(Photo: Imgur)

Looks like the tech industry is still poaching from Wall Street, and the WSJ is ON IT! [Wall Street Journal]

Facebook's first quarter results are in, and it looks like the company's mobile ad revenue is finally increasing. [New York Times]

The father-son duo of NYC-based VC firm Lerer Ventures is launching a website in conjunction with Mayors Against Illegal Guns called StoptheNRA.com. [TechCrunch]

Now that the neckbeard lobby is growing in influence, can Hollywood A-listers master the Reddit AMA without having another Rampart situation on their hands? [LA Times]

Now New York Senator Chuck Schumer is going after patent trolls. Perhaps he's jealous of all Mayor Bloomberg's startup cred? [TechCrunch]

"Hey guys, we can make TV too!" - AOL [Adweek]

Twenty New York startups are competing to be featured in the second season of our web series The Pitch. But only 10 will move on for a chance to pitch investors--Steve Schlafman of Lerer Ventures and Nikhil Kalghatgi of SoftBank Capital--and win funding for their idea. And you get to decide!

Check out the slideshow and vote for your favorite startups to make it to the next round.

Admitted.ly – A platform gamifying college admissions.

Chalkable – An app store for educational tools.

Doppelhanger – A matchmaking service for your closet.

Equala – Social radio for you and your friends.

Funderverse – A social network for companies.

FundingCommunity – A platform revamping small business lending.

Instreamia – A new way to teach and learn language.

Kapture – A mobile application to turn anyone into a brand ambassador.

Lover.ly – A visual search engine for all things bridal.

MealTics – A crowdfunding platform for donating meals to local soup kitchens and shelters.

Motionry – A social network for developing sustainable technologies.

SeamlessDocs – A platform for making any PDF fillable.

Seed&Spark – A social network for filmmakers and film lovers.

Sendicate – An email app for sending emails simply.

Silver Living – An independent source of research and reviews of senior care facilities nationwide.

SpaceSplitter – Free and simple tools for awesome roommate living.

Status Chart – A better way to showcase all things freelancers do.

Suitey – A real estate brokerage platform.

The Swizzle – A platform organizing and simplifying daily emails from brands.

UrbanClout – An internet subscription service for TV shows and movies.

The topography of New York’s tech scene has changed since 2011, when we first peeked behind closed doors to document the fundraising process for season one of The Pitch. According to the latest reports, venture capitalists are investing more money in more local tech startups, luring expats from fashion and Wall Street to pursue their dreams and launch their own company.

But success is far from guaranteed, especially with the spectre of the Series A crunch and difficulty in getting users to download and engage–never mind pay for–your product or service. That’s why, for our second season of The Pitch, we’re letting you decide which startups get a chance to sell their concept on camera to investors from top notch firms like Softbank Capital and Lerer Ventures. Because, hey, if the founders can’t convince you to vote, how will they ever convince VCs to invest?

Will it be the team gamifying college admissions? The platform for managing finances and responsibilities with your roommate? The matchmaking service for your closet? Or, perhaps, the site that lets users crowdfund meals for the homeless?

Readers are welcome to vote as many times as they would like. The 10 startups with the most votes by midnight Thursday, March 28th will have their pitch vetted on camera by Nikhil Kalghatgi from SoftBank Capital and Steve Schlafman from Lerer Ventures, and vy for the chance of taking home $10,000 in funding.

Check out this season's startups and click “like” to vote for your favorites.

(Photo: Mr. Berry)

Back in April 2012, the HuffPo cabal-backed Soho TechLabs launched a social travel site called CasaHop that allowed users to "connect with people worldwide to trade homes for vacations and more." Now, Soho TechLab's CEO Paul Berry told Betabeat that the incubator is shutting down CasaHop in order to focus more on RebelMouse, a tool for building social webpages that has seen explosive growth in recent months.

