1. Dave McGlaughlin - Vsnap
2. John Hoopes - Junctions
3. Jeffrey Peden - CraveLabs

The winner of the audience choice award for best panelists (for the 2nd time in Boston) was Matt Witheiler of Flybridge Capital Partners. An honorable mention goes to Scott Kirsner of Boston Globe who got nearly as many votes and definitely got the most laughs. Finally, a super-special mention goes to Cris DeLuca, organizer of Ultra Light Boston who keeps growing the Boston chapter month after month. Congrats, everyone!

We’ve also got a fantastic line-up for next Thursday’s Investor Feedback Forum in New York. There are a few early bird tickets left, so grab one soon. The next opening to pitch is on Jan 12. See the Pitch FAQ for instructions on how to apply.

Have feedback on this newsletter? Feel free to reply directly via email.

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Ultra Light Startups – Investor Feedback Forum and Pitch Showdown (New York)

Thursday, December 8 – 6:30pm EST

Panelists (alphabetic order)

• Greg Cangialosi (@gregcangialosi) CEO at Nucleus Ventures
• Owen Davis (@owendavis) Managing Director at NYC Seed
• Nihal Mehta (@nihalmehta) General Partner at ENIAC Ventures
• Marc Michel (@marcmichelvc) Managing Partner at Metamophic Ventures

Startups

1. Duy Huynh - Taap.it
2. Robert Petti - Resoomay
3. Richard Zelson - MyStream
4. Joshua Dern - Reqoop
5. Aaron Sylvan - Lemonade Heroes
6. Maya Landesberg - I Had Cancer
7. Gavriel Wolf - Indiewalls
8. Andrew Cohen - Brainscape
9. Philip Reichen – LocalUncle

Three of these startups, the winners of the pitch contest, get automatic bids to present to the New York Angels, New York’s largest angel investor network.

Agenda

• 6:30pm – Pizza, networking and introductions
• 6:45pm – Investor Feedback Forum – 10 startups pitch to an investor panel; the panel provides actionable advice for each pitch
• 8:15pm – Pitch Showdown - audience voting via Twitter; winners announced and prizes awarded
• 8:30pm – Drinks at nearby location

Please note

• In New York, this event will be held at NYU. Ticket sales close at noon EST the day of the event (or when they sell out online). Note that there are seven ways to get in free.

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Calendar

Monday, December 5 – Holiday Networking – For Entrepreneurs, Investors & Small Businesses. Join 250+ business owners for a night of drinks and networking from a variety of industries. The event is hosted by the world’s nicest guy, Aron Schoenfeld. Use code: uls for 50% off.

Fri-Sun, December 9-11 – Lean Startup Machine is coming back for it’s 5th session in NYC next month. Hosted by Trevor Owens, LSM is a metrics-driven startup competition where teams are taught how to identify the key risks in launching or scaling their startup venture. I know a number of Ultra Light members who have gone through this program and everyone has given it the most glowing reviews. There’s an awesome lineup of speakers from Betaworks, Union Square Ventures, DFJ Gotham, and more. Plus I’m a huge fan of Trevor and his team. Definitely check it out if you get a chance.

General Assembly has a whole list of events and classes to check out. I’ve been to a few in the past and they are always great.

Community

[PRESS] Jonathan Weinberg, founder of AutoSlash is getting to be a regular in this column. He was featured in on PIX11′s 6 Ways To Save Money On Holiday Traveling. Check out tip #6 “Lock in the lowest price on car rentals: Like airfares, car rental prices go up and down due to the forces of supply and demand and competition among rival agencies.” Congrats, Jonathan.

Best regards,
Graham

On top of all this, three great startups won the Pitch Showdown in Boston last Monday. Congrats to Boston organizer Cris DeLuca and crew for another great event. The winners were:

1. Momchilova Kristina of Greenbean Recycle
2. Leo von Wendorff of Virtual Knowledge Workers
3. Lorelei Fara of Nexly

I found this Internet Trends 2011 research report by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins to be a fascinating read. Lots of macro-research on major trends in the internet/social/mobile/tech industry (hat tip Konstantinos Papakonstantinou) .

The panel is finalized December’s Investor Feedback Forum in New York, as are about half of the pitches. If you’d like to pitch in New York before the end of the year, be sure to get your application in soon.

Meanwhile, there are only 16 Early Bird tickets left for the November 10 event in New York (see all the details below). Grab one quick!

Have feedback on this newsletter? Feel free to reply directly via email.

