Wiosio is a Turkish company being featured at Disrupt NY’s Startup Alley this year, and it’s a little like what watching television would be like if your friends took over the programming.

At first glance, Wiosio most closely resembles an everyday television programming lineup. There are a number of predefined channels that are organized by category, each of which streams a series of 15 minute “shows” that air one after the other on a 24/7 basis.

And yet, you won’t find any programming from any of the four major TV networks on Wiosio. Nor will you be able locate any shows from any of the major cable networks. Each 15 minute show is in actuality a running playlist of YouTube videos, photo galleries, songs, or blog posts that have been curated and packaged by Wiosio’s users.

Wiosio has a number of channels called “stages”, that are defined by specific arenas of interest and location. For example, you’ll find a “Music” stage for general music related content, and a “New York Music” stage for content specific to the New York music scene. You can also subscribe to the stages that most interest you, and thus create a specific channel that is tailored to the content you’d like to consume.

But what if you want to do more than just consume? If you’re looking to get your own curated content on Wiosio, it’s a fairly simple process.

When you first sign up with Wiosio, you’re given 5,000 Wiosio points that you can use to bid for auctioned spaces of airtime. Airtime on each stage is auctioned off in 15 minute chunks, and the auction runs until the very second that slot of content is scheduled to begin streaming on the stage.

The more people upvote your shows when they air, the more Wiosio points you obtain, increasing your influence as a content curator in the Wiosio network.

“You can say that the media manufactures its own stars, news, and facts,” says Mujdat Ayoguz, founder of Woisio, “and imposes them on people.” Ayoguz believes that Woisio is a platform that truly democratizes content curation and distribution.

Wiosio launched in the United States in December, and released their iOS app last Friday in an effort to expand their user base here. According to Wiosio, they’ve already established a presence in Turkey in the “tens of thousands” of users range, and are planning to launch in Latin America very shortly.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Kevin Ryan has had a lot of variety in his career so far, with a front-row seat building companies including DoubleClick, Gilt Groupe, 10gen, and Business Insider. And recently it’s been reported that he could add another very interesting facet to his resume by running for mayor of New York City.

So when we had the opportunity to talk with Ryan backstage at the Disrupt NYC 2013 show, we asked him about the rumors and whether a leap from business to politics is in his future. While it sounds like he might not be keen to take the seat vacated by Michael Bloomberg in the very near future, he had some great insights on why it could be a very good thing if the next leader at City Hall is someone from the tech world. We also talked about how he keeps balance while running companies in such divergent spaces, from fashion to programming tools and beyond.

Check it all out in the video above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Bidzy, a new platform for connecting local services businesses with customers who need the service they offer in the next few hours, is launching at Disrupt NY 2013 today. Like the best ideas, Bidzy’s premise is simple: allow the customer to specify exactly what they want and the amount they are willing to pay and then let the individual businesses decide if they’re happy to take on a spot of last-minute work on those terms. Job done. Or, rather, credit card charged.

Bidzy’s platform sits in the middle, connecting the right customers to the right local services and holding payment until the work is completed – much like TaskRabbit hooks up consumers with time/skills to offer to other consumers (c2c) who have a task that needs doing. Except Bidzy’s focus is solely c2b – with its twist being that it allows customers to specify what they’re willing to pay.

“I actually don’t think there is anybody else who is allowing customers to name their own price,” says co-founder Dave Thawley, when asked about Bidzy’s competitors. “Or to put a credit card behind their bid… Bidzy is actually reaching out to the merchants on customers’ behalf, saying ‘hey are you free at two o’clock today, are you willing to cut my hair for $35?’ So we feel like we’re the first company to put the equation that way in the personal services space.”

There’s undoubtedly some crossover between Bidzy and Zaarly but Thawley argues that’s “more of a traditional storefront business versus the kind of marketplace that we are today.” Other rivals he cites are Craigslist and “vertical-specific online booking tools” – but, in the latter’s case, he points out that merchants have to provide availability data, something Bidzy does not require them to do.

The main knot Bidzy is trying to work out of the local business ecosystem is the amount of time and sweat it can take consumers to track down a service that suits, especially if they have a last-minute need for it — whether it’s a back massage after a sports injury, a quick haircut when a work meeting is cancelled, or an overlooked oil change before heading off on a road trip. Or a dog walker when you’re presenting on stage at Disrupt.

