This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide 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.

Mayor Bloomberg and the NYCEDC recently launched a prototyping competition, where six lucky winning teams will get an opportunity to prototype new products while receiving studio space from sponsor NYDesigns and mentorship from industry leaders Shapeways, Adafruit Industries, and Honeybee Robotics. Alison Hodgson and Miquela Craytor from the NYCEDC will be at the Hardware Startup Meetup today to explain the competition and take any questions.

The Worldwide Investor Network (WIN) is organizing a two-day conference this Tuesday (November 13-14), bringing together ten tech startups from around the world intimately engaging and pitching to the New York venture community. Speakers include David Teten (ff Ventures), Habib Kairouz (Rho Capital), Ed Sim (BOLDstart Ventures) and Kirill Sheynkman (RTP Ventures). Students can get 50 percent off using the discount code "innovation." And if you're a CEO/VC interesting in participating and sharing best practices, email my friend Eyal Bino at eyal@worldwidein.com.

The Partnership for New York City Fund and Accenture have announced a search for top fintech innovators who will work with global financial institutions to bring their ideas to market. Winning companies will be part of the FinTech Innovation Lab, a 12-week program that helps early and growth-stage fintech innovators accelerate product development and gain exposure to top-level financial industry executives. Applications are due by December 19.

New York City recently announced the H.E.L.M. (Hire Expand in Lower Manhattan) contest, its latest initiative to bring more startups into Manhattan’s growing tech scene, which promises up to $1.2 million in funds to startups looking to reside in Lower Manhattan. Applications are due by noon on November 30. And there'll be an event this Thursday where you can mingle with the judges including Reddit's Alexis Ohanian, restauranteur Danny Meyer 'n others.

This Saturday is AngelHack (which is putting together one of the biggest hackathons ever) and they will be donating 100 percent of the proceeds from here out to Sandy relief efforts.

Heard of 37 Angels? They're a community of women investors committed to funding early-stage startups. This Thursday they're organizing a pitch event at NYU with five to eight cross-sector pitches.

Next week, Ray Kurzweil, the bold futurist and author of the bestseller The Singularity Is Near, will explore the limitless potential of reverse-engineering the human brain to create more intelligent machines. You can't miss that!

If you're a startup, don't forget to check out the "Who Would You Fund" TechStartup Challenge 2012, which I'll be judging. It's a contest to find the best startup pitch videos out there. Add your startup promotion video and you just might win the opportunity to make a live pitch to the ARC Angel Round Capital Fund! Deadline is today (Monday) 11:59pm.

Going slightly off-topic... growing up I was always a huge fan of the James Bond movies (no wonder I'm always dressed to kill). This year is Bond's fiftieth anniversary and the latest flick, Skyfall, is seriously awesome. Go see it!

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

Uncubed NYC (Scout and Scale)
NYC's biggest startup hiring event.
Monday (Nov. 12), 12:30 p.m. @ Altman Building, 135 W. 18th Street

NJ Tech Meetup 30
Feature speaker is Brian Cohen (Chairman, NY Angels and first investor in Pinterest)
Monday (Nov. 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Howe Center, Stevens Institute of Technology, 4th Fl., Hoboken

New York City Pinterest Meetup #6
Panelists include Jenny Layne Cardon (Gogobot), Diego Saez-Gil (WeHostels) and Ava Fedorov (Beyond NYC).
Monday (Nov. 12), 7 p.m. @ WeWork Lounge, 154 Grand Street, Ground Floor

Funding The Best In Global Innovation
A two-day event bringing together a global ecosystem, developed to close the gap between U.S. investors and top investment opportunities overseas.
Tuesday (Nov. 13), 8:30 a.m. @ SNR Denton, 1221 6th Avenue

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) Happy Hour
Meet some ERA1, ERA2 and ERA3 companies, mentors and learn more about ERA's Winter 2013 program.
Tuesday (Nov. 13), 6 p.m. @ WeWork Labs, 175 Varick Street, 4th Fl.

NY Enterprise Technology Meetup & Afterparty
Demos by Badgeville, Namely, Vaultive and eZ Systems.
Tuesday (Nov. 13), 6:30 p.m. @ Cooley, 1114 Avenue of the Americas, 46th Fl.