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Ultra Light Startups – Investor Feedback Forum and Pitch Showdown (New York)

Thursday, November 10 – 6:30pm EST

Panelists (alphabetic order)

• Andrew Cleland (@awcleland) Venture Partner at Comcast Ventures
• John Frankel (@john_frankel) at ff Venture Capital
• Bradley Harrison (@bradharrison1) Managing Partner at Brad Harrison Ventures
• Ian Sigalow (@sigalow) Co-Founder and Partner at Greycroft Partners

Startups

1. Daniel Maloney - BridesView
2. David Friedman - Inhabi
3. Peter Verrillo - EnHatch 
4. Seth Goodman - wespk
5. Morgan Dierstein - RentaStudent.com
6. Stephen Smyth - Twigmore
7. Joseph Hedaya - Wearing Social
8. Melinda Wittstock - NewsiT
9. Michael Raybman - WaySavvy
10. Nick Fugaro - Vivastream

Three of these startups, the winners of the pitch contest, get automatic bids to present to the New York Angels, New York’s largest angel investor network.

Agenda

• 6:30pm – Pizza, networking and introductions
• 6:45pm – Investor Feedback Forum – 10 startups pitch to an investor panel; the panel provides actionable advice for each pitch
• 8:15pm – Pitch Showdown - audience voting via Twitter; winners announced and prizes awarded
• 8:30pm – Drinks at nearby location

Please note

• In New York, this event will be held at Microsoft. Ticket sales close at noon EST the day of the event (or when they sell out online). Note that there are seven ways to get in free.

Calendar

Monday, Oct 31 / Nov 1 – SearchLove Distilled is an SEO consulting agency based out of London. They recently opened an office in New York, and are bringing their SEO conference, SearchLove, along with them. The conference is run by Distilled founder Will Critchlow who came to me through former Ultra Light panelist Noah Kagan.

Wednesday, November 2 – Best Practices Long time friend of Ultra Light, Joe Chin, is hosing the next in his excellent startup event series with Laurel Touby and Mark Wachen. This event is taking the NYC startup scene by storm. Definitely check it out.

Thursday, November 10 – NextNY Always Be Closing with Sony Sony Electronics is interested in connecting with New York media and technology startups and will select a handful of companies to present their products to its business development team in front of a live audience, including select members of the VC community.

Tue/Wed November 15/16 – SocialMediaPlus (Philadelphia) – Hosted by member Joe Stubblebine, SocialMediaPlus is the Mid-Atlantic region’s largest business summit for professionals interested in learning about the latest in Social Media and web technology. Use discount code ’10-jrs’ to save 10% off any package.

Thursday, November 17 – Venture Shift – Produced by my friend Lauren Perkins and hosted by Vator and Bullpen Capital. Meet top angels, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to explore the changes disrupting the VC industry. The all-star lineup includes Mark Suster, Barry Silbert, Michael Lazerow, Gil Beyda, David Tisch, and many more. Use discount code “ULS15″ for 15% off.

General Assembly has a whole list of events and classes to check out. I’ve been to a few in the past and they are always great.

Community

[EXIT] Ultra Light Boston member Rachel Levy announced last week that she sold WebinarListings, her webinar directory portal, to internet entrepreneur Rudi Vanderschoot. The site was only founded last year, which makes for an exceptionally quick turnaround. Congrats Rachel and Rudi!

[PRESS] Kelsey Recht, founder of Instevent was the featured startup this week in the NYC edition of world’s best startup events newsletter, Startup Digest. But I can’t figure out how to link to it (!), so you’ll have to take my word. Congrats, Kelsey!

[PRESS] Sandira Calviac, founder of RideHack (and 2nd place in October’s pitch contest) is a one-woman PR machine. In the past couple weeks, she’s been covered in the WSJ, the Rachel Maddow show, and BetaBeat. Congrats Sandira!

[FUNDING, PRESS] David Bloom of Ordr.in recently graduated from TechStars and got some great press in GigaOM, funding from Google Ventures (covered in TechCrunch) and got named to the Silicon Alley 100. Nice run, David!

[FUNDING, PRESS] Erich Wood of Jagimo was accepted to First Growth Venture Networks and mentioned in this TechCrunch article. Well done, Erich!

[PRESS] I was interviewed by Zev Green of theroadmap.tv last week about my lead-generation startup, BrightMap. Congrats, um…, me!

[FREE TICKET] My friend Chensun Mills of The Global Leaders is hosting a Global Healthcare Forum (afternoon, evening) in San Francisco in January. She is giving out free conference tickets ($1,000 value) to one lucky Ultra Light member. If you are working on an innovative healthcare-related startup and would like to attend the conference, reply to this email and I’ll put you in touch with Chensun. Good luck!

[APPLICATION] Murat Aktihanoglu is a 3-time Ultra Light panelist and Founder and Managing Director at ER Accelerator. Startups accepted to his awesome program get a $25,000 investment, 3 months of office space, 200+ mentors and lots more. The application deadline for their January 2012 class is November 20th. Apply here.

Best regards,
Graham