The idea for Bidzy was sparked after just such an incident. “One of the reasons why we chose to do the service category was based on personal experience where I had been out kite boarding in the day, hurt my back and it was 8PM,” says Thawley. “I was trying to find a massage studio to give me a back massage and I ended up having to call about 20 merchants before I finally found somebody.

Instead of a customer with a last-minute service requirement wasting time trying to track down a business that can fit them in, Bidzy’s platform lets them broadcast a request to relevant businesses in their area. All they have to do is wait for a merchant to accept their bid and the appointment is booked and paid for. For the consumer it’s a low hassle way of ticking tough-to-schedule items off a to-do list.

To make a Bidzy bid, a consumer enters five criteria: the category of service they’re looking for; how far they’re willing to travel; the time they have available for an appointment; the star rating of the business they want to use; and how much they are willing to pay. At launch, Bidzy is using an amalgamation of public-review data to generate its own star rating for businesses, but, as consumers conduct transactions through the platform, it will be able to feed its own data in.

Once the consumer’s bid is submitted, merchants who meet the customer’s requirements are pinged by Bidzy — and each one can decide if it is happy to accept the customer on their terms, with no obligation to do so. The first to accept gets the business. Bidzy will also be able to show customer data to merchants to help them make a decision on whether to accept a bid – such as how many bids the customer has submitted before, and the star ratings they have left.

Bidzy’s founders are keen to point out that, unlike daily deals companies like Groupon – which cast a long and rather chilling shadow over the local services space with their deal-driven customer acquisition model — Bidzy does not place margin-battering requirements on businesses to accept hundreds of customers at a particular offer price. Local merchants with modest means are able to choose to accept each potential sale on a case by case basis.

Click to view slideshow.

“A lot of the negativity from merchants towards Groupon is that you’re required to sell 200, 300, 400 appointments in a single Groupon deal,” says Thawley. “What that means for them is for a very long period of time – sometimes upwards of six months – they are just having a very challenging issue pushing all of these Groupon deals through their system without disrupting their traditional customer flow.”

So while Bidzy’s platform may inevitably encourage customers to haggle and perhaps try their luck at getting a discount price, it’s not a like-for-like competitor with daily deals since merchants retain control over whether they take on each new customer. For them it’s a zero risk, low hassle way to get new customers through the door at times when they specifically need them, increasing utilization rates and supplementing their normal cash flow. And at the end of the day, if a customer is trying their luck asking to pay too little, the merchant can just ignore them and wait for a better bid to drop in.

Having talked to plenty of services business in the course of setting up the business, Bidzy’s founders point out that most operate at less than full capacity at certain times of day – “lots operate at 50 percent utilization” overall, says Thawley. And that’s the pretty big business problem Bidzy is aiming to fix — as well as offering consumers a more convenient way to get stuff done. “Bidzy allows local services businesses to monetize what was previously un-utilized time, and to augment their existing customer base in a very bite-sized manor,” he says.

The startup is launching in one city — San Francisco — and targeting personal services categories including hair and beauty, nails, fitness, massage, automotive, and home and pet, which it believes are best suited to the last-minute service/convenience problem it’s aiming to crack. Once usage data starts flowing in it can of course look to adjust the categories it covers, based on where traction is and isn’t taking place.

“We’re the first people to acknowledge that it’s never going to be 100 percent of [local services] appointments going through the Bidzy platform,” says Bidzy’s other co-founder Sven Jensen. “There’s certain situations where people on the consumer side do want more control… The woman who’s going to get her haircut the morning of her marriage is probably going to want someone she’s spent a lot of time researching.”

But for every pre-wedding hair cut there are undoubtedly scores more consumers needing a quick short-back-and-sides on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. And that’s where Bidzy is positioning itself to take a percentage cut of all those extra transactions it makes possible.

Although it’s just the beginning for Bidzy’s platform — which today launches as an iOS app and website (an Android app due in six to eight weeks’ time) — the startup has managed to sign up around 15,000 merchants in the Bay Area already, with relatively minimal levels of merchant outreach (and no paying customers yet).

Thawley and Jensen, have been bootstrapping Bidzy to the tune of just $70,000, which makes its merchant acquisition efforts all the more impressive. Bidzy’s permanent headcount is currently just the two co-founders, although they have used contractors to help get the initial swathe of merchants signed up.