November 2012 NY Tech Meetup
You know the drill by now. Five-minute, rapid-fire demos. A bunch of amazing new startups. Now hopefully, you've managed to snag one of those elusive tickets.
Tuesday (Nov. 13), 7 p.m. @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts, 566 Laguardia Place

Women 2.0 PITCH NYC 2012 Conference & Competition
Learn from successful women entrepreneurs who started Cisco, Match, Meebo, DailyWorth and more with networking + mentoring.
Wednesday (Nov. 14), 8 a.m. @ Manhattan Center, 311 W. 34th Street

The Inside Story of Election 2012: Fast Politics and Faster Media Meet a Rapidly Changing Electorate
With Peter Hamby (CNN), Ben Smith (BuzzFeed), Molly Ball (The Atlantic), Sayu Bhojwani (The New American Leaders Project) and David Catanese (Politico).
Wednesday (Nov. 14), 8:30 a.m. @ The New School, Theresa Lang Community Center, 55 W. 13th Street, 2nd Fl.

NY Business Expo 2012 (in Association with NYEBN)
With Jeff Bussgang (Flybridge Capital), John Frankel (ff Ventures), Peter Shankman (HARO), Dan Porter (OMGPOP/Zynga) and others.
Wednesday (Nov. 14), 12 p.m. @ The 69th Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue

Investor Feedback Forum - Future Energy
Panelists include Andrew Garman (New Venture Partners), Arrun Kapoor (SJF Ventures), Jim LoGerfo (Earthrise Capital) and Willem Rensink (Shell). Startup pitches by Lucidity Lights, Kohilo Wind, ReNew, ThermoLift, Solstice Power, KiteFarms, Re-Nuble and Algepower.
Wednesday (Nov. 14), 6:30 p.m. @ NYU, W. 4th Street

The Brooklyn Startup Scene: Brooklyn Coworking Spaces & Their Entrepreneurs
Presenting spaces include Bat Haus CoWorking (Bushwick), Dumbo Startup Lab (Dumbo), The Yard (Williamsburg) and The Secret Clubhouse (Williamsburg).
Wednesday (Nov. 14), 6:30 p.m. @ Dumbo Startup Lab, 68 Jay Street, #718, Brooklyn

NY Video Nov 15 2012 Meetup
Demos by CrowdSurf tv, Rawporter, Liveu, Shelby tv and Pond 5.
Thursday (Nov. 15), 6:30 p.m. @ AOL HQ, 770 Broadway, 6th Fl.

Appular Presents A F#@K Sandy Event- Geeks Give Back
Don’t take anymore of Hurricane Sandy’s $h!t, grab some shots instead! Show the world how real New Yorkers face Mother Nature’s wrath by joining us for some downtown cocktails, geeky gossip, and cheeky NYC charity.
Thursday (Nov. 15), 7 p.m. @ White Rabbit, 145 E. Houston Street, New York

7th Annual Ivy Sports Symposium
With Bob Bowman (CEO, MLB Advanced Media), Rick Cordella (NBC Universal), Will Dean (CEO, Tough Mudder), Tracy Dolgin (CEO, YES Network), Billy King (General Manager, Brooklyn Nets) and others.
Friday (Nov. 16), 8 a.m. @ Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University, 2920 Broadway

Sustainability Hackathon - hosted by BMW i Born Electric Tour NYC
Help create a more sustainable future.
Friday (Nov. 16), 7 p.m. @ BMW i Born Electric Tour in NYC, 1095 6th Avenue

AngelHack Fall 2012 New York City
Join 2,500 hackers this fall for the HACKathon of hackathons! $500,000 in hosting and over $50,000 in Sponsor Prizes!
Saturday (Nov. 17), 9 a.m. @ The AlleyNYC, 500 7th Avenue

More events on the horizon...
Future of Fashion Startup Series on Nov 19 @ Projective Space - L.E.S.
Ray Kurzweil: Engineering The Brain on Nov 20 @ Kaufmann Concert Hall
Business Insider: Ignition - Future Of Digital on Nov 27 @ Time Warner Center, 10 on the Park
MakeIt NYC: Secrets of Kickstarter Panel on Nov 27 @ University Settlement - Speyer Hall
NYTECH Fall Networking Cocktail Reception on Nov 29 @ National Showroom
tilt@vc: ff Venture Capital on Nov 29 @ ff Venture Capital
Mashable Media Summit 2012 on Nov 30 @ The TimesCenter
Vator Splash NY 2012 on Dec 05 @ Le Poisson Rouge
FashInvest 2012 Capital Conference on Dec 11 @ Fashion Institute of Technology

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 GarysGuide 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.

