Everyone wants to recapture pieces of the past these days. Facebook for example changed all profiles to the timeline format this year, and others in the social media space are pursuing ways of tracking the past. New York-based Timehop has developed its own technology to let individuals recall content from their personal histories, via once-day e-mails. Jonathan Wegener, CEO and co-founder of Timehop, believes the e-mails offer deeper looks into the past than its rivals in the market.

For the team behind Timehop, the technology also marks a major change from where they were one year ago. Back then, they were also working on a startup called FriendsList as part of TechStars’s inaugural NYC class. FriendsList is now defunct. And the tale of how the team scrapped FriendList and moved forward with Timehop provides an interesting case study on startup strategizing—with a dash of nimbleness.

Timehop sends its users e-mails each day that tell them what they were doing exactly one year ago, based on information gathered from their Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and Instagram profiles. These personal newsletters, Wegener says, offer more context than what the sources offer individually. “There’s a big opportunity in history, and no one is doing it well,” he says. Wegener says Timehop gives its users a picture of how they spent their time, whom they spent it with, and what they were thinking across the social sphere. “Effectively you’re writing a diary without really doing anything,” he says.

One-year-old Timehop raised $1.1 million in seed funding in January from OATV, Spark Capital, and individual investors who include Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Wegener says the seed funding will go towards … Next Page »

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Xconomy held its first Big Apple tech event (well, mostly tech, since there was one life sciences company on hand) on Wednesday. We called it New York’s Venture Emergence, and a fantastic crowd of nearly 250 turned out to the Apella Center on East 29th Street for an afternoon of startup snapshots, VC-entrepreneur stories about building great companies, and keynote chats featuring some of New York’s hottest emerging companies and investors.

On the VC side, speakers included Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, RRE Ventures’ Eric Wiesen, Nick Beim of Matrix Partners, Todd Dagres from Spark Capital, Rich Levandov of Avalon Ventures, Michael Greeley from Flybridge Capital Partners, and Dennis Purcell of Aisling Capital.

Companies presenting included bitly, Gilt Groupe, Armgo Pharma, Simulmedia, BarkBox, and Gotham Greens. We also heard from HackNY and Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of SecondMarket—on the day Facebook filed to go public.

We snapped a lot of pictures of the speakers—and our audience. Following is a selection of shots of both. We hope you enjoy them.

A great thanks to our venue host, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and our fantastic event sponsors: Cooley, EisnerAmper, Halloran, IDA Ireland, and TriNet. Special thanks as well to the National Venture Capital Association and New York Angels, which went above and beyond to help with this event.

And thanks most of all to all of you who came to see it, and made such a great crowd. I hope we got a picture of you.

(Xconomy digital media intern Teddy Worcester contributed to the production of this slideshow)

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	New York’s Venture Emergence — The crowd gathers
	Photo by Keith Spiro Photography courtesy of Kendall Press

… Next Page »

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Much like the New York Giants charging onto the football field, companies such as bitly, BarkBox, and Gilt Groupe—along with their backers—have upped the caliber of innovation expected from startups in New York. In response to this upswell of activity, Xconomy brought some 250 members of the local investor and entrepreneurial community together Wednesday to catch a glimpse of the city’s potential as a venture hub. (And to debate the merits of the Giants vs. the Patriots.)

Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures, and Todd Dagres, general partner and founder of Spark Capital, discussed the role media hype plays with some startups and the rise of social media, during a keynote chat moderated by David Rosenblatt, CEO of 1stdibs.

Admittedly, the media is notorious for picking its darlings when discussing innovation while barely mentioning some growing companies. Though Instagram, for example, makes headlines when it lands funding, Wilson said, Union Square Ventures has companies in its portfolio quickly building their businesses under the radar. “They don’t get caught up in a bunch of nonsense,” he said. “We have companies like Indeed.com and Return Path that will be public companies in three or four years—maybe less.” The management teams at those companies, Wilson said, are more focused on developing their products than building their media following.