The founders met in San Francisco about five years ago, through another startup Jensen was working on, and started talking about setting up “a platform for what a buyer wants” early last year. They both have retail experience to draw on as they build out Bidzy. After a stint in the Air Force, Thawley headed to business school and went into business strategy consultancy — where eBay become a client. Jensen worked in investment banking before doing the sports equipment marketplace startup which is where he met Thawley.

After the buzz generated by launching at Disrupt, the founders say they intend to start looking to raise their first round — to build out the Bidzy team and technology, ramp up customer and merchant acquisition and start expanding geographically. Fittingly for Disrupt NY, New York is the next city on their roadmap, but they also see a lot of potential for Bidzy in less well-served parts of the U.S.

“We built our technology to have a very rapid rollout across the United States. And our hope is to go from San Francisco to New York, and once those two markets are operating comfortably we think a lot of the value is actually getting into middle America where a lot of these solutions are much less prevalent,” says Thawley. “We’ve got a very automated means of merchant outreach – we spent a lot of time building out our North American database – it’s stuff that should hopefully happen very quickly.”

Questions & Answers

Judges: Nikolaos Bonatsos (General Catalyst), Tracy Chou (Pinterest), Matt Mazzeo (Lowercase Capital), Ron Palmeri (MkII Ventures).

Q: How do you provide apples to apples comparisons of service providers who are used to providing services at different price points?
A: That’s mainly based on star rating. So if you are submitting a bid for a five star hair cut then that’s automatically going to be pushing out to the group of merchants who receive those ratings on traditional online ratings forms so when you submit your bid and if a merchant qualified it, based on their geolocation and their star rating, it’s actually the first merchant to accept the bid that earns your service. This is how Bidzy’s operating on day one. Further down the line — assuming we have merchants that are auto-accepting or accepting at a very fast rate then we’d use our own algorithm to decide what’s going to provide the best experience for the customer.

Q: What are the top use cases that you have in mind? What are the top three verticals?
A: I think different people are going to have different products that they use. Some people would be fine with getting a haircut and using Bidzy to get that last minute haircut when you need something quick and simple. Other people wouldn’t let us go near their hair but maybe something like a manicure, or maybe something like dog walking — or even something like getting your house or apartment cleaned — you as a customer think of more as a commoditised experience. Consumers can still set a star rating to have a level of quality assurance but the more commoditised the experience, the easier for the customer to get their head around it.

Q: One of the challenges is this is a classic two-sided market. You have to have enough providers, in order for people to find people that are willing to fulfil the bid. That’s usually a pretty hard problem to do so how are you tackling that?
A: It’s the chicken and egg problem but we think our chicken lays a lot of eggs. Speaking specifically to the merchant side, we’ve got two main answers to that: we’re offering them a customer at 2pm today whether they want it or not. On top of that, in order to reduce this friction and not have this problem of a lot of boots on the ground in order to sell Bidzy into these businesses we’ve developed a proprietary app that regardless of whether the merchant’s on our platform or not when you submit that bid for the oil change, every merchant in the local area receives a telephone call, an SMS and an email notifying them that this appointment’s available. And they can choose whether or not they log on to the Bidzy platform in order to find out more.

On the consumer side it’s a little bit more of a traditional playbook. We’ve got all of the normal social hooks built into our app  and our website. There’s Facebook and Twitter sharing. We already have a refer a friend program — if I tell you about it and you enter a code, I’m getting $10 to spend on my next bid.

Q: How far along is the company in terms of team, market, customers?
A: We’ve launched about three hours ago. So far the numbers are really through the roof! We’ve been developing for approx. 7 months. The business has been in place for 10. We spent first few months mainly doing research. The team right now is Sven & myself, as well as a team of contract developers but post-TechCrunch we’re hoping to raise a round of funding an build out a more significant sized in-house team. And then we’ve built out the technology to date so we can rapidly deploy across all U.S. cities although we’re launching today in San Francisco

Q: For the first time that somebody fires up the app how are you going to make sure that whatever that person requests, you’re going to be able to fulfil that?
A: We start off by making the customer put bids in our buckets. It’s not a Craiglist format where you can type in free-form text. The customer is pushed in an avenue to structure their data. There’s very few points where you get to put in unstructured data. There’s some bids that we’re never going to be able to offer — if you’re looking for something very specific at two o’clock in the morning and merchants aren’t working at that point. We’re not going to solve that problem; nor is anyone. But speaking to these merchants, a lot of them are small businesses, a lot of them are desperate — they’re working at about 50% capacity. We’re giving them a new channel to get a customer. They know how much they’re going to get, they didn’t have to do anything in advance of it and they get extra money.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hot damn, the Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon was great. Even with the hackathon over and the winner declared (Way to go, Rumbler!), we keep finding more projects we want to highlight.

