By Dennis Clemente
How do you tweak the startup meetup? The drill in New York meetups: Startups pitch for two to five minutes to investors who then provide their feedback. That’s how it goes.
In the Startupalooza meetup last July 24, host Alan Brody tweaked that formula. This time, he had the startups in place while the investors—this time angels, not the usual VC—roamed around asking questions. Think trade fair. And how it could only be pulled off like one because there were just too many startups—14 in all.
Out of the 14, Brody picked four to present to the audience. They were Flower Turbines, Potboiler, 90Grand and CelebDare.
Flower Turbines, the night’s winner based on votes by the angel investors, makes small, easily started, nearly silent vertical axis wind turbines that efficiently generate electricity.
Clustering them causes an additional 20 percent “flower power boost” in net energy output, according to Farb Daniel.
Potboiler produces serialized novellas with graphics, video, animation and social media components and distributed through Amazon, iBooks and Barnes & Noble. Check out getfisk.com where single chapters can be read or refined along the way. Stories are created from scratch.
90Grand, for its part, is looking into the corporate rewards and loyalty sector with its licensed iconic photographic images of luminaries, celebrities and personalities, shot by renowned photographers of the last century.
“We carry no open receivables or inventory, with minimal infrastructure. We are also fully scalable,” said Roger Maggio, chief of operations.
Another presenter, CelebDare is a crowdsourcing platform aimed at engaging celebrities or anyone in the spotlight for the purpose of advancing a common good.
Founder Jeffrey Katz sees it as a new avenue for charities and companies to reach key objectives.
Asked what is the unique aspect of the business? Katz, a Harvard grad, recalled how another startup back in his day was also not that unique but how it still made it big. He let the audience say it was Facebook.
For Katz’s business model, there’s the challenge of reaching a celebrity, but he is undaunted.
One interesting startup is a white label service offered by datingadvisors.org. Trained advisors give personal live dating advice directly through a dating site.
Among the investors at the meetup were John Ason and Barry Kolevson of Joshua Capital who also announced the Private Equity Forum event on Oct 2 where the winner, Flower Turbines, will get to pitch and raise funding for his startup. Visit privateequityforums.com