak has basically the exact same user experience as it offered at launch.

That's a problem, because no one has touched the massive headache that is group travel. Planning a group trip currently requires, on average, searching 9.5 times over a 22-day period. Then there's the fact that someone always ends up carrying a couple thousand dollars on her credit card until her fellow travelers pay up. Jetaport proposes to simplify this process, by providing a platform that allows people to plan and purchase together, but with each trip remaining independent. A partnership with Expedia will help stock the company's inventory.

The company is asking $500,000, with "about" $100,000 already invested.

Juniper and Trade 

Juniper and Trade CEO Sandy Lin launched her pitch by chronicling the many ways we're moving away from mass produced and toward the custom and the artisanal--in food, in crafts. She and her cofounders want to bring the revolution to home goods, with an Etsy-like platform to connect buyers with a curated selection of makers. A telling example of the kind of vendor the company works with with: RecycledBrooklyn, a furniture company run by a pair of brothers who make things like benches upholstered with locally sourced burlap sacks.  

"We're here to make buying a custom piece easier and better than buying from a store," said Ms. Lin.

The company is raising a seed fund, but offered no specifics.

VidRocket 

A few numbers about YouTube, courtesy of VidRocket CEO Rami: The site is still the third most visited on the web. In 2011, it received 1 trillion total views, and currently clocks around 4 billion views per day--2.8 million every minute. The odds of your video standing out amid a sea of content? Slim. That's not a huge problem if you're someone who uploaded a video of your sleepy kitten passing out in its Iams, but if you're a brand that's devoted actual money to a video for marketing purposes, that's a little more alarming.

VidRocket wants to help, with platform to manage one's various campaigns, gather reactions in one dashboard, and provide analytics.

The company is seeking $750,000.

Houdini 

This company's tagline is "human labor in the cloud." Alterative title? Mechanical Turk on steroids, as founder Muhammad At-Tauhidi called it. So what, precisely, is the nature of those steroids? Mr. At-Tauhidi had a simple answer: Quality assurance. Houdini breaks potential workers into categories--researchers, writers, etc.--then vets them. Mechanical Turk, on the other hand, has become "almost synonymous with low quality and poor results," he said. So far, Houdini has signed more than a dozen customers and completed half a million tasks, adding up to 8,000 man hours of work, for $55,734 in gross revenue. There are 380 companies waiting to get into the private beta.

The company is seeking seed money, but didn't provide a number.

CaterCow

As anyone who's ever watched a Bridezilla's marathon will no doubt attest, the process of finding and paying a caterer is frustrating at best, nightmarish at worst. On the other side of the transaction, caterers are constantly on the hunt for new business. Chris Collins, CEO of CaterCow, put it even more baldly: "Catering is broken." Enter his company, which is an online platform for the sale of catering packages, which aims to make the process "fun, easy, and transparent." So far they've sold over a hundred catering packages, netting more than $9,000--on which the company takes an 11 percent cut.

The company is seeking funding, but didn't give a number.

Angel Politics 

There are 87,000 candidates running for political office every year, and 95 percent of the time, it's the candidate with the most cash that'll win. That's according to Jessie Sandoval, cofounder and "chief political scientist" at Angel Politics, which aims to offer "big data fundraising and analytics platform for political campaigns." In other words, the company wants to be the Trulia of politics (which just went public, by the way). The team has aggregated 55,000 candidate records, plus 10 million donor records, adding up to 20 billion data points to work with. "We are building America’s political genome," said Mr. Sandoval, promising that "fundraising will never be the same after us."

Angel Politics is raising a $500,000 seed round, with the goal of building out their mobile platform.

SaleMove

You've probably bought a book or two online. But life insurance? A car? Probably not. That's because, as SaleMove CEO Daniel Michaeli explained, these kinds of sales "require a human touch, someone to help us navigate the maze. These products require a consultative sale." SaleMove wants to make that possible for the two sectors mentioned above, plus jewelry and real estate. The company has built a SAAS platform that allows customers to add capabilities like video chat and collaborative browsing to their sites.

