Dom's Demo

This weekend, students from all over the east coast descended on NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to participate in hackNY's fall student hackathon.  HackNY is an intercollegiate organization designed to keep the tech talent off Wall Street and interested in startups. The students spent 24 coding in order to impress judges like former TechStars NY managing director David Tisch and Chris Poole, aka Moot.

A large number of the hacks presented used Tumblr’s API, including one smut-filled surprise. Naturally, three of the projects also incorporated GIFs.

The most impressive showing of the day was definitely Dom, a video game "on top of the Internet." The game turns the layout of any website into a 3D landscape where players have to shoot away oncoming robots. Their fully-functional demo drew actual gasps from the crowd as 3D characters climbed all over Vimeo's homepage to destroy some bad guys. The game also uses Tumblr’s API to alternate between changing background images of outer space. Dom won first place and a cash prize of $1,001 to split between the team’s five members.

Another hack presented this weekend was Pulp, a cross between Mad Libs and the game telephone, where users add three words to a story at a time and corresponding popular "related images" pop up via Tumblr’s API. The team's demo hit a major snag when the word "naughty" was used and a picture of a girl fingering herself filled the screen. The crowd went wild and made jokes about this throughout the rest of the demos. A text to meme service called Cap'n Meme spoofed this later on by creating a Bad Luck Brian that said "demos hackathon, shows porn."

A couple of Princeton guys created Memepath, something that resembled a Jonah Peretti fantasy. Using the bit.ly API, their site tries to pinpoint the exact moment something becomes a meme. They used the example of "Gangnam Style" to show that Katy Perry's August 21st tweet was the moment that the video turned into a worldwide sensation. Although the science here isn't completely correct, not everything passes through bit.ly, it's a good start.

When asked if it had a more practical use, creator Santhosh Balasubramanian said that it could be used to analyze serious things. The team tried to analyze the Kony 2012 video but there wasn't enough data to go around. They also aspire to add a geo-grouping element to it, to figure out which country helps the meme machine hit its tipping point.

Lisa Li and Daria Jung from Columbia created the simply designed Have My Babies, or HMB for short. You search for a celebrity and you're instantly able see how many tweets there are asking said celeb to have the tweeter's babies. The number of tweets is represented by a corresponding number of wiggling sperm cells naturally. "It was started from an offhand comment about Justin Bieber," Ms. Li said. "It's just meant to be funny."

A team from Rutgers built Settlers of Silicon Alley, a web app of Settlers of Catan themed to the New York tech scene. In the game, developers represeted the original game's wood and designers filled in for wheat. This got a few chuckles from the crowd and it seemed like everyone wanted to play.

Henry Clifford, a student from the United Kingdom interning at content sharing network Spling this semester, was the last presenter of the day. He created Gifs With Captions, which ranks the popularity of posts from single-serving Tumblr sites like What Should We Call Me. The Internet-obsessed crowd clearly found Mr. Clifford's idea appealing. The admiration went both ways. He praised the event and told Betabeat that all of the ambassadors, employees from some of New York's tech companies that stay overnight and advise the students, were "brilliant."

Kartik Mandaville, Himanshu Pandey, and Bryan Wade created Charfit, a practical hack with real-world potential. It allows you to track fitness participation through Foursquare check-ins. If you don't keep up with your regimen, the app uses the Venmo API to donate money to your favorite charity, then Twilio bugs you about going back to the gym and to notifies you about your donation. For the final humiliation, it publicly shames you by auto-posting a message to your Tumblr about your lack of dedication to your health. Public shaming for fitness is a campaign that we can see Mayor Bloomberg getting behind--as soon as he learns to code at least.

(internetweekny.com)

Unless you've gone off the grid, you probably already know that Internet Week 2012 launches on Monday. But with a dizzying number of events to attend, it's hard to figure out which ones are worth the time, effort and subway fare. Betabeat guest blogger Gary Sharma, something of an events truffle hound, already penned his personal list of recommendations. But consider this Betabeat's official to-do list: blogger tested, Betabeat approved.