Built in just 24 hours, Game Of Tones is a proof-of-concept game that, with a bit of work, could teach you to play the actual guitar (versus, say, Rock Band — which, while a great game, is about as effectiv

Game Of Tones works in unison with a real-life electric guitar, paired to the computer through a line-in converter. As you strum, notes are fired from the neck of your on-screen hero’s guitar. Different chords result in different attacks, currently represented as notes of different hues. Strum an A, and blue notes fire out; strum an E, and red notes are fired.

In its current, proof-of-concept state, Game Of Tones is a bit simple, but the team says they want to build it out into something bigger. Right now, your character (modeled after the game’s co-designer Jeff, which fellow co-designer Roman says was a change that came “while he was in the bathroom”) stands in place, firing notes to blast away at a pile of physics enabled boxes. The focus of the first 24 hours was to get the game’s engine (Unity) recognizing the guitar input and differentiating the different chords.

The team says they’d like to expand the concept into something more, mentioning the possibility of some sort of forever-runner platformer with enemies vulnerable to different chords, or a multiplayer shredding battle.

Check out the team’s on-stage demo below. While Murphy’s Law went into full effect when a wiggled cable lead to some technical woes, I made sure to pull ‘em backstage for a better look — be sure to check out that video, as well.

Game Of Tones On-Stage:

Game Of Tones Backstage Interview:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Technology has helped to level the playing field across a wide range of industries, letting more individuals come to the table in fields such as publishing, entertainment and, of course, building web startups. And according to Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers partner Chi-Hua Chien, the next space ripe for a big tech-powered wave of democratization is commerce.

In an on-stage conversation with David Kirkpatrick at the TechCrunch NYC Disrupt conference Wednesday afternoon, Chien explained how tech has helped flatten a number of previously stratified spaces. The mid- to late-90′s saw the democratization of information — companies such as Google made data available to everyone, no matter where or who they were. After that came the democratization of distribution, with services such as Twitter and Facebook allowing anyone to broadcast their content and potentially attract an audience. The democratization of computing has occurred as well, with billions of people in the world now having access to computers because of the availability of low-cost mobile devices. Up next? The world of shopping and selling.

“We’re now entering an era around the democratization of commerce,” Chien said. The past, he said, has been about “mass aggregation,” with companies such as Safeway and Wal-Mart rising to the top of the commerce space by simply being the best at aggregating a suite of products into one space. These big companies also built up their own brand names to make shoppers feel secure in buying things from them. Today, though, we are starting to “see an unwinding of aggregation of commerce as technology starts to disrupt” the industry, Chien said.

“If you think about what a Wal-Mart does, it aggregates credibility and inventory,” Chien said. Credibility is the Wal-Mart brand name, and the inventory is simply products and storage. Today, credibility can be established by smaller players via social media, and real estate and inventory can be outsourced much easier.

Chien pointed to two Kleiner Perkins portfolio companies to illustrate this movement: Square, which he said is democratizing becoming a merchant, and Zaarly for democratizing the ability to do a particular job. In a short conversation off-stage, he told me that Gumroad is also one of the Kleiner-backed startups that is leading the way toward big commerce disruption.

Looking at Kleiner Perkins itself, Chien not surprisingly declined from discussing the lawsuit filed by investment partner Ellen Pao (the news of which TechCrunch was the first to break yesterday) during his fireside chat.

But, he did shed some light on the firm’s larger strategy, in particular its increasing focus on making digital investments, after a few years of being more well-known for making moves in the green tech space. “In the last five years, [Kleiner has] added four investing partners focusing on consumer digital,” Chien said.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The tale of Docracy’s year-long journey is a fun one. When Matt Hall and his partner John Watkinson first went into the Hackathon last year, the only goal was to get a prototype working for an idea they had, a GitHub for legal documents. Sure, a win would’ve been nice, but the main goal was to push out a prototype they could pitch to investors (instead of just an idea) with a firm deadline hanging over their shoulders.

But alas, Docracy took home the top prize despite the fact that they were the first of more than 100 presentations that day. And after last year’s Disrupt NYC (tickets to this year’s Disrupt here), the story only gets better.