Hola folks,

Batten down the hatches. Stock up on the liquor (and food). Bring out the candles and flashlights. Because Hurricane Sandy (a.k.a. #frankenstorm) is almost upon us. And now, at almost a thousand miles wide, it definitely has our attention. Hopefully by this time y'all are safely at home (and not still slumming in Zone A) with eyes glued to the twenty-four-hour news coverage, watching weathermen expound on "cones" and "surges."

As you know, the MTA has shut down all subway and buses, and pretty much every event on Monday has been cancelled or postponed including AllThingsD's Dive Into Mobile conference, Google's Android event, Facebook's engineering open house and our own Big Apple Smackdown Silicon Alley ping-pong tournament (which will be re-scheduled).

At this time, the Tuesday events (and the rest of the week) seem uncertain too. They're still listed below, but I'd highly recommend you confirm first with the event organizers. In the mean time, stay safe, keep your fingers crossed that the storm turns out to be a mild one and don't forget to check Miguel Bloombito's Twitter feed for the latest updates!

Lots of really awesome events coming up in the next few weeks ...

November 8 is the city's preeminent startup event, Ingenuity, organized by the New York Venture Capital Association (NYVCA). Who's coming? Tim Armstrong (CEO, Aol), Julius Genachowski (chairman, FCC), Mike Richter (New York Rangers), Bob Pittman (CEO, Clear Channel), Michael Barrett (Chief Revenue Officer, Yahoo) and many more.

Also on November 8 is Red Innova, an intimate event to create a better understanding of Latin American Internet market opportunities and trends. Featured speakers include Martín Varsavsky (FON), Fabrice Grinda (OLX), Andrew Mclaughlin (Betaworks) and Matías Recchia (Vostu).

On November 9 is Capital On Stage, an unconventional conference about funding where, in a twist, top-tier investors will present themselves to the world’s finest Internet startups. David Aronoff (Flybridge), David Teten (ff Ventures), Tom Wisniewski (NY Angels), Brad Svrluga (High Peaks), Lucas Nelson (DFJ Gotham), Jahan Ali (NYC Investment Fund) and others.

My friend Shaherose Charania (Founder of Women 2.0) is organizing the highly anticipated Women 2.0 Pitch conference on November 14. Keynote speakers include female founders of Match.com, Cisco, Oxygen Network, Urban Decay and talks and panels feature women entrepreneurs who've run super successful Kickstarter projects and grown massively successful companies from the ground up. Don't miss it!

The good folks at the upcoming Angelhack hackathon (on November 17) are offering a few free tickets to GarysGuide members. Just use the discount code GG.

When the theme of an event is 'Rise of the Machines' and the keynote speaker is author Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near and the recent How To Create A Mind), all I can say is--sign me up! That would be the upcoming TEDxSiliconAlley event on December 3. Other keynoters will be Bre Pettis (founder, Makerbot), Francessca Ferrando (Philosopher of Posthumanism and visiting scholar at Columbia), Jincey Lumpkin (Attorney and Huffington Post sex columnist) and Ken Segall (creative director of Apple's "Think Different" campaign).

And if you're a startup, don't forgt to check out the "Who Would You Fund" TechStartup Challenge 2012, where I'll be one of the judges. It's a contest to find the best startup pitch videos out there. Add your startup promotion video and you just might win the opportunity to make a live pitch to the ARC Angel Round Capital Fund.

And now let's see what might be going down in the Alley this week...

The {c}0dEd Costume Carousal!
A Halloween celebration of the New York coworking startup community.
Wednesday (Oct. 31), 7 p.m. @ Alley NYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.