Of course, if you're someone who shops online specifically to avoid human interaction, you're just going to have to get faster on the CLOSE TAB button.

The company is raising a $750,000, and they've already got $160,000 committed.

Healthy Chic

Are you a yoga fanatic, looking for somewhere to buy yoga paraphernalia? Well, have the founders of Healthy Chic got a site for you. "For many Americans"--something like 20 million--"yoga and the yoga lifestyle is their oasis," explained CEO Joel Fan. To furnish that oasis, they shell out a collective $40 billion for related crap. However, there's no shop ready to meet their "yoga lifestyle needs." (We guess Lulu Lemon doesn't count?) Healthy Chic, which will sell activewear, nutritional products, accessories, inspiration bracelets, and performance-measuring gadgets.

The company is raising $1 million.

mxHero

“Email is not the most exciting of topics--I know that,” admitted mxHero CEO Alexis Panagides early in his pitch. (Points duly granted for candor, sir.) But it is a nagging problem, like the unattended toothache of office work, taking up an estimated 31 percent of everyone's day. Then there's the spam, and the phishing, and the limited attachment sizes, etc., ad nauseam. Building on some sort of server-side magic, mxHero aims to "fix" email with a series of helpful applications that do things like allowing you to send email attachments of any size. The company has done zero advertising, and yet has signed on more than 1,300 companies, to the tune of 25,000-plus users.

mxHero is seeking $800,000, and has already raised $415,000.

startups of the roundtable

The first class to graduate from the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator summer 2011 program nabbed funding from venture shops like First Round Capital, ff Venture Capital, High Peaks Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Lightbank and RRE Ventures. Today ERA announced its second class, a group of ten young companies, some of whom Betabeat has met before. (Although Dibsie, an interactive shopping catalog, was a finalist on Betabeat's first original webseries, The Pitch.) You can meet all the new startups and find their websites below. All the companies get a $25,000 investment, office space in Times Square and access to ERA's group of more than 200 mentors.

Appy Couple:

Appy Couple lets you quickly, easily, and affordably create a gorgeous mobile app to share all the excitement of your wedding with invited guests. The Appy platform populates a mobile app in real time, and includes features like picture uploads, virtual champagne, countdown, and geolocation.
www.appycouple.com

Cinchifieds:

Cinchifieds is the world’s simplest marketplace. Users catalog what they’re interested in buying or selling, and Cinchifieds does all the work, delivering matches directly to you. Cinchifieds makes buying and selling a cinch.
www.cinchifieds.com

Dibsie:

Dibsie makes it easy to find, organize and discover products online by integrating social networking with powerful search capability. Dibsie streamlines the process for discovering and sharing products by allowing users to search thousands of retailers and brands, then bookmark favorites for sharing through a mutually-curated catalog.
www.dibsie.com

LocalBonus:

LocalBonus allows consumers to use their existing credit and debit cards as their loyalty card at local merchants and gives merchants an easy way to deploy a rewards program to build customer loyalty.
www.localbonus.com

Pictorious:

Pictorious is a photo-sharing game that creates a fun way to explore the world, meet new people and earn awesome rewards and prizes. Pictorious also helps brands and merchants engage with and attract customers.
www.pictorious.com

ShareRebate:

ShareRebate is a referral tool that helps mobile app developers get more downloads. The referral tool seamlessly integrates into any mobile app and starts to offer users of the app rewards for recommending the app to friends and family.
www.sharerebate.com

Stray Boots:

Stray Boots turns the walking tour on its head through its cell phone-guided, interactive urban games in cities throughout the U.S. Stray Boots curates the games and delivers them to customers’ phones via its proprietary software, taking urban explorers on an adventure that’s more fun, engaging and flexible than other ways to explore the city.
www.strayboots.com

STYLYT:

Stylyt is redefining the way fashion brands acquire loyal fans. Partnering with contemporary and boutique brands, Stylyt launches collaborative fashion design campaigns that allow any user to customize an item in a collection, vote on user entries and even choose the winning design entry to be manufactured and sold.
www.stylyt.com

Wizpert:

Wizpert is a real-time platform that instantly matches people who need advice with experts who are qualified to provide it on a wide range of topics from parenting to relationships and nutrition. Wizpert offers immediate access to a simple, helpful form of human communication. Talking. www.wizpert.com

WowWombat:

WowWombat is an event sponsorship marketplace that provides an easy way for businesses to find and interact with their target audience. A business selects events to sponsor based on the demographics they want to reach and scale they can afford—while event organizers post event details to receive sponsorship.
www.wowwombat.com

Steve Gutentag from Sitesimon.

Betabeat moseyed up to Murat Aktihanoglu, the accented managing director of Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, after the program's demo day this morning in a basement auditorium at NYU's Stern School of Business. He had the overwhelmed, flushed face of a proud parent. "Oh, it was amazing," he said, eyes widening. ERA put its ten startups through 1,500 meetings, he had calculated, and all the companies have users and 80 percent have revenue. One of them had just signed up 35 cities and two Dubai landmarks: the biggest mall in the world, which serves 47 million visitors, and the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. 

"That was incredible!" said Brian Cohen, vice chairman of the New York Angels, ambushing Mr. Aktihanoglu at the podium. "Grand slam!" He pinched the director's cheek. "Murat is magical. He really is."

Mr. Cohen was impressed by the startups. "I go to all the demos," he said. "I was just at DEMO--I went to TechCrunch," he said. "This was quality."

The room was about three-quarters full--perhaps 300 attendees or so--including representatives from Union Square Ventures, TechStars, Founder Collective, Greycroft, Bessemer Ventures, and Bloomberg Ventures. Judging by the lines at the startups' tables, Public Stuff (who signed up the mall), Sitesimon and BuzzTable were the favorites.

Below are the startups and their raises:

Bespoke Post: Curated mail subscription service for products men want. Seeking $500,000.

Centzy: Comparison shopping engine for local services. Raised less than $100,000 of $500,000.

WebThriftStore: Provides a private label eBay solution for charities that enables anyone to turn their unused "stuff" into tax-deductible donations. Raised $625,000 out of $1.5 million.

BuzzTable: Establishes a direct line of communication between restaurants and customers. Raising $750,000.

Pricing Engine: A business intelligence service for digital marketers. Just started raising a $750,000 round.

LetGive: Provides a platform that connects application developers, charities and socially-conscious consumers. Seeking $750,000.

Parking Panda: A mobile real-time parking discovery tool. Has $50,000 committed for a $750,000 round.

PublicStuff: Enables cities to easily receive and manage service requests from citizens. Raised $100,000 out of $750,000 so far.

NumberFire: Analytics platform that uses quantitative modeling to analyze sports. Raised $400,000 out of $750,000.

Sitesimon: Analyzes browsing behavior and recommends web content with minimal user input. Raised $500,000, seeking $3 million.

“We are very excited to have received interest from such a wide group of top-flight entrepreneurs for our inaugural ERA program,” said Murat Aktihanoglu, managing director. “We are thrilled with the group of companies which will be participating, and we look forward to working with them and our extensive mentor network to help these companies succeed.”

As part of their participation in ERA, each startup will receive a $25,000 investment, access to 180+ mentors and three months of free office space at the ERA office in exchange for an 8 percent equity stake--higher than the price usually demanded by other more established accelerators TechStars, DreamIt and Y Combinator.

The mentors include the same cast of local stars that filled the room at TechStars New York's recent demo day: Fred Wilson, David Pakman, Howard Morgan and Esther Dyson.

The ER program also includes seven resident technologists who specialize in areas like software development, user experience design and android development, who can provide hands on assistance for the start-up teams. Legal advice will be provided during the summer free of charge by Gunderson Dettmer, so get as much pro-forma paperwork squared away as you can kids!

The programs managing directors are Murat Aktihangolu, Jonathan Axelrod and Charles Kemper.

Here they are, in alphabetical order.

