Drinks and pitches flowed freely at DEMO and VentureBeat’s first New York City startup party

More than 100 people from New York’s burgeoning tech scene showed up October 25 for a startup party sponsored by VentureBeat and DEMO.

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That’s not a bad turnout for an impromptu event organized just a week before. It’s a sign of the robust vitality and collegiality of the New York tech economy, which is one of the reasons VentureBeat was there in the first place.

VentureBeat editor-in-chief Matt Marshall and I were visiting New York this week on a mission to find out more about the city and its tech business. We talked with PR people, journalists and dozens of entrepreneurs. We spent time with VentureBeat’s intrepid New York staffers, senior editor Devindra Hardawar and staff writer Sean Ludwig. But the highlight of the week may have been the party at Katra Lounge, where a dozen brave entrepreneurs stood up in front of the crowd to give two-minute pitches for their companies.

We picked 10 of those startups to present ahead of time. While I kept strict track of the time (using the iPod Nano on my wrist), and the dozens in the crowd sipped their beverages, these 10 gave it their best shot.

• agrowculture.org — helps urban farmers find the right technology for their space whether it is a window sill, backyard, or rooftop, and allows them to sell to their community.
• Campalyst —  provides social media analytics software that helps brands to convert fans to paying customers.
• ChatID —  a universal platform that powers chat communication between businesses and consumers anywhere around the web
  and from any mobile device.
• Estimize — “First Call” for the social media age, allowing social finance users to aggregate their earnings & economic estimates and compete against each other.
• Ingenuitas — creates open source software and hardware for manufacturing inspection and systems and provides customization, data management, and analytics.
• Leebug — a SaaS solution for events that offers networking tools for attendees, branding tools for sponsors and revenue generating tools for event producers.
• LocalBonus — allows consumers to use their existing credit/debit cards as their loyalty card at local merchants.
• Paatle — the first global platform to simplify the way consumers rent, buy and sell real estate while enabling the entire real-estate ecosystem to collaborate.
• Shodogg — a patent pending technology enabling any smartphone to deliver media content to any connected screen without using wires or boxes.
• Surre.al –a location-based virtual world that interacts with the real world through augmented reality and the camera of your smartphone or tablet.

Missed your chance to come to the party? Don’t worry — VentureBeat will likely be holding more events in New York in the near future.

Photos: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat