On May 13th and 14th, a few of my colleagues and I had the distinct pleasure of attending NewCo Fest New York. Admittedly, we had not heard of the event before… and we were not quite sure what to expect. I speak for my whole team when I say that our expectations were beyond exceeded.
NewCo, sponsored by the likes of LinkedIn, Citi Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank, allows people to connect with innovative businesses in their native environments. They connect the founders and leaders of companies to interested parties and glean helpful insights, knowledge, and roadblocks that have come across in each of their unique journeys, all for the purpose of making a positive change in the world. NewCo now holds events in over fifteen cities worldwide, including New York, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.
Since teleportation has not yet been figured out, we were tasked with the difficult choice of having to decide between lots of exciting startups to visit. Some of the offices we were able to get a glimpse inside of were Taboola, Percolate, Refinery29, Salon, StatSocial, Salesforce, and Aloha.
At Taboola, founder Adam Singolda explained the idea for the company came to him when he was in his parent’s house, trying to figure out what TV show to watch. Why was no one suggesting which show for him, and why did he have to go out and seek something? This he wondered for a while. He then knew he was onto something. He recruited a couple of his friends he met in the Israeli army, knowing that they enjoyed solving complex problems with advanced mathematics, and the rest is history.
Recognizing that the United States has very weak regulations on the false claims from manufacturers and conflicting messages in the media, Aloha CEO Constantine Bisanz wanted to make it less complicated for people to maintain a healthy lifestyle. He created a company that focuses on raising the bar for products that are considered “healthy” and only use the highest quality of ingredients from all over the world to deliver on simple and honest products. Aloha currently offers nutrients, greens, protein powders, chocolate, and trail mix in their constantly expanding line of products. We got to try a couple different varieties of chocolate and the daily berry shake—and it is safe to say Aloha will now be having a handful of new customers.
Hearing all of the different view points from the leaders at these companies was extremely inspiring and made us all very proud to be apart of the startup community. We can’t wait for NewCo’s next event in Silicon Valley!