NYC UNCUBED (Startup and Scale)
Bringing together emerging companies and talented attendees in an exciting and informative environment that showcases startup culture.
Thursday (Nov. 1), 1 p.m. @ The Altman Building, 135 W 18th Street

Food Network and Ad Age Present: Brand Hacks
Six startups will be selected to pitch partnerships, new tech and integration ideas to a panel of top Food Network execs and industry pros. The best idea receives $25,000.
Thursday (Nov 1), 6 p.m. @ Food Network Studios, Chelsea Market, 75 9th Avenue

Behind the scenes at Gawker: Publishers, Brands and Native Ads
Get the scoop on Gawker's native ad process, strategies around scaling, building effective, measurable products and more.
Thursday (Nov 1), 6 p.m. @ NewsCred, 27 West 24th Street, Ste 202

Start-Up City: If You Can Make it Here Part 2
With Josh Miller (founder, Branch), Ben McKean (cofounder & CEO, Savored), Vinicius Vacanti (cofounder & CEO, Yipit), Kathryn Minshew (CEO & cofounder, The Daily Muse), Kellee Khalil (founder, Lover.ly) and moderated by Rachel Sklar (Change the Ratio).
Thursday (Nov 1), 6:30 p.m. @ NYIT Auditorium, 1871 Broadway

State of the Startup: Politics
With Mattan Griffel, Harrison Weber, Alexis Ohanian, and Reshma Saujani.
Thursday (Nov 1), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Mashable Media Summit 2012
With David Carey (President, Hearst Magazines), Alexis Ohanian (cofounder, Reddit), Kay Matadi (head of entertainment & media, Facebook), Jason Seikin (SVP, PBS Interactive), Bonita Stewart (VP Partner Business Solutions, Google), Raman Kia (Executive Director Digital Strategy, Condé Nast) and others.
Friday (Nov 2), 9 a.m. @ The TimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street

2012 NYU Entrepreneurs Festival
Rockstar speaker list including Jack Dorsey (cofounder Twitter and Square), Herb Kelleher (cofounder & former CEO, Southwest Airlines), Alexandre Douzet (cofounder & COO, TheLadders) and Rachel Sterne Haot (Chief Digital Officer NYC).
Friday (Nov 2), 12:30 p.m. @ Tisch Hall, 40 W 4th Street

NYC Startup Weekend FinTech Edition
Bringing together financial technologists with the goal of building consumer and enterprise financial applications with tools provided by several API and data partners.
Friday (Nov 2), 6 p.m. @ The Alley NYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.

Foursquare Hackathon
Build something amazing and you might just find yourself ringing the NASDAQ closing bell, rocking tickets to SXSW, partying with an action figure version of yourself, or wearing the infamous Foursquare hackathon TITLE BELT.
Saturday (Nov 3), 9 a.m. @ Foursquare HQ, 568 Broadway

November DemoDays
Part of the NYU Entrepreneur Week. Students take the stage to showcase what they've been working on.
Saturday (Nov 3), 5:30 p.m. @ Pivotal Labs, 841 Broadway, 8th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Founders@Fail: Pitching Publishers on Nov 5 @ General Assembly
Ad:Tech New York on Nov 7 @ Javits Convention Center
Daniweb Presents: Publishers meet Advertisers Cocktail Mixer on Nov 7 @ Highland Park
Ingenuity 2012 on Nov 8 @ New World Stages
NYTECH Fall Networking Cocktail Reception on Nov 8 @ National Showroom
Capital On Stage on Nov 9 @ Goodwin Procter at NY Times
Hack & Jill: Hacksgiving on Nov 9 @ Etsy
Funding The Best In Global Innovation on Nov 13 @ SNR Denton
Women 2.0 PITCH NYC 2012 Conference & Competition on Nov 14 @ Manhattan Center
AngelHack Fall 2012 New York City on Nov 17 @ The AlleyNYC

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

(Photo: flickr.com/classicchanelhandbags)

Healthy Hills? Everyday Health, the SoHo-based and more successful version of WebMd, has acquired EQAL, the creators of Lonelygirl15 and the owners of LaurenConrad.com. Everyday Health's ad revenue grew 40 percent in the first quarter, compared to WebMD’s decline of 20 percent. This coincides with Everyday Health's announcement that they're moving beyond YouTube and launching a version of it's web show "Recipe Rehab" for ABC stations around the country.

Diller Brings Back Dog Ben Silverman's multimedia entertainment studio Electus, part of Barry Diller's IAC, just sold ten episodes of a new show starring Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife Beth to CMT. "Dog and Beth are not only great television characters," said Electus CEO Chris Grant, "They are the best bounty hunters in the world, and this show is a natural evolution of their life story.”

Exit This Way Indeed, which describes itself as "the #1 job search engine worldwide," has been acquired (for a rumored $750 million to $1 billion price tag) by Recruit Co. Ltd, a large-scale Japanese HR company with over $10 billion in revenue. Rony Kahan, co-founder of Indeed, says that half of the site's traffic comes from outside the U.S and that they see this buyout to further that.

Thrillist on the LES Jackthreads, owned by Thrillist, just launched Goodale's Fall 2012 collection. Swedish singer/songwriter Sebastian Mikael modeled the clothes at the Lower East Side's Hotel Chantelle. There are a few days left of the heavily discounted sale. What, no Asher Roth seasonal playlist to shop by this time?

Shop Local Smallknot, the site that lets backers help small businesses get off the ground in exchange for rewards, had a pretty busy couple of weeks. They launched their first three Los Angeles businesses this week. The company partnered with Accion USA, a microlending company, to help fully fund A7, a Brooklyn-based shop that makes handcrafted leather camera straps. The team at Smallknot is also hard at work at a new product that will help small business owners get the word out about their products.

But It's So Dead At Night The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) launched a competition called “Take the H.E.L.M.: Hire + Expand in Lower Manhattan." The contest invites all companies that plan to either open or expand office space in Lower Manhattan in the next 12 months to apply for the opportunity to win a grand prize of $250,000. Twenty finalists will also will also receive $20,000 each. David Tisch and former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt will join Reddit's Alexis Ohanian as judges to pick the winner.

Will Hack For Food NYU's Courant Institute will be holding a hackathon this weekend with over 300 hackers already planning to attend. It starts this Saturday at 2 p.m. and goes until Sunday at 2 p.m. Appetude will be providing free food at the event for sleep-starved participants.

Mongo Matriculation 10gen announced today that it will offer free online training courses for its parent company's key product, MongoDB. The courses are open for registration now--there's one for developers and one for administrators. Lead MongoDB developer Dwight Merriman will teach the first class that starts in early October. Learning MongoDB is apparently the second most wanted skill companies are looking for right now.

Très Fab Custom design shop, Fab, just expanded the site's European version, which already has 2 million members. These updates essentially make the site just as fully functional as the U.S. version. There are already 200 million Fab employees overseas. The company says that Fab Europe is on pace to represent about 30 percent of the company's 2012 sales.

Changing That Ratio Women 2.0, a media company that offers resources for aspiring women in tech, just announced its partnership with Google. Their first effort together will be pumping up Women 2.0's signature event, Founder Friday, a monthly networking meetup. Detroit and Mexico City will host the event on November 16th, followed by Sao Paulo, New Orleans, and Moscow later on. Mary Grove, head of entrepreneurship outreach at Google, said, "We're looking forward to hosting these important gatherings in Google offices around the world and working together to help female entrepreneurs turn their ideas into innovative, sustainable businesses." No word yet on whether the gift bag includes What Would Marissa Mayer Do? bracelets.

(Source: Warby Parker)

PERFECT TEN. Last Wednesday Time Inc. brought together editors from many of their news properties to bestow upon us the "10 NYC Startups to Watch." Only in the startup picking game since lat year's Internet Week, Time Inc. has already picked winners like GroupMe, which was purchased by Skype for a supposed $85 milion.

The startups that made the cut for 2012 are Adaptly, a social advertising platform; Art.sy, the Pandora of art; Codeacademy, an interactive self-paced tool to learn to code; Enterproid, a mobile platform to segregate work from personal information on a single mobile device; Fab—you already know what Fab does; Fancy Hands, a provider of virtual personal assistants; Loosecubes, a matchmaker for workers and workspaces SideTour; a community marketplace for booking and hosting adventures, Stamped; a five-star-only mobile rating app and Truth Art Beauty; an online platform where users can custom-create skincare blends.