Dagres said that some companies simply do not talk up their plans. He compared Twitter, a usual suspect on many blogs and news sites, with Tumblr, which until recently was not as vocal. “Tumblr couldn’t get arrested even though it was growing like crazy and was very substantial,” he said. “You didn’t hear anything about it. Now it’s starting to catch on.”

New York’s Tumblr could be on to something by shrugging at hype in order to endure in the social media arena, Wilson said. He noted that early players such GeoCities gave way to MySpace, Facebook, and now Foursquare and Pinterest. “People are figuring out how to make these services more useful and how to also make them businesses,” he said.

The trouble with GeoCities, Wilson said, was in spite of the high hit counts on those … Next Page »

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We’re just a few hours away from the start of Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence. But there’s still plenty of time (relatively speaking) to get your tickets. We have nine left and up for grabs, which you can get by clicking here.

We have a great lineup of speakers planned, including Fred Wilson, founder and managing partner of Union Square Ventures, Todd Dagres, founder and general partner of Spark Capital, the Gilt Groupe startup team, and representatives from Armgo, BarkBox, Simulmedia, and other great New York success stories.

New York’s Venture Emergence happens today from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center for Life Science at 450 E. 29th Street. There will be plenty of time for networking, too. We hope to see you at this exciting event.

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“It is the ‘silver’ age of VC/entrepreneurship. It would be the ‘golden’ age if we could fix the liquidity issues.”

Those are the words of Michael Greeley, general partner of Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston and treasurer of the National Venture Capital Association, referring to the very tight IPO market that is limiting capital-raising options for emerging growth companies. It is also an issue Greeley intends to explore this Wednesday afternoon, at Xconomy’s conference: New York’s Venture Emergence.

That’s because Greeley will be the moderator of a keynote chat with Barry Silbert, CEO and founder of SecondMarket, the hot New York broker-dealer that is doing its share to fix the aforementioned liquidity issue, in large part by creating ways to trade shares of privately held companies.

The chat between Silbert and Greeley is just one part of a fantastic afternoon of discussion and stories from some of New York’s—and the country’s—leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, including Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, the Gilt Groupe founding team, 1stdibs CEO David Rosenblatt, RRE Ventures’ Eric Wiesen, Internet advertising pioneer Dave Morgan (now CEO of startup Simulmedia), Todd Dagres of Spark Capital in Boston—and a whole lot more.

If you don’t have your tickets already, get them fast—time is running out, and space is limited.

Greeley says he is really looking forward to his chat. Some questions he intends to ask Silbert include:

—What is the future of stock exchanges, and how companies raise capital and generate shareholder liquidity?

—What does Second Market look like in five years?

—What are the greatest risks to the business going forward?

—What regulatory issues do companies like Second Market face, and what should the government do?

And last but not least, says Greeley (who remember is from Boston): Who will win the Super Bowl? (I personally feel it will be the Patriots’ revenge).

There will also be time for you to ask Silbert a few questions of your own. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday afternoon. Register here.

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We’re just a week away from Xconomy’s first big New York City event, Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence. And the New York Angels have stepped up to sponsor admissions for 50 NYC startups. Most of these free tickets will be distributed through the city’s startup incubators, but we have 10 to hand out ourselves to entrepreneurs who’d like to attend this exciting afternoon conference, which will be held at the Alexandria Center’s Apella Event Space on February 1.

Brian Cohen, chairman of the New York Angels, says his group was inspired by the great lineup we have planned for this event. We’ll have a keynote chat on the future of venture capital in New York with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Todd Dagres of Spark Capital: their interviewer will be former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt, who is now CEO of Istdibs. The startup teams from bitly, Gilt, Simulmedia, and Armgo will share their experiences, and there will be demos from three of the newest members of the New York startup community: HackNY, Gotham Greens, and BarkBox. ”We have an absolute responsibility to help entrepreneurs be as smart as possible, and this is a great opportunity to do that,” Cohen says. New York Angels was launched in 1997 and has since invested $45 million in 70 companies. “As much as we give back to the startup community, we get back far more from the entrepreneurs,” Cohen says.