"CasaHop never gained the traction it needed," Mr. Berry told Betabeat by phone. "The timing was off. Airbnb is really in a winner takes all situation in this area. I hope one day someone is going to break out and make this an enormous idea because I love home exchanges, but too few people feel comfortable with other people staying in their place while they're away."

Mr. Berry said that CasaHop only spent a third of its investment money. It will be returning the remaining two thirds to investors in cash, and the other third will be accounted for in RebelMouse stock. "Only Lerer Ventures and I will get diluted," he added.

Despite this setback, Mr. Berry was eager to emphasize the success of RebelMouse, another Soho TechLabs venture, which aggregates users' social posts onto one main homepage.

"We’re reaching 1.5 million uniques a month, so just six months out it’s this feeling of traction," Mr. Berry said. "With hosts like GoDaddy, .01 percent of people actually like what’s on their domain name and RebelMouse has the opposite percentage. 98 percent of users with RebelMouse-powered domains are thrilled by it." Mr. Berry added that everyone from influential journalists to big companies to small businesses have adopted RebelMouse as their homepage.

"RebelMouse is the chance to build a CMS from everything we’ve learned about what’s happened to social and to build it ancitipating what’s coming and make it so that the people that understand social are the ones that can power the website," Mr. Berry said, adding, "It’s also a very direct reflection of who I am and what I've learned."

Despite all this excitement for RebelMouse, Mr. Berry acknowledged that it is a "bummer" to close CasaHop. "I wish CasaHop was bigger than Airbnb, but I think you have to be able to realize when something’s not working," he admitted.

Wise words.

Mr. Hippeau. (Photo: David Yellen via Ad Age)

When we last spoke with Eric Hippeau, the Huffington Post mafioso was discussing Lerer Ventures' new $36 million fund. Today, the early-stage investment firm is announcing two new hires to help it manage and grow its considerable portfolio.

Max Stoller, a recent NYU graduate whose hackathon apps we've covered in the past, will be joining Lerer Ventures as an analyst. Mr. Stoller, a HackNY veteran, worked as an engineer at Hyperpublic--a company founded by LV managing director Jordan Cooper and sold to Groupon--as well as on the platform team at Foursquare, both while in school. And, yes, if that makes you  wonder, you probably did college wrong.

LV also brought on Nicola Korzenko as portfolio support manager before the holidays, coordinating help for LV's startups. Ms. Korzenko previously worked at Signpost, which is backed by Google Ventures and Spark Capital, and Creative Artists Agency.

"Max is someone that we’ve known for quite a while, and he’s well known in New York," Mr. Hippeau told Betabeat when we mentioned running into him at a hackathon or two. "His job is outreach into the marketplace to make sure that we know all the budding entrepreneurs, specifically the younger ones--that they know who we are, that we understand what people are doing," he added. Mr. Stoller will focus on the emerging entrepreneurs coming out of school or doing hackathons. "He knows the young people to know much better than we do," Mr. Hippeau added.

LV began investing the new fund in October and has made about eight different commitments thus far, Mr. Hippeau said. Not all of those are public, but the firm grabbed headlines last week when it participated in a $19.3 million Series D for BuzzFeed only a year after investing in BuzzFeed's $15.5 million Series C.

BuzzFeed reportedly expected to bring in $20 million in revenue last year. So was there any truth to the rumor that investors expect them to triple that in 2013? "Oh my God, no! I don’t think anybody expects it to triple," Mr. Hippeau said. "That would be pressure!" He wouldn't confirm the $20 million figure, but said investors do "expect them to be on a strong growth path, which they are."

Naturally, the path Mr. Hippeau was referring to is paved with that new media cure-all: social advertising. "As you know, [BuzzFeed has] always turned back any kind of monetization that relies on banner or traditional display. They had plenty of opportunities to sell a lot of that. Now they found a model which scales, which is attractive to large brands, and they’re just at the very beginning of trying to take advantage of that," he said.

