maxstoller

Agreed, the title is a bit sensational. There are a handful of active, quality firms on this list. I don't think it's fair to call out SoftBank Capital, Quotidian, etc. I appreciate the goal here, but the approach is flawed. (FWIW, I work in venture, but the firm I work at is not listed.)

I wouldn't worry about it. I had an AdSense account at 13 and a server with SoftLayer at 16.

Check out Grape. (https://github.com/intridea/grape/)

I don't think it's 'unclassy' to replicate a successful model in another vertical, but this model usually doesn't translate well.

BirchBox gets all of their samples for free. Beauty companies are used to giving out free samples and consider it a marketing expense.

Great idea and beautiful UI. I sent chocolates to a friend in SF. I'm a little sad he got an email notification, though. I was hoping it would be a surprise.

I used to live in a 3 bedroom apartment in Manhattan. They exist.

Harvest is taken. (http://getharvest.com/)

You should look into HackNY (http://hackny.org). Last summer HackNY paired 35 students [1] up with startups and gave them all housing in NYC.

[1] http://hackny.org/a/2011/06/class-of-2011-hackny-fellows/

Foursquare is working on a venue harmonization map that does this. See: http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/03/14/1up-the-importance-of-...

True, but Twilio doesn't support MMS yet.

Well done, but it looks awfully similar to DontEat.at. ;)

I was also at the hackathon. A couple of friends and I hacked together a lists feature: http://foursquare.heroku.com.

I hear you. I'm working on it. :)

I'm not sure. I'll have to see what the users demand. First step: bring the app to other cities.

Pure coincidence. I've never seen that app before and can't find it on Google. Can you link it to me?

Good points, thanks. According to the NYC health department, the followup visit is "roughly" within the next month after the failed inspection -- but my guess is that they fall behind often. This is truly a MVP but I will continue to develop it if there is enough demand.

Good point. I didn't expect it to make HN. To answer your question: no, it does not work outside of NYC. It uses data provided by the city.

Wow, thanks for submitting my app. DontEat.at is my submission to the NYC BigApps competition (http://nycbigapps.com/). Let me know what you think.

Mark, the startup community in NYC is thriving. It's a very exciting time to be in the NY tech scene. It's especially interesting as a CS student. Shoot me an email if you want to chat.

Disclosure: I was a HackNY fellow last summer.

I'm all for more programs like this, but I don't think VCs should be running them. HackNY.org is a similar program in NYC. The key difference is that it's a non-profit run by educators and hackers with no commercial interests. HackNY is truly paying it forward.

It exists: http://hackny.org. I was one of the students in the first class this past summer.

I was rejected by TechStars NYC with the same idea. My partner and I were really excited by the idea, but like you, ran into a wall of both legal and social boundaries.

Direct: http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid

I had a similar experience, except I sent a friendly snail mail letter instead of a cake. A couple days later a Twitter employee transferred the username to me and responded to my support ticket thanking me for the letter.

Thanks a lot for the support. We're going to do our best to record all of the panels. Check techatnyu.com next week for links to the recordings.

I'm one of the students behind an organization at NYU called Tech@NYU. We're hosting our second startup week. Feel free to check out our events if you're in the NYC area.

Carbonmade is built on the Microsoft stack: http://www.microsoft.com/web/inspiration/carbonmade.aspx.