If you work at a startup and would like a shot at one of the free tickets sponsored by the New York Angels, just write to us at events@xconomy.com and tell us a bit about your company. (Our apologies, if you have already bought a ticket, you cannot substitute it for a free one.) If you don’t work for a startup but would still like to benefit from the wisdom of our great speakers, you can buy your ticket here. We look forward to seeing you soon at New York’s Venture Emergence.

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Day in and day out, venture capitalists ask questions of entrepreneurs—some might say grill them. But on February 1, at Xconomy’s New York Venture Emergence forum, former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt, who’s now CEO of luxury online marketplace 1stdibs and chairman/co-founder of Group Commerce, will help us turn the tables. Rosenblatt will be the moderator of a fireside chat with legendary investors Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Todd Dagres of Boston’s Spark Capital.

Rosenblatt knows both men well. He and Wilson served on the Twitter board together—Rosenblatt is still on it, while Wilson is no longer a director. And Rosenblatt knows Dagres through Spark Capital’s investment in Group Commerce.

He has some great questions ready for the both of them. I spent some time on the phone last week with Rosenblatt—who outlined his plans. I can’t reveal his specific queries, so as not to ruin the surprise for Wilson and Dagres and let them get too prepared. But I can say they will cover the gamut of how to start companies (and who should start them), how to mentor and grow them, the latest trends and their downside, and a lot more. The discussion should be of immense interest to entrepreneurs and hopeful entrepreneurs, not to mention anyone interested in entrepreneurship, investing, and innovation. “I’m an operator, not an investor,” Rosenblatt says. “And the questions will be for the most part from the point of view of companies—not investors, but entrepreneurs…Hopefully, they are questions that will be helpful for you in relating to investors.”

Rosenblatt plans to leave plenty of time for audience questions as well. But just in case you are shy, or he doesn’t get a chance to call on you, feel free to share yours beforehand. Just put them in the comment stream below, or send them to events@xconomy.com. We’ll do our best to make sure they get addressed.

The keynote chat between Rosenblatt, Dagres, and Wilson is just one part of a star-studded afternoon that includes another keynote chat with Barry Silbert, founder of SecondMarket, and featured talks with the founders and founding investors in Gilt Groupe, bitly, Simulmedia, and more.

We hope to see you there. Get your tickets soon—space is limited for this great event and Early Bird registration ends tomorrow.

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The startup scene in New York is red hot, with a plethora of financings in e-commerce, ad technology, and yes, sometimes even biotechnology. The innovators in these cutting-edge industries are helping drive New York commerce in new directions—a major priority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is on a mission to diversify the city’s economy.

It is in this exciting environment that Xconomy presents its first big NYC event, New York’s Venture Emergence, coming up on February 1 at the Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center.

Today we’re announcing the official agenda for the event. We’ve assembled a first-class lineup of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and executives to share the stories of their New York startup successes.

The event will feature a keynote chat on the future of venture capital in New York with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Todd Dagres of Spark Capital. The startup teams from bitly, Gilt, and Armgo will share their experiences.

There will be plenty of time for networking during the half-day event. And we’ll have demos from three of the newest members of the New York startup community: HackNY, Gotham Greens, and BarkBox.

Our special early-bird pricing is set to end tomorrow, so get your tickets today. And check out our special ticket prices for students and startups. Please join us for this stimulating afternoon with some of New York’s major innovators.

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‘Tis the season to reflect on the past year and take a look at some of Xconomy Boston’s top stories.

As usual, these aren’t necessarily the highest-traffic stories (though in some cases they are). They are stories that exemplify what we are trying to deliver to our readers every day—narratives about the people, companies, and ideas that are shaping the future of technology, life sciences, and cleantech in our region, and across the country.

