collected by city agencies. Entries will be accepted until next January 25 with the winners to be announced next March.
Bloomberg also shared the names of some of the institutions that have filed proposals to fulfill the previously announced Applied Sciences NYC project to build a new academic campus for applied sciences and engineering in the city. “Stanford University wants to come here, Cornell University wants to come here, Purdue University wants to come here,” he said.
Bloomberg said a university will be chosen by year’s end to pursue the project, which his administration has pledged $100 million to help fund. Applied Sciences NYC is part of the mayor’s effort to grow the ranks of local technology talent.
Bloomberg described for the audience some of his challenges as an entrepreneur when he founded Bloomberg L.P. in 1981. In the early days of his financial data and media company, Bloomberg served as an installer and repairman for the information terminals—even going so far as to help solder together circuit boards himself. “It took three years from when we started until we got our first customer,” he said.
He also shared some advice, which echoed the late Steve Jobs, regarding understanding the nature of one’s business and being in command of how best to meet market needs. “You must listen to your customers but not too much,” Bloomberg said. He explained that an entrepreneur should ask questions about what people want, “but don’t let them design your product.”
The night continued with presentations from tech startups and other innovators:
Artsicle: A website that lets users rent artwork from up and coming artists.
Amicus: A platform that nonprofit and political organizations can use to leverage personal connections from their social networks for fundraising campaigns.
Aurasma: A visual browser app from HP’s Autonomy that uses the cameras on smartphones and tablets to scan photos and other images in the real world and then find Web videos related to that subject.
bitly: Known for shortening Web links, the company is leveraging the data it has collected and creating its own search engine that shows popular links.
Framesocket: Lets users steer viewers of Web videos about their product or company to their own websites rather than to a third party such as YouTube.
Goodsie: An e-commerce platform that lets sellers setup online stores without coding.
Gust: The new, upgraded version of AngelSoft, which lets entrepreneurs create profiles that potential investors can peruse.
LayerVault: Lets designers update and control the version of projects their teams work on together.
Twilio: For the coders in the audience, lets users turn their Web browsers into functional telephones.