Do BuzzFeed's sponsored stories count as "native advertising?" we asked. "I never quite understood the definition of native advertising," Mr. Hippeau admitted. But the reason social ads are extremely attractive to brand marketers, he explained, is because it mimics the same narrative opportunity they have in TV advertising. "The reason why there’s still a lot of advertising on television, even though the audience has moved on, is because it’s still one of the few mediums where advertisers can tell a story. They try to grab you emotionally, they try to make it funny. That’s not something you can do in display." Tumblr's revenue consultant Rick Webb recently drew a similar comparison between TV advertising that can still delight you and native ads.

And what about reports that investors are expecting BuzzFeed, which has raised a total of $46.3 million, to sell for at least $300 million, but ideally closer to $600 million? "I never put a price expectation on our companies. That sounds like a crazy analyst," Mr. Hippeau said. "Look, what you’re trying to do is build a scalable, reliable business, and if you can do that, which is tough, then when the time is right, when it’s time for the company to go public or be sold, then the right thing is going to get done. Then people understand the value that’s being built, and the fair value will be made at the time. What that value is, you can’t tell today."

Mr. Hippeau said LV opted to invest in BuzzFeed again so soon for a number of reasons. "It’s a combination of how excited we are about the company and how confident we are that the company is on the right path. And how confident that the last money we put in is going to get a VC-like return." Whether a "VC-like return" is closer to 5x or 10x, he didn't say.

Ms. Hesser and Ms. Stubbs

Former New York Times food editor Amanda Hesser made a media splash a few years ago with the launch of a crowdsourced home-cooking site called Food52. Started with Merrill Stubs, who co-authored The Essential New York Times Cookbook with Ms. Hesser, Food52 has become a household name for certain Internet-savvy foodies. The site features recipes, a hotline for asking and answering food questions, as well as plenty of recipe contests. Now, Food52 has raised $2 million, according to a Form D filed with the SEC and published on FormDs.com.

A source within the company confirmed to Betabeat that it has closed the $2 million round. The form indicates that 13 investors participated in the round, but does not state which firms that includes. However, Lerer Ventures' Ken Lerer is listed on the form, and our Food52 source confirmed that his firm is an investor. Lerer Ventures also participated in Food52's seed round when it raised $750,000, and Mr. Lerer currently sits on the company's board.

The fresh infusion of capital will most likely go towards expanding popular features on the Food52 website, as well as possibly launching some new products, though the source declined to elaborate just what those might be.

The Food52 site currently features a shop that collaborates with "high-quality producers, shops and artisans to bring you the greatest in food and drink, kitchen and tabletop items, books and gastro-fabulous experiences." Ms. Hesser and Ms. Stubbs also published a well-received crowdsourced cookbook called The Food52 Cookbook: 140 Winning Recipes from Exceptional Home Cooks back in October 2011.

Beer Me Storied New York venture capital firm Lerer Ventures knows its target audience. According to a tweet from Scoutmob cofounder Dave Payne, Lerer is hosting a beer pong tournament for some of the companies it has invested in. "just got invited to a beer pong tourney by one of our venture investors," tweeted Mr. Payne. "that's hard core @lererventures. well done."

Competition at the tournament seems like it will be quite fierce. "hope you've been practicing," responded Northeastern student Scott Edelstein. "i've seen@benjlerer win with his eyes closed."

In fact, here's proof:

(Photo: Twitter)

Twitter Tempest There's no beef like a Twitter beef. Exhibit A: This week's digital bar brawl between erstwhile TechCrunch writer Paul Carr (now EIC of NSFW Corporation) and current TechCrunch writer Ryan Lawler.

The opening salvo came from Mr. Carr: "This is the dumbest thing I've read on TechCrunch all hour," he tweeted, pointing to a post uncritically touting some stats from Airbnb. Told, "at least it wasn't a slideshow," Mr. Carr responded: "it would have been had Airbnb sent a slideshow." It might've stayed there, had Mr. Lawler (the author of the piece) not leapt into the fray and gone nuclear. "I wish I could build a career on my own drunkenness and self loathing," he rejoined. Oh, dear.