It was very hard to pick just 20 stories, like I usually do. I guess that’s a good thing. So I fudged it and actually picked slightly more—a dozen tech stories, and a dozen life sciences and cleantech stories.

In any case, our editor’s picks for 2011 span the fields of software, mobile, Internet, security, health IT, biotech, life sciences, energy, and hardware/materials.

They range in topic from people stories (Adriana Jenkins, Steve Jobs) to company strategies (Acme Packet, Vertex) to trends and analysis (big data, biotech risks); from universities (Harvard accelerator) to startups (MedicalRecords, Harvest Power) to big companies (IBM, Pfizer, Biogen Idec); from Q&As (Rob Day, Jim Baum) to company profiles (EnVivo, MC10) to news features (testing the nation’s first car collision-avoidance system); and from big community projects (Entrepreneur Walk of Fame) to cheeky area clusters (top 10 “boring” tech companies).

Here they are in their full glory, our top 20-ish stories of the year, sorted by sector:

Top 12 Tech Stories

Adriana Jenkins, Boston Biotech PR Maven, Dies from Breast Cancer at 41

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Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, co-founder and chief merchandising officer of Gilt Groupe, knows a thing or two about attracting venture capital. Gilt—which holds limited time, online “flash” sales of clothing, accessories, and travel offerings—was founded in 2007 and raised $80 million in several rounds of financing. Then, in May of this year, Gilt raised an incredible $138 million more.

On February 1, Wilkis Wilson and Gilt co-founder Alexis Maybank will be featured speakers at Xconomy’s New York Venture Emergence Forum, a half-day conference during which entrepreneurs and VCs will share the stage to pass along their startup stories and wisdom about creating great companies. Joining the Gilt duo will be Nick Beim, general partner at Matrix Partners, one of Gilt’s main investors.

We’ll also have keynote chats from the likes of Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Spark Capital’s Todd Dagres, and Second Market CEO Barry Silbert. And there will be brief presentations from recently launched companies, including a website for pampered pooches, BarkBox. Check out the full lineup here.

Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence will take place at the Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center for Life Science from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 1. If you act quickly, you can still get the Holiday Special and save on your ticket price. Please join Xconomy to learn all about Gilt’s success and other great NYC entrepreneurship stories.

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Silicon Valley may get the lion’s share of attention when it comes to tech and biotech startups, but as has been clear since well before we launched Xconomy New York in April, the Big Apple has plenty to brag about, too. Take, for example, Gilt Groupe, the fashion e-commerce site that has raised more than $218 million in VC funding. Or bitly, which shortens, tracks, and analyzes Web links and is backed by a Who’s Who of venture and angel investors from RRE Ventures to Ron Conway and Mitch Kapor. The New York area is also home to dozens of other cutting-edge startups, big and small, including Armgo Pharma, BarkBox, and Simulmedia.

Entrepreneurs from all those companies and more—along with their VCs—will be sharing their secrets to creating innovative new companies at Xconomy’s February 1 half-day conference, New York’s Venture Emergence.

At this afternoon event, entrepreneurs will share the stage with VCs to pass along stories about how they built their startups. There will also be keynote chats with Barry Silbert, CEO of Second Market, and two of the country’s most influential and astute investors—Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson and Todd Dagres of Spark Capital. Moderating the chat between Wilson and Dagres will be former Doubleclick CEO David Rosenblatt, who now heads online luxury marketplace company 1stdibs, and no doubt knows how to bring out the best in VCs. Finally, we will showcase some “burst” presentations from some of the city’s most promising new ventures.

