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Published March 2, 2009 at 3:15 PM
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Hundreds of companies have applied for funding from NYCSeed, reports managing director Owen Davis. "There's a small number of punches on our card," explains Davis, who describes the selection process as rigorous. "We can only fund 10 companies at $200,000 each."
For PlaceVine, the backing from NYCSeed will "support our sales and marketing efforts as we expand PlaceVine to hundreds of brands, agencies and content creators across film, television and new media," says co-founder Adam Erlebacher.
Davis says one of the roles NYCSeed will play is helping startups prepare for an institutional round of funding.
Indeed, Path 101 CEO and co-founder Charlie O'Donnell views the NYCSeed funding as "kind of a bridge" to the $2 million to $3 million round he hopes to raise from venture capitalists later this year. Path 101 raised $350,000 previously from well-known angel investors, including Wilson and Brad Burnham, co-founder of Union Square (where O'Donnell once served as an analyst).
O'Donnell spent much of the fall talking to venture capitalists, who he found to be more focused on nurturing their existing portfolio companies rather than on investing in new ones in the current economy.
"While we hadn't been burning that much cash, we decided that it made sense to pick up what we could and keep pushing through our launch -- getting early traction without the added distraction of trying to raise money in a difficult environment," O'Donnell reports in a blog post announcing the new funding.
"The process of working with a new investor, versus just going back to our existing angels (since they had offered to be supportive) was a great move," blogs O'Donnell. "Owen asked a lot of challenging questions, and we're a much better company for having gone through the NYCSeed investment process."
The Path 101 site will launch officially later this month. - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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NYCSeed, a new private-public partnership that aims to support New York City startups, is announcing its first 