The Art of Apps Gallery Opening
Monday, May 14th, 10am-6pm
138 Sullivan St.

Expect a lot of rounded edges and pixel talk at this gallery opening, featuring the designs of tech types like Path's Dave Morin, Jon Slimak of Piictu and Matias Corea of Behance. The exhibit will feature some of the best UI designs for apps on iPhone and iPad.

NYU ITP Spring 2012 Show
Monday, May 14th, 5pm-8pm
721 Broadway, 4th Floor

We write about ITP a lot (see the Listserve, the Descriptive Camera, and Kickstriker for some recent examples), mostly because the majority of projects produced by the students at NYU's interactive telecommunications program are actually really, really cool. ITP will unveil its best projects to the public in a two-day spring show on Monday 5/14 and Tuesday 5/15, and we think it's worth attending if only for the chance to see most of the most nimble young minds in the city at work.

Choosey Netizens Choose GIF: Analyzing an Animated Cultural Lexicon
Tuesday, May 15, 12pm-12:45pm
82 Mercer St.

We are huge fans of animated GIFs. In fact, we would probably devolve into communicating entirely through tiny moving pictures, if we could. Motherboard deputy editor Sean Yeaton will discuss how the GIF became its own cultural phenomenon.

Why Being a Good CEO has Nothing to Do With Being a Woman
Tuesday, May 15, 1pm-1:45pm
82 Mercer St.

If you haven't noticed, all of the full-time staff writers here at Betabeat possess two X chromosomes, so we're never ones to turn down a good panel about our fellow XX in tech. Featuring Birchbox cofounder Hayley Barna and Nestio CEO Caren Maio, in addition to some other talented lady founders, the discussion should offer some helpful advice on leading as a woman in the tech community.

TIME Inc.’s 10 Startups to Watch
Wednesday, May 16, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Top Secret

The list of TIME's 10 startups to watch reads like a week in Betabeat posts: NYC tech scene favs Code Academy, Art.sy, Fab.com and Side Tour are among the honorees. But the event is invite-only so be sure to get on the guest list if you want to attend.

WeWorkLabs Happy Hour
Wednesday, May 16, 5pm-8pm
175 Varick St., 4th Floor

First off: there will be free beer at this event. Plus, you'll get to check out the coworking space of WeWorkLabs, a NYC tech staple that seeks to foster collaboration between up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Check out some of the pitches from WeWorkLabs members and network with other like-minded techies.

hackNY Fundraiser
Wednesday, May 16, 7pm-9pm
foursquare HQ: 568 Broadway, 10th Floor

10gen will be providing drinks for a celebration of the hackNY community, an event to help raise funds "for the future tech innovators of New York City," and keep kids off Wall Street as the slogan goes. We had a pretty great time at the last hackNY fundraiser. But if nothing else, it's a chance to peep Foursquare's sweet office digs.

The Webutante Ball
Wednesday, May 16th, 8pm-11:55pm
Marquee

Don't pretend like you don't want to see the digerati all dolled up. The Webutante Ball is in its 4th year, and it's not really getting any cooler, but there will be lots of drinks. The "prom committee" is packed with NYC tech allstars, like Ben Lerer, Dave Tisch, plus old school fameball Julia Allison.

Walkabout NYC
Friday, May 18th, 1pm-6pm
187 Lafayette St. 6th Floor

If you're a fan of the Roger Mag, or just an interior design nut, you'll probably want to take some time to hit up Walkabout NYC, an open house of startup offices around the city. The lineup includes Betaworks, Gilt Groupe, Tumblr and Facebook, among many others.