FOUNDER POWER. This Friday Women 2.0 is hosting their New York Founder Friday at 16 East 34th Street. Featured founders Cheryl Yeoh of CityPockets and Eloise Bune of GraciousEloise will begin speaking at 7 p.m. but the event will kick off at 6 p.m. with an introduction by Matt Wolfrom of Makovsky and Company, the event's sponsor. Founder Friday is free, and open to people of all genders, unlike the LOL-inducing "Jews against the Internet" rally, which is $10 and closed to women. Unfortunately, Founder Friday is already at capacity. Add your name to the wait list and cross your fingers.

RALLY IN THE ALLEY. The Association for a Better New York Foundation and Mayor Bloomberg honored the city's technology leaders in Union Square last Thursday including Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley, Greycroft's Alan Patricof, ideeli CEO Paul Hurley and NYTM cofounder Dawn Barber. The Lew Rudin Founder's Award went to New York City deputy mayor for economic development Robert Steel.

MEDIUM MAYHEM. Shelby.tv sat squarely at the intersection of social media and video and last week they began making strides to kick to competition down the block. At The Next Web 2012, cofounder Reece Pacheco unveiled Shelby GT, currently operating in private beta. "Rolls," a tool for organization, curation and the sharing of videos by way of tweets, Facebook posts and other social platforms, make up the centerpiece of this latest social video iteration. Request a private beta invitation to the virtual viewing party here.

DESIGNBOX. Last week LayerVault, an online, unlimited storage space for design files, underwent a redesign adding color extraction and an ability to measure mockups. The "Github for designers" has also introduced "Wormhole," a way to search art files visually by highlighting different design components. That recent shell-out for CS5 might feel a little worse now.

CLOTHES BUY YOU. New York fashion ecommerce company Ruby Ribbon got a $3 million go ahead from Trinity Ventures to launch, sell and market a fashion line "exclusively through social commerce." The company plans to connect to customers on a highly personal level through a national network of stylists who will introduce customers to Ruby Ribbon products at private social functions and in their homes. Ruby Ribbon has been operating stealthily, without so much as a landing page, until today.

PURCHASEST. Ever come across something on Pinterest that you wanted to buy? Well now you can! Sort of. The Fancy wants to treat your eyeballs like a lady while and your wallet like... well pretty much how everyone else treats your wallet. "Everything you see on the site is for sale, or can be for sale, in a function that operates like Groupon in reverse," a press release said. "If someone posts something that develops a huge following -- merchants can come online to sell that item and meet the demand." Fancy just hit half a million users and has big name backers like Square's Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Chris Hughes.

WARBY DARKER. Online prescription eyewear retailer Warby Parker just launched a new line of snazzy prescription sunglasses. At $120 they're a little pricier than their non-polarized counterparts.

COMMUTE. Spotify is on the hunt for a senior product manager with at least five years of experience to drive user revenue. App management platform Appboy wants to add a developer to its small team to provide the server backend for mobile client SDKs and the developer dashboard.

Joanne Wilson, Founder Labs mentor.

New York has plenty of accelerators--TechStars! DreamIt! Entrepreneurs Roundtable! TechStars, again! But incubators have gotten so selective that companies need to be more and more mature in order to get in. Enter the pre-accelerator.

Founder Labs is a five-week mentoring program for (preferably) female entrepreneurs looking to do something with mobile. It was developed by Women 2.0 and is now being spun off as a standalone entity, and expanding to New York.

"The time is tight and the expectations are high, especially since most of you walk in pre-team, pre-idea. You will ideate, talk to potential customers, release products constantly, while getting insights from weekly visiting advisor talks and feedback from mentors," the website says.

Unlike incubators that take a stake in their companies, Founder Labs is pay-to-play at $755 a person (scholarships available). Mentors include Fred Wilson, Joanne Wilson, Esther Dyson and Pivotal Labs's Ian McFarland. Applications are due by April 20.

"Think of [it] as what you do before Y Combinator or Techstars," Fred Wilson told TechCrunch.