BuzzTable - BuzzTable puts the "old school" table buzzer on your phone, establishing a direct line of communication between the restaurant and their customer. The focus is customer retention, incentivizing customers to return through loyalty rewards, deals, and a more personalized relationship.

Centzy - U.S. consumers spent $540B on local services like haircuts, massages, oil changes, and yoga classes in 2010, yet over 80% of local service businesses do not post prices and hours online. Centzy is a new search engine where consumers can find accurate prices, hours, and ratings for every service in their city.

LetGive - LetGive provides a platform that connects application developers, charities, and socially conscious consumers. The platform allows developers to turn their applications into fundraising vehicles for nonprofits and charities in the LetGive network. The entire donation and distribution process is managed seamlessly by LetGive.

Nabfly - Nabfly is a mobile tagging platform that lets people scan posters with their phones and engage with a brand through a native application. Nabfly makes it easy to remember and interact with the cool things you see walking around a city.

numberFire - numberFire is an analytics platform that uses quantitative modeling to bring new insights and analysis to the world of sports.

Parking Panda - Parking Panda is a mobile, real-time parking discovery tool. It enables parking space owners to rent out their underutilized spaces to a community of drivers. People in need of parking can save money and time by finding a place to park and paying right from their phone.

Pricing Engine - Pricing Engine is a business intelligence service for digital marketers. It provides users a simple visual interface to discover actionable insights for improvement. The service includes patentpending advertising optimization and valuation across the full range of creative and targeting options, media choices, and pricing models.

Public Stuff - PublicStuff’s web-based solution addresses the service needs of both local governments and residents by increasing consumer participation while also driving down costs for public agencies. The municipal platform allows agencies to cost-effectively manage communications with the public and better manage the delivery of services. The consumer platform allows the public to request a variety of services.

Sitesimon - Sitesimon makes it easy to find and enjoy new content online. Users can share their browsing seamlessly, connect with what their friends and others are looking at, and be recognized for discovering sites that others love too.

WebThriftStore - WebThriftStore enables anyone to turn their unused "stuff" into tax-deductible, charitable donations. The product makes it easy to offer anything online, and then allows consumers to use their social networks to convert it into cash for the charity of their choice.

Untitled from ER Accelerator on Vimeo.

Pausing, he reconsidered. "Ok, Dennis is a nice guy, and very smart, but I can't stand to see another photo of him at a party. That's not tech."

Detering was up on the third floor of Connolly's on West 45th for a party himself, the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator happy hour.

"I don't really know when a start-up stops being a start-up. I've been running my business for a decade, still sometimes people call us a start-up. I don't." Detering launched Event in September 1999, just six months before the dot-com bubble burst.  "We survived by the skin of our teeth. That's what I want to see, more bootstrapped, more lean start-ups, not just folks raising millions."

The ER Accelerator is one of many programs set to turn New York into start-up summer camp, providing fledgling companies with $25,000 in seed funding in exchange for a small equity stake. "I'm  profitable now, I'm married and so is my business partner," said Detering, gazing around the room at the gaggle of twenty-something founders. "Can a start-up be your midlife crisis?"

While the ER happy hour was going on in Midtown, TechStars NY was holding a happy hour for their summer program down in Union Square. "I mean, you've got to consider the whole transplant versus native thing," said Jonathan Betz, VP of engineering at Yext, and an ER Accelerator mentor. "Having roots in the city is valuable, even if they are more high profile."

Betz is a principle at Hudson River Angels, a band of Google and Xoogle engineers looking to leverage their expertise to help grow their portfolio companies. More recently he also began to try his hand at the online upstart creating waves in the seed stage community.  "I joined Angel List, of course," he admitted with a smile. "So far funded one venture through that. It really makes me feel like a conservative, watching this river of companies go by and deciding: no, no, no."

The investment Betz did make was in a company where he knew and had worked with members of the team. "I was at a startup in the dot-com days. I watched the rocket ships take off and come crashing back to earth. There were a ton of great ideas then that never got executed. I think investors today care less about ideas than they do about execution."