Future of Media Panel
Friday, May 18th, 1pm-2pm
20 Cooper Sq. at 5th st. (NYU's journalism HQ)

Oh look, another panel to discuss the future of an industry about which no one has the slightest clue. Yay. But! The lineup is packed with A-list names in both media and tech, including Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti, Thrillist's Ben Lerer and Jezebel's Jessica Coen. As long as everyone's candid about the real state of things, we think it should prove pretty entertaining.

Thursday, December 8

Taap.it Holiday Charity Event

7 p.m.
Taap.it
335 W. 35th ST. 11th Floor
Price: $35
Benefiting: New York Cares

Sunday, December 11

Launch + holiday party for Elizabeth & Clarke
1 p.m.
New Work City
412 Broadway
Price: $20 to $35
Benefiting: Girl Develop It and HackNY.

Tuesday, December 13

NYC Tweet Drive Holiday Party
6 p.m.
Roger Smith Hotel
501 Lexington Ave, New York, NY
Price: One wrapped toy
Benefiting: New York City's Toys for Tots
By donating one NEW, unwrapped toy you can join us in giving back, sharing a few drinks, and enjoying the holiday season with New York City's top social media professionals and entrepreneurs.

Friday, December 16

Digital party: Tech the Halls
1 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST
Turntable.fm but individual matchup room links won't be released till the day of)
Price: free
Benefiting: One Laptop Per Child

(image courtesy Raise Cache)

Raise Cache, the techie fashion show presented by Raptor Ventures, raised $75,000 from selling 1,500 tickets, an additional $20,000 or so in Skillshare classes, and another $5,000 or so through an auction. That means the event slightly exceeded its rather ambitious $100,000 goal for the HackNY programmer apprenticeship program that encourages students to intern with startups instead of heading to Wall Street.

"A lot of times I thought it wasn't going to happen," organizer Rebecca Zhou told Betabeat. "In the Armory, a car looks like an ant. I was like, 'omigosh, how are we going to fill this thing?' But it all came together."

The idea for Raise Cache came to Ms. Zhou after she finished TechStars in May. She started talking casually about it to fashion companies and the reaction was enthused. "Every company, ever person we'd meet introduced us to ten more people," Ms. Zhou said. "We were blown away."

From idea to customers to PR push, organizing the event was like doing a startup, she said.

The planning culminated in a glamorous runway show at the Park Ave. Armory, where the likes of Fred Wilson, Alexis Tryon, Roger Ehrenberg, Dave Tisch, Rachel Sklar and more stalked the catwalk with attitude.

"It had the finesse and the drama and the elegance of New York the same way our companies do here," Ms. Zhou said. "My friends who came, they had fun, got a little drunk and laughed. Who knew that tech people on the runway would actually turn out so well?"

She doesn't have any plans for another event, she said, although she imagines doing another fundraiser or event in the future, "something that reflects New York's personality," but it will depend on what is needed and when. Raise Cache is not an annual event, she clarified.

Everyone who's anyone from the startup world had gathered there to raise money for a universally-beloved cause: a fundraiser for hackNY, the program that shepherds computer science students towards Startupland--and away from Goldman. And, oh boy, did folks clean up nice. Seriously, where have all you PYTs been hiding?

The last time we stopped by the Armory it was for a startup job fair back in June. But last night, the ping pong tables and meet-and-greet booths had been swapped out for an indoor red carpet, flood lights on the runway, and giant cut-outs of Turntable.fm avatars standing guard from the DJ booth overhead.

The techno was blaring when we walked in and ran into OnSwipe's Jason Baptiste, the inspiration for our Tech Poachables article, who said he's on the hunt for hires and had scoured our list. But, he assured us, Mark Bao, his 19-year CTO, wasn't going anywhere. Duly noted. Rex Sorgatz also had a quibble with the list, namely whether $2 million plus equity wasn't a little steep for HuffPo CTO Paul Berry. We allowed for the possibility that our super-scientific calculators may have been off on that one.