The back and forth that ensued was collected by the parody account @NextTechBlog and given the title of, "Utterly Embarrassing Interpersonal Shit-Show In Front Of Everyone." And Start-ups: Silicon Valley star Kim Taylor knew her opening when she saw it: "Season 2 of #SiliconValley: Self important tech reporters argue on twitter like 12 year old girls."

Diwali, D.C. Style LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta spent some time in Washington D.C. this week. But instead of snapping pics at the Lincoln Memorial or going bar hopping in Adams Morgan like your typical D.C. visitor, Mr. Mehta attended the White House's official Diwali celebration. "current status: in the @whitehouse eating a samosa after mtg the first hindu congresswoman @tulsigabbard after #diwalipuja w/@joebiden," Mr. Mehta tweeted. If that doesn't trigger your FOMO sensibilities, he then followed it up with a photo of Vice President Biden lighting the Diwali Diya. Baller status: unlocked.

(Photo: Twitter)

Interpersonal Fitness Adventures in Timehop: Seven years ago, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley gave all his friends pedometers, "in an attempt to make a poor man's NikeFuel." No word on whether it worked.

Sadface Tumblr ad man Rick Webb shared the below photo--on his Tumblr, natch--depicting a rather deserted-looking Microsoft store. Given that it opened just a few weeks ago, and that the holidays are approaching, shouldn't it be slightly more crowded? Poor Steve Ballmer. "This would be comical if it wasn’t so sad," Mr. Webb offered.

(Photo: Tumblr)

Ayndroids Among Us It seems tech world conscience (and 2012 Tech Insurgent!) Anil Dash had quite the interesting conversation recently. "Odd FB exchange with a founder who says 80% of U.S. are worthless & just take," he tweeted, adding that he "Blocked me when I asked why his homepage doesn't say that." Unfortunately, Mr. Dash didn't reveal the unnamed founder's identity, other than to clarify it wasn't a Facebooker and he'd started "a few companies." Perhaps we'll just dub this mystery man John Galt, which would surely delight him to no end.

As always: Overheard a juicy tidbit about impending departures or imminent acquisitions? Dying to dish about startup blunders or frothy financing? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com We’ve also implemented an anonymous tip box for you covert tipsters out there; you can find it on the top-right corner of our homepage.

Mr. Gross.

Smart pivots can pay off handsomely. Earlier this week, Percolate, a fast-growing New York City-based startup that helps brands curate content, announced a sizable Series A led by GGV Capital, the same Silicon Valley VC firm that backed Buddy Media, which was acquired by Salesforcefor a eye-popping $698 million. Existing investors First Round Capital and Lerer Ventures also participated in Percolate's latest round.

Roughly a year ago, Percolate shrewdly changed its focus from helping users find the most relevant top stories toward a (more profitable!) service that helps brands figure out the most compelling content to push out to their followers--a process that starts by helping them interest graph, something that comes more naturally to humans.

The company now boasts a staff of 28 and more than 30 Fortune 500 clients. It has also achieved something of a startup novelty: profitability! The company's cofounders, Noah Brier (formerly of the Barbarian Group) and James Gross (formerly of Federated Media) have the right pedigree to assist their blue chip clientele.

By phone, Mr. Gross attributed Percolate's growth to "a rapid rise in social," he said. "For a long time marketers were waiting out to see if Facebook was going to be the zero sum game should they just focus on Facebook." But with Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr, "brands acquire audience in these channels and then they have to sustain and communicate with their audience in these channels and tumbl and tweet and Facebook all day long."

Demand has outstripped even Percolate's aggressive forecasts. "Marketers need technology solutions that relate to social," he explained. "It’s less about buying media and more about buying technology to help their operations."