Check out the exciting lineup of speakers we have planned:

Keynote chats featuring:
Fred Wilson, founder and managing partner of Union Square Ventures
Todd Dagres, founder and general partner of Spark Capital
Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of Second Market
David Rosenblatt, CEO of 1stdibs

Featured speakers and storytellers:
Nick Beim, general partner of Matrix Partners
Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, founder and chief merchandising officer of Gilt Groupe
Alexis Maybank, founder and chief marketing officer of Gilt Groupe
Rich Levandov, managing director of Avalon Ventures
Dave Morgan, founder and CEO of Simulmedia
Dennis Purcell, senior managing partner of Aisling Capital
Sapan Shah, CEO of Armgo Pharma
Peter Stern, CEO of bitly
Eric Wiesen, general partner of RRE Ventures

Bonus presentations by:
Carly Strife, co-founder and CEO of BarkBox
Chris Wiggins, co-founder of HackNY

Xconomy Forum: New York’s Venture Emergence will take place at the Apella Event Space at Alexandria Center for Life Science from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 1. There will be a networking reception, too.

You can find more information—plus special discounted ticket prices for super early birds, students, and startups—by clicking here. Please join Xconomy for this exciting review of the New York venture scene.

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Xconomy continues its partnership with WGBH to bring you the latest and greatest in news from Boston’s innovation community. Have a listen to find out about software that may help you work off that Thanksgiving feast, investments in companies that make high-power lasers and plant-harvesting robots, and the Xconomy quote of the week. Plus, get the details on one of Xconomy’s major Boston events, 6×6: Six Cities, Six Big Tech Ideas—this Thursday at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology. The Xconomy Report airs every Friday at 7:49am on 89.7 FM. Listen here:

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New England startups working on drugs, security software, robots, laser weapons (seriously), and mobile fitness applications have reported a bundle of deals this week heading into Thanksgiving.

—Newton, MA-based Allena Pharmaceuticals, a new startup targeting protein therapeutics, premiered with a $15 million Series A financing. The funding came from Third Rock Ventures, Frazier Healthcare, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

—Area security software makers were busy in the past week. CounterTack, formerly of the DC area, announced a $9.5 million financing and its plans to move to Boston. The new money comes from Fairhaven Capital of Cambridge, MA, along with other private investors. Boston-based Rapid7, a security assessment software maker, pulled in a $50 million Series C round from new backer Technology Crossover Ventures.

—Cambridge-based Agios announced its oversubscribed $78 million Series C financing, from its drug-development partner Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) and return investors Arch Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures, and Third Rock Ventures. Also participating in the deal were “three leading, large public investment funds,” whose identity Agios did not disclose.

—The week kicked off with a duo of deal announcements from Harvest Automation and TeraDiode. Billerica, MA-based Harvest, which makes robots that harvest shrubs, raised $7.8 million led by Entree Capital. And Littleton, MA-based TeraDiode, which makes lasers for defense and industrial applications, pinned down $10 million in Series B money led by Argonaut Ventures.

—Mobile app developer RunKeeper nabbed a $10 million financing round, led by new investor Spark Capital, with participation from existing investor O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and new investor Revolution Ventures (co-founded by AOL chairman Steve Case). The Boston startup said it would use the money to further develop a platform for plugging different health-focused applications and devices into its RunKeeper ecosystem.

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FitnessKeeper, the Boston-based startup known for its RunKeeper mobile app, is announcing today that it has pulled in a $10 million funding round, led by new investor Spark Capital, with participation from existing investor O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV) and new investor Revolution Ventures. The money will go towards helping the company, whose RunKeeper app tracks users’ running speed and mileage count, tackle consumer health and fitness data more broadly.

Earlier this year, FitnessKeeper developed an application programming interface (API) called the Health Graph, where other wellness-focused applications can plug into the RunKeeper platform, enabling consumers to map the data on and interaction of things like running, weight gain or loss, calorie consumption, and sleep. The platform is also used by companies powering corporate wellness programs and fitness competitions.

“The early success of the Health Graph has showed us that the world is ready for someone to step up and build a consumer health platform that ties together all of this disparate health information across categories,” said founder and CEO Jason Jacobs in an e-mail discussing the deal. That platform will be an extension of the Health Graph, and the new funding will go towards product and community development. FitnessKeeper now has 14 employees, but that headcount should surpass 40 by the end of 2012, Jacobs told Xconomy. The company is crammed into its same South End offices for now, but it will likely move into new space to accommodate the team growth, said Jacobs.

Announcing funding in November has been a tradition for FitnessKeeper the last few years. Last November it raised a $1.1 million financing from OATV and existing investors LaunchCapital, Will Herman, Dave Balter, and Don McLagan. The November before, it announced a $400,000 seed financing.

The RunKeeper app, which previously cost around $10 for a premium version, was made completely free last year. The company offers a yearly subscription and more expanded services for $20 per year. It will be interesting to see how the company’s business model evolves, as Jacobs said the big focus with the Health Graph right now “is not on monetization, but rather on improving the core product, building the largest, most engaged userbase possible, and continuing to expand the universe of apps/devices that integrate via our Health Graph API.”

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All this talk about quarterly earnings and venture stats reminded me: I never posted my favorite stories from Xconomy Boston’s third quarter.

Yes, I know it’s almost the end of October, and the third quarter ended a month ago. I must have been traumatized by the collapse of the Red Sox or something (is baseball still going on?). Go ahead, run me out of town like Theo and Tito.

This time, I’m not consulting with my colleagues. I’m a rebel, a maverick. I work alone. Without further ado, here are my favorite stories from July through September:

Top 10 Tech Stories:

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One of the Boston area’s most intriguing tech startups—because of its global reach—has emerged from a fairly quiet period with a new name and a refined mission.

Boston- and San Francisco-based Txteagle, a mobile research and marketing startup focused on developing countries, has rebranded itself as Jana (pronounced “Jah-nuh”). The name is Sanskrit for “people,” and as co-founder and CEO Nathan Eagle explains, it highlights the focus of the young company. It also fits the aesthetic profile of what the team wanted in a name: “It’s short, has two consonants and two vowels, and is easy to recognize and spell,” he says.

Yes, Eagle is a precise kind of guy. Precisely crazy enough to think his startup can change the world by enabling companies to do market research and mobile marketing in nearly 100 developing nations (and counting) via mobile phones. All by compensating consumers for participating by rewarding them with airtime on their mobile subscriber accounts.

This is interesting because, first of all, most brands and ad agencies don’t have good access to detailed data about consumers in emerging economies. “We want to generate data that simply doesn’t exist,” Eagle says. And, second, Jana has a way of reaching a lot of people with what sounds like a pretty compelling offer. “As far as I know, there’s no other company on Earth that has the capability to instantly compensate 2 billion people,” he says.

Where did this company come from? Ten years ago, Eagle (see photo, below) was a graduate student in the wearable computing group at the MIT Media Lab. He convinced his advisor to let him program a Nokia phone to collect data about his behavior and surroundings, instead of strapping on bulky equipment like other students. “So I wouldn’t have to dress up as a computer for the rest of my graduate career,” he quips. “I’ve been hacking on phones ever since.”

He finished his PhD in 2005, and wanted to make an impact on people’s lives through mobile devices. Mobile phone adoption was taking off fast in Africa, so Eagle took a faculty position at MIT but arranged to live in Kenya, where he taught mobile-app development at the University of Nairobi.

That led to a number of interesting projects. One was an app to enable rural nurses to send text messages about the local blood supply levels in their hospitals, so that centralized blood banks could see where blood was needed. (Previously this was done by having people drive from hospital to hospital, with long delays in information flow.) The first week of the release went well, but in the second week, about half the nurses stopped texting. By the end of the month, all the texting had stopped.

“It failed simply because of lack of insight on my part,” Eagle says. “We were asking these rural nurses to send a text message every day with the data. That was like asking them to take a pay cut. The price of a text message was a surprising fraction of their day’s wage.”

So he went back to the drawing board. Eagle’s work was around mobile phones, but it was also around “big data,” he says. “I was working with dozens of mobile operators in East Africa, … Next Page »

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