In addition to the sizable list of entrepreneurs-turned-models getting gussied up in the back, Foursquare's Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert, Aviary's Michael Galpert, Kal Vepuri, and GroupMe's Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht were all there. Mr. Hecht invited Betabeat and Jenna Wortham to stop by GroupMe's new Microsoft digs. Did they put the kibosh on those bottles of Johnny Walker lying around, we wondered.

Twilio's Rob Spectre was on also hand, fresh off a trip across the pond to get London's booming startup scene to play around with Twilio's API, now that they've added UK phone numbers to the mix. It seemed like YouAre.TV founder Josh Weinstein was having a good birthday. "I just picked up a 50-year-old chick on UserTesting.com!" he exclaimed while checking his phone. He also extolled the design chops of Art.sy's Robert Lenne, the IDEO veteran standing across from us, which we're filing away for future poachables lists.

RRE Ventures' Tom Loverro noted the "few if any poseurs" last night, taking the opportunity this morning to pontificate on what makes us different from the Valley. "Last night’s event couldn’t have physically happened in the Bay Area. Of course you could find hundreds of folks in SF to get together to celebrate tech, but it would have been different "

But you came here to hear about the fashion show, didn't you?

Sure there were a couple glitches. The sound was off. Unless you were lucky to get a seat up front (ours got stolen, so we stole someone else's, sorry row 5!) it was hard to hear Shelby.TV's Dan Spinosa emcee the festivities, but his formidable mohawk more than made up for it. And Mayor Bloomberg's taped greeting closed the show instead of starting it. But his quip, "Hold on, I forgot to check-in," got a big applause. The mayor was kind enough to take time out from arresting protesters in Zucotti Park to send the message that, "Now more than ever, [New York] is the place for to be for tech soirees."

Once it got going, the notion of dressing up a bunch of nerds and having them prance down a catwalk, however, was a surprising success."Carter just pulled off an epic Zoolander at #RaiseCache give him the trophy- nailed it!," tweeted Aviary's Alex Taub. Artisicle's Alex Tyron sported red lips and a rocker up-do. TechStars's Melanie Moore stomped with the best of them. Shelby.TV's Reece Pacheco tried to run off stage, but made it to the end to pose. In Warby Parker glasses, disheveled hair, a corduroy blazer, and bright colored khakis, Lerer Ventures' Jordan Cooper looked ready to be cast in a Wes Anderson film.

There were plenty of shenanigans at the end of the runway, with "models" pulling napkins out of their crotch, showering photogs with dollar bills, and whipping out a trademark baseball cap to top off a suit (we're looking at you, Tisch). But without a doubt, the evening's show-stoppers were Roger Ehrenberg and Fred Wilson. Mr. Ehrenberg shimmied and strut the entire way up and down the catwalk, pausing only to do the Robot. Mr. Wilson, however takes the cake for opening up his jacket to reveal a homemade OCCUPY sign. #powertothepeople

After Mr. Wilson exited the stage, Mr. Spinosa told the crowd, "You may not believe this, but he's not a professional model. He's a full-time blogger." The young lady to our right had to explain the joke to her hipster friend who was slouched in his seat. "See, that's why it's funny. Actually, he owns half the people in this room."

We didn't make it to the after-party at the Ace, but it may have been a good thing. It was so crowded even the miniature femme fatales behind Small Girls PR couldn't get in. And they did all the press for it. Mallory Blair emailed us a disclaimer: "We got in after 30 mins, but still, that's half an hour of waiting in the cold for your own party."

Mr. Ehrenberg:

Mr. Wilson:

(flickr.com/photos/ericwahlforss/)

STARTUP WEEKEND. Startup Weekend is now an affiliate of the Kauffman Foundation, the same entity that funds AngelList. "While Startup Weekend will continue to operate autonomously, becoming a Kauffman affiliate will allow the organization to increase its geographical reach, conduct more frequent events, and build long-term sustainability. Startup Weekend events bring entrepreneurs and supporters together and teaches them how to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch companies, all during a 54-hour crash-course weekend."