The original plan was to push out a fully functional Docracy within a week or so of the Hackathon, but after a chat with a more legal-savvy friend the pair realized that a little extra scrutiny to any liabilities was in order. That week turned into a full seven months, with a hard launch in December of 2011. In November, just a month before, the company received a $650,000 seed round led by First Round Capital. Vaizra Investments, Rick Webb and Quotidian Ventures also participated.

Matt and John were able to quit their jobs and focus on Docracy full time. And today the service already has over 10,000 users.

There’s something to be said about the power of a successful Hackathon presentation. It’s not only true with Docracy, but Group.me (which was recently acquired by Skype) won the TechCrunch Hackathon as well and has since gone on to fall under the almighty Microsoft umbrella.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

How timely. After launching a year ago at Disrupt NYC 2011, Tracks is today releasing one of its biggest updates to date. The service is much like Color, but without the creepy factor as any and all members of a specific photo-sharing group must be invited. I like to think of it as the place where Color and Google+ Circles intersect, but I far prefer Tracks than either of the former.

Thus far Tracks has offered iOS, web- and real-world versions of your tracks (the collection of photos shared with a specific social network, which can be both geo-temporal or last forever). Today, however, the service gets much more beefy, with the ability to shoot and send real-time video and the addition of new filters, Instagram-style. There are now ten filter options on the app, and they’ll all work on both photos and videos.

But that’s not all. The update brings with it the ability to add friends to various tracks from Facebook and Twitter, as well as a new custom camera with multi-shot capability and locks for exposure and focus. Animations have also been added.

Tracks has seen great success since its debut at Disrupt last year, launching an iPhone app officially in October and raising a $1 million round in December. The company also enticed Photobucket’s founder Alex Welch to join the board.

Speaking of Mr. Welch, here’s what he had to say about today’s Tracks update:

Since joining Tracks as both an investor and board member last year, I have worked very closely on product and strategy with Vic and team. I continue to be impressed at the overall vision, as well as the dedication and execution of this team. As simple as it may sound, the challenge of having a single mainstream service that can span both experiences and interests with different groups of friends and family, has not been solved at a large scale. The Tracks approach is the right one.

The idea of a private social network is one of the few new social ideas that I can jump on board with, and it’ll be interesting to see how the company builds out this offering with behemoths like Facebook and Twitter still growing at a solid pace.

Click to view slideshow.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

My first-ever Disrupt was a year ago, almost exactly. I had just started working for TechCrunch and Disrupt NYC 2011 was my initiation, of sorts. I had heard of Disrupt before — but witnessing the Battlefield first-hand, from the front row no less, is a totally different beast.

Every uncertain moment or slip-up during a presentation left me worried, and each triumphant joke or wondrous moment made me clap as loud as the folks in the back. Looking back on that time, a handful of startups are still locked safely away in my memory, the most prominent of all being Sonar.

That’s because the second I heard the concept, I knew it would be a big deal. Considering a host of new apps on the market that do similar things, like Highlight and Crowded Room, I was right. But as Disrupt NYC 2012 (tickets here) draws nigh, I couldn’t help but wonder what life has been like for Brett Martin and his social proximity company since launching on the main stage just a year ago.

I set out on a mission to find out the answer, and Brett Martin was kind enough to oblige.

Here’s the interview in its entirety:

TechCrunch: So tell me what it was like to launch at Disrupt last year.

Sonar: Well, first of all, Disrupt is an amazing, unbelievable, could-not-have-imagined-a-better platform for launching a company. Like all the startups involved, we hadn’t told anyone what we were doing until the moment Sonar launched. We didn’t know what to expect, or if the reaction would be good. But the response was amazing.

We had all of these people talking to us about how excited they were about what we were doing. Whether it was advertising or recruiting or PR, people picked up on the fact that Sonar would change industries. The platform gave us the opportunity to get out and start fast.

TC: So what have you been up to since then?

Sonar: More of the same. We get to meet the leading VCs, and brands are knocking down our door trying to partner with us. We’ve done a couple select partnerships with companies we really like that fit our vision. One was a partnership with Wired Magazine, where we provided personalized product recommendations in their pop-up store for anyone based on their online identities.

SXSW was amazing this year. Because of the press we got early on at Disrupt, everyone already knew what we were doing and wanted to talk to us. Our space really heated up, but everyone knew about us as the early proximity social network because of Disrupt.