Silicon Alley tends to specialize in companies that address the socialization of everything for enterprise customers. But Percolate stands out because it's "the only software that doesn’t assume the brand knows what they wants to say," Mr. Gross said. "Social is full of empty boxes, a status update on Facebook, what do I tweet about, a Tumblr box, Pinterest box, and what we’re trying to help the brand do is fill it with the right content that they can create in real-time."

In talking to marketers, he explained, "The biggest problem they have is that they’re going from  a production model where they create things like television commercials and billboard ads and they’re moving to a content model where instead of creating something every 3 to 6 months like a TV commercial is, they need to create something every 3 to 6 minutes. They don’t know what to put into that blank box." The biggest publisher on Facebook, he pointed out, is Coca Cola with 52 million fans. "If you think about it, these brands are massive publishers in these channels and of course what we know is that the bigger the audience, the more content you need."

So in essence, Percolate is helping brands do what the rest of us do everyday. "This is how you and I, as people who tweet and tumbl all day long, consume content," based on our interest graphs. The company's software figures out "the things they should be following to create content around and be relevant in real time." Mr. Gross offered the example of Intel posting a photo mash-up of the Intel robot against the backdrop of the "Gangam Style" video or Oreo taking the cookie "which is their most valuable asset, and placing it against things that are happening that day like the Mars Rover or gay pride."

The transition for Percolate's clients is moving from stock to flow. "The idea of 'stock and flow' is that brands are traditionally good at creating what’s called stock content. They’re like durable assets--it’s content that’s based on very slow moving trends. This is the content that’s created traditionally like television commercial you should know an agency studies trends and research and then you create a big piece of media from that. The average television commercial costs about 3 to 5 million dollars to create and 18 to 22 weeks to create and then it stays in market for 3 to 9 months." That kind of thing brands excel at, but they're less sure-footed when it comes to flow.

"Where our technology really helps in the systemization standpoint. If you’re a multinational global brand and you support 35 markets which means you support 35 languages stuff like that, then you need to do that at sort of a local relevant level as well. You can sort of see where brands are dealing with these massive challenges globally," he said. Chief marketing officers want to be able to do through technology "as opposed to the infinite amount of people you’ll need to hire in order to reach the 15 million people you reach from a social audience perspective."

But don't mistake Percolate's ambition or investment from GGV Capital--partner Jeff Richards will be joining the company's board--as a sign that it will follow Buddy Media's acquisition strategy.

"The big thing we liked about Jeff is that he sees the tremendous opportunity in social and he sees the tremendous opportunity in the marketer becoming the person that takes over social and is buying software to scale their organization." Rather, the model Mr. Gross is looking to comes from the private markets. "I admire companies like Bloomberg, which is a private company but the way they’ve built that company for the past 20 some odd years, they have a very different model, they run from a software perspective. From a lot of financial models in New York City, it’s something we emulate."

The NowThis site (formerly called Planet Daily) currently pulls in newsy video clips from sites like Twitter, Facebook and--most typically--Buzzfeed, another Lerer Ventures portfolio company. The company's Twitter handle, @NowThisNews, is run by its social editor, Drake Martinet, who's also an adjunct professor at Stanford. Mr. Martinet said that 90 percent of the video content on the site is produced by the NowThis team.

"We're building a video news company, and today that means being native to the social web," Mr. Martinet told Betabeat by email. "We think of Twitter, Facebook and other social sites as our front page... thats where we want users to find and share our videos."

Last night, each time a state was called by one of the major news networks, NowThis tweeted a piece of ASCII art relating to that state. Seeing the graphics pop up on our Twitter feed every so often was a welcome break from typical political tweets--though not everyone enjoyed the flashback.

NowThis said it worked with noted Twitter ASCII artist Matthew Haggett, known on Twitter as "tw1tt3rart," to come up with the illustrations. "We wanted to try something ambitious and a little bit fun," they tweeted.

Check out some of our fav tweets in the slideshow.