MORE STARTUP WEEKEND. "As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2011, a weeklong celebration of innovation and entrepreneurship, Startup Weekend events will take place in more than 50 [UPDATED --ed.] 20 U.S. cities, fostering new companies that change industries and create jobs. Two of these hosts will be in New York City and New Jersey." GEW takes place from Nov. 14 to 20.

RAISE CACHE FOR HACKNY. The highly-anticipated fundraiser is coming up. "Raise Cache has brought together more than 75 companies, from the hottest start ups, to the biggest corporations, to create a once in a lifetime event that highlights the power of our community and the passion of our city. On November 17th, we will bring together more than 1,000 members of New York tech, fashion, media, and arts under the roof of the State Armory to raise $100,000 in cache for hackNY."

THRILLIST APP. Thrillist Rewards NY will be available to download for free on iPhone and Android devices on Thursday (Nov. 10th). "Users will receive mobile notifications of new Thrillist Rewards in New York, each week, as soon as they become available, and can quickly, easily and securely purchase the Rewards through the app. Rewards can be redeemed by simply presenting a voucher built within the app to a participating merchant – no schlubby printed coupons required."

SECOND SCREENS. NYC-based Umami debuted an app yesterday, "a significant new second screen TV app for the iPad ... The app also serves as a scaleable publishing platform for TV programmers, with National Geographic Channel first on board."

LOCAL LAUNCH: CAPSULE. "Remember The Fridge? We learned about them just a week before they were acqui-hired but our product is vaguely familiar even though we're going at it from a different angle. Capsule is sorta like an Evite or Facebook Group... the way espresso is sorta like a cup of coffee. We're making it easier for people to share photos and memories in private groups centered around events rather than individuals (experience graph vs social graph). We're in private beta but here's a quick tour: http://bit.ly/v36QlN."

WHO'S HIRING? Want to work at SportsPickle.com? College Humor is looking for a PHP/MySQL engineer.

11/11/11. That's the date of the next Silicon Alley Talent Fair. So far 70 companies have signed up to meet job seekers at the Altman Building in the Flatiron. 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.

CAPITAL FACTORY DEMOS. The Austin incubator is having a demo night tonight.

STARTUP BUS UNCONFERENCE. A six hour intensive workshop for entrepreneurs who like to think fast, and under pressure. Saturday, Nov. 19.

STARTUP PARTIES. This time it's Gojee, the recipe-suggester, on Saturday at WeWork; and SNAP Interactive kicking off the holiday party season with an office-warmer near Penn Station on December 1. With ping pong.

Saturday, back when everyone had gotten some sleep.

There were a few factors that made hackNY's fourth intercollegiate hackathon the one to beat.

First, the much-loved local fellowship program got ambassadors from the likes of Pivotal Labs, Foursquare, Code Academy, Twilio and Google ("But I'm not here officially," said the rep who shall not be named) to hold office hours during the hackathon. They were on hand to help bleary-eyed hackers running on empty RedBull with the finer points of MongoDB and JavaScript. Then we heard 10gen, Kevin Ryan's most promising investment, was sponsoring buses to pick up coders all the way from schools like RISD, Carnegie Mellon, and UPenn. But the real clincher was that the hackathon was organized using the Hacker League, which was itself a hack cobbled together last week by three students from Rutgers who skipped class to get it ready in time.

In the first hour alone, we learned about a stealth New York startup with some big name clients and an upcoming Turntable.fm party. Add in some humorous contestants ("It's its like Chatroulette, but without the dicks!" was one memorable tagline) and some familiar judges (David Tisch, Chris Dixon, Charlie O'Donnell, Khoi Vinh) and it made Betabeat wish we'd stayed up all night too. Well, not really, but close enough.

As Mike Swift explained, the Hacker League came about after he and his fellow co-founders, Ian Jennings and Abe Stanway, found themselves seeing the same people again and again at every hackathon. To keep track of the usual hackathon suspects, prevent good hacks from being lost, or people from cheating with the same hack at multiple events, the trio put together a social network of sorts. All the students attending had a chance to submit a profile with links to, say, their GitHub page or personal website and upload their hacks. When the site was up--hey, it's still in alpha--it also broadcast vital info like where to find the demo livestream or when the shwarma delivery showed up. Mr. Swift, who's working for TechStars finalist CrowdTap, said Hacker League is in the running for Lean Startup.

We can't say much about the stealth startup, Parse.ly and its Dash platform for publishers, which officially launches next month, except that co-founder and CTO Andrew Montalenti showed us a demo and we really, really want to start using it on Betabeat, like yesterday. And after hearing some of the big name publishers they've signed up as beta clients, its clear we're not the only ones. Thankfully, Mr. Montalenti offered to let us come by and see his standing desk at the ff ventures ergonomic new office space in the interim.

As for the party, mark November 17th on your Google Calendars. Rebecca Zhou, a former HackStar that we recognized from the TechStars reality show, is organizing Raise Cache (get it??). It's a party/mixer/fashion show with the goal of drumming up $100,000 for hackNY. If that doesn't sell you, how about the fact that Moot himself is going to walk in the fashion show and that party is being DJ'd via Turntable.fm.

Popular themes for the hacks themselves appeared to be ordering in food without moving an inch and solutions to help ladies evade "creepers." You can view the full API list, including Tumblr, Twitter, Parse.ly, Hyperpublic, Bit.ly, and Etsy, as well as all the hacks here. But you really only care about the winners, don't you?

3rd Place: LoCreep,"like a LoJack for creeps!," which lets women offer the LoCreep group phone number instead of their own, mock the offender with her friends on LoCreep.com to "stir his game up," and then "when they believe that hilarity has reached optimal level, export all activity to public Tumblr" and print out a QR code to slap on his back.

2nd Place: AdRunner, which makes an addictive game out of dodging ubiquitous online ads. The punishment for losing? You go to the page of the ad that tripped your epic run. One of the creators had been playing all night, and got pretty good at it.

1st Place: MidiPhon, which was created by two NYU music students who code on the side. The hack lets up to 16 performers control MIDI instruments through their phone and led to successful audience performance during the demo. Afterward, it sent a Bit.ly link to a recording of the "concert" to everyone that played. Wonder how long before they give up rock n' roll for Startupland.

Betabeat would also like to award an honorable mention to YPNHOI, short for "You've Probably Never Heard of It," to an app we'd probably download for kicks. According to the demo, it was founded on the "first rule of hipsterdom," namely the fact that "coolness is indirectly related to popularity." It attacks the problem that the first results in Foursquare or Yelp are often what's most mainstream. You can enter in a venue and, based on the number of check-ins and reviews, the app will tell you "Is it still cool?" If it hasn't yet been discovered by the norms, it gives you the option to create a misleading QR code or write a bad Yelp review to keep the tragically uncool at bay. As for the unwieldy moniker, YPNHOI, they were just following the hipster golden rule, "We chose a difficult name to remember for a reason."

IDK WE MIGHT GO. Does anyone else here hate Plancast? Betabeat does! We also hate Google Calendar! So much clicking! So it was of great interest to us to see that WeWork Labs-based startup Tentative.ly has soft launched to let you easily bookmark events across the web.

CAPTURE THE FOURSQUARE. From New Work City and New Zealand startup Snapr: "We are launching a new app - Capture the Flag "The Mobile Photosharing Game of World Domination" that's built off our API and takes advantage of our soon to be announced location based gaming features. You can see a demo for the game and download the app here: http://capturethefl.ag/. In the game people join teams and then check in photos to win territory."

GLAD TO SEE YOU'RE WELL! New York-based content recommendation engine writes in to say they're doing awesome. According to public relations reps, "Outbrain has grown 600 percent growth over the last 18 months. We're installed on more than 3 billion content pages. We generate 23 billion links each month. Content shared through Outbrain has a six percent click-through rate." Betabeat might kill ourselves if we had a six percent CTR. But congrats! You can also see Outbrain at their event during Advertising Week.

BUILDING A BETTER NEWSLETTER. "FanBridge has announced the launch of Social Digest, a service that aggregates the most popular content posted on a performers or athlete’s social media accounts into a singular email [was that word use intentional? -ed]. For brands and performers, social Digest ensures that the stickiest content and most popular posts and comments are seen by subscribers. For advertisers, it’s more of a direct path to the influencers they want to target. They did a beta test in July that pulled an 18% click-thru rate on social content , which is three times more than a general campaign."

MAJOR, GAME-CHANGING LAUNCHES. "Good morning Adrianne, I wanted to take a minute of your time to send you information on a major, game-changing launch NYC’s BuyWithMe is announcing today: BuyWithMe is announcing the launch of MerchantConnect, the industry’s first performance based marketing platform. MerchantConnect allows businesses real-time access to customers engaging in daily deal and loyalty enhancing promotions. By using a card-linked engagement tracking system, businesses are now able to monitor and track the success of their daily promotions. This allows businesses to better understand customer buying habits, trends, patterns and repeat purchase habits."

LEARNIN'. Fall HackNY student hackathon is the weekend of October 1. Only students can code, but everyone can watch.

What they hackNY fellows were picturing.

Moot (né Christopher Poole) was the latest tech luminary to impart his wisdom and experience, accumulated over the past 20-something years, to hackNY's 2011 class.

Akarshan Kumar, one of hackNY's new fellows, chronicled the experience on his blog New York Summer. In the two-hour talk Mr. Poole covered everything from his personal temperament (“I’m not easily offended. I run 4chan”) to not being friends with your board members.

But Mr. Poole's most trenchant advice seemed to be about picking the right co-founder and the benefits of imperfection. When picking a partner to run your start-up, over-eagerness should be a turn-off. Instead, he told them, go for a hard-to-get founder you're going to have to fight to work with. Mr. Kumar's take away? "If your prospective co-founder wants to sleep with you, don’t sleep with him."

As for imperfection, Mr. Poole said that's something he intentionally aimed for with his latest start-up, Canvas, an image sharing and tweaking website. By building Canvas to function like "something between Paint and Photoshop," it makes users more comfortable creating images on the site. Embracing a lack of optimization is an interesting approach to user experience, but one that certainly seems to have worked for 4chan. Think of it as familiarity breeds content.

Image via Barbara Haddock Taylor, Baltimore Sun

Here's a little anecdote to get the day started. Some dudes in Balitmore with a parking app and a panda for their mascot totally left that town and headed to the Big Apple when they landed a spot in the innagural ER Accelerator.

For anyone who's been paying attention, New York is throwing a sort of start-up summer camp this year, with half a dozen accelerators and incubators putting young start-ups through the paces. The L.A. Times, which doesn't even mention ER by name, seems blown away by the idea of a company getting $25,000 and a spot in Times Square.

"Baltimore might have had its own private accelerator in place this summer — Miller and Zilberbaum applied for it — but organizers couldn't pull together the necessary funding," that article intones.

In the last year three accelerator programs, Entrepreneurs Roundtable, DreamIt and Techstars, which was ranked as the #1 program in the nation by the Kauffman foundation, have all launched in NYC. HackNY, Big Apps and Founder Labs are also in the mix. The result is a critical mass where start-ups are drawn to the city even when they fail to win a coveted spot, knowing that a new opportunity might open up soon.

Feeling confused? Not to worry, Betabeat has created a handy guide to picking the right accelerator for your start-up.

Of course, Panda Parking might be equally interested in New York's other natural resource, tons and tons of cars, very limited space and alternate side rules that can only be deciphered by a smartphone.