Another thing we noticed about launching at Disrupt is that it offers a huge mobile platform. We launched at the Battlefield, and by the next day, when we went on stage for the finals, we were being used in 35 different countries. And what’s awesome is that that global reach has persisted through today. Because of the way Sonar works, people from everywhere are using it trying to connect.

We’ve also been growing. We went from a three-person staff at Disrupt to nine people now, and we’re still hiring developers for back-end, front-end, and mobile.

TC: So what do you think a Disrupt launch did for your company?

Sonar: Simply put, it gave us the opportunity to cement ourselves in proximity social networking. It was the first time people had heard about this type of thing. We have some more exciting stuff in the works that’s not ready to go out.

TC: I think one of the greatest things about the Battlefield is the Q&A. It can make or break a presentation, and with hard-hitting judges like Michael Arrington and Marissa Mayer up there, it can probably be a really stressful moment. Do you feel like the Battlefield Q&A helped you refine your product, or would you say it was a hindrance in any way? In short, how did you feel about the Disrupt Q&A during your launch?

Sonar: This is how I see it: if you’re a startup CEO or founder, it’s your job to be able to answer difficult questions on the spot in front of thousands of people. Disrupt is a great place to separate the weak from the strong. It really is a battleground — a rite of passage. If someone didn’t have a great launch it won’t kill the company. Companies aren’t built on a launch.

And one more thing: Arrington is a big teddy bear. I don’t know why people are so scared of him. He’s big and cuddly.

TC: How would you say Disrupt participating played into your platform with the media?

Sonar: Disrupt got the ball rolling. Every major media outlet out there covers us. A few weeks ago we got a call from MSNBC to talk about the JOBS act.

I find that the most common thing people say when they meet me is “Oh, I’ve heard of Sonar. I saw your video from Disrupt.” That video is a lot of people’s first perception of Sonar. So it’s a good thing the pitch went well.

TC: I guess my last question is more for new entrepreneurs than for you specifically, but there are hundreds of young entrepreneurs and startups headed to the city this week to be a part of Disrupt, whether they’re in the audience, in Startup Alley or on stage for the Battlefield. What advice would you give to them?

Sonar: Know your pitch. Practice what you’re going to say, of course, but don’t forget to listen.

Listen to the judges, listen to the announcers and the way you’re being presented, and listen to the crowd’s reaction. There are so many interesting, thoughtful people out there, and Disrupt is the opportunity to get in front of them.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Yext has been making waves of late, what with the spin-off of their original pay-per-call ad business which has been renamed Felix and the launch of their new business, PowerListings. But this is far from the beginning for Yext — the company first hit the scene way back in 2009 at our TC50 conference.

That means founder and CEO Howard Lerman is about as close to a Disrupt veteran as you can get, seeing as though he was launching at Disrupt before we even called it Disrupt (tickets here).

I asked him to come into the AOL headquarters to discuss what TC50 did for his brand and the company’s overall success, as a part of my “Disrupt Alumni: Where They Are Now” series.

In the words of Lerman, TC50 led to a $25 million C-series round led by IVP and Sutter Hill less than two weeks after the company launched. But his advice to new entrepreneurs is very simple. Despite whatever success or difficulties you may have with your business, know that things can always change.

He saw a better growth opportunity for Yext’s PowerListings tool than he ever saw for Felix, the original pay-per-call business. That didn’t necessarily mean that Yext should abandon its root business, but instead they’re growing the two companies separately to get the most value out of each.

Lerman also warned entrepreneurs to be picky and careful about choosing founders. “You’re entering into a marriage with that person,” said Lerman.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies itching to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

TechCrunch Disrupt NYC is almost here! Yes, we are very excited. And you should be, too. We have already announced some incredible speakers and judges who will be joining us next month in New York, and we have even more surprises in store that will be announced as we get closer to the event.

Starting this week, we are going to be giving two free tickets away every Friday. So, if you don’t win this time, make sure to check back next week to win.

Disrupt NYC is going to be so much fun. These free tickets, each worth around $2,000, will get you into the whole three days of the conference, plus all of the after parties. Check out the images below. We are already all over New York.

To enter, all you have to do is follow these steps:

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us your favorite thing about New York

The contest starts now and ends April 29th at 7:30pm PT.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose two separate winners at random and contact them once the giveaway is over. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note this giveaway is for tickets only and does not include airfare or hotel.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch