There are a number of problems you could mention in the New York City startup scene, but the solutions have been slow to emerge. There have been a few I others have thought of recently that I thought were particularly valuable and should be shared with the community. Many of these ideas appealed to me because they 

1. Health insurance: Many entrepreneurs are making a very risky move by working without health insurance. Matt Meeker - EIR at Dogpatch Labs - and Matthew Brimer - Founding Partner at General Assembly- both have thought of some interesting ways to attack this. It would be great if places like Dogpatch Labs and General Assembly could negotiate with one of the PEOs to offer any startup with month to month health insurance plans for early stage companies at a reasonable cost. Founders wouldn’t have to risk their health and the PEOs gain early access to potentially valuable customers. 

(Update: Shai Goldman of Silicon Valley Bank had an idea to have Founders Card aggregate coverage for early stage startups. Good call Shai!)

2. Engineers going to Wall Street: One of the biggest problems startups have with attracting talented engineers straight out of school is the fact that Wall Street firms can lock up students far before they graduate. A startup can’t offer jobs that far in advance, placing them at a huge competitive advantage. Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson’s Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Schwaitzberg and Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai came up with what I think is a genius idea. 

Somebody should form a company that partners with a dev shop like Pivotal Labs and provides guaranteed full-time job offers and relocation assistance to talented devs from Universities around the country. These devs would be assigned temporarily to different startup projects, with the startups able to purchase the contract for a premium. This would allow the startup scene to have more agile hiring while providing more stability for graduates as companies compete with Wall Street for talent.

3. Recruiting engineers from outside the City: This idea was sparked by Charlie O’Donnell’s idea to give tax credits to companies who relocate developers from around the country. I tweaked it a little because giving tax credits could be perceived to incentivize companies to hire developers from out of town. Instead, I think the City should offer to waive 1 year of income taxes for web designers/developers who move to New York and join a small business (i.e. a startup). 

This tax rebate would be about $3500 per participant if on average they were paid $100k in their first year. This would maintain a level playing field for NYC based devs/designers and foreign ones, companies making a decision based upon fit not tax implications. While the City would lose some tax revenues in the first year, program participants would continue to command high paying jobs and add to the City’s tax base. 

These are just three ideas I’ve heard recently, I’m going to continue to write about other concepts I hear around town. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments below. 

I like to rap about NYC startups. I’m writing a second verse, I’d love some suggestions. I already included Drop.io, Etsy, and Betaworks in the second verse.

As I’ve met many VC’s and angels in the New York area, I’ve noticed a few small things entrepreneurs seeking funding can do to connect with investors . Investors are people, connecting with them on a personal level is the only way they’re going to like you and write you a check.

1. Connect with them however they communicate: If an investor tells you to tweet @ him or writes a blog post and tells you to pitch your company in the comments, do so. It’s marketing, you have to go where your audience is. Go through Venture Hacks Angelist. With a lot of investors email might be the best way, but do your research and connect with them on their preferred platform.
2. Make it easy to schedule a meeting: Suggest dates and times for meetings not, ‘sometime next week’. The reason these people have money to give you is because they’re successful businessmen and women who are busy. You might also want to set up a Tungle.me account, a service that syncs with your calenders and allows other people to suggest meeting times. You can send them a link and make it easy to schedule the meeting.
3. Check their schedules: It’s pretty easy to meet investors in New York, it’s once again about research. There are sites  Garysguide, Meetup, NextNY, and Plancast will let you know of a number of events each week where investors are. Mailing lists like Startup Digest, Ultralight Startups, and Startup One Stop are also great resources. Some of them have public calenders on their blogs. Get in front of the right investors and allow them to get to know you and your business.
4. Know who they are: This doesn’t mean knowing their name, firm, and title. You should know where they’ve worked what their interests are, where there from and other stuff like that. Read their blog, check Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Its all about making that personal connection. if you went to the same school as they did, know a mutual associate, like the same band or think the same way as they do on politics there’s a chance to strike up a conversation about something other than your business. It shows you’re human and, if they like you, they’re more prone to like your company (you still need a great product though).
5. Be courteous: If you see that an investor is pressed for time, get into your elevator pitch and offer to follow up. If they want to know more they’ll ask you more questions. If they want you to get back to them late, email them that day with a concise pitch and follow item 2 above. They’ll appreciate your sensitivity to their time constraints.
6. Be human: If you’re meeting for a 30 minute coffee, it might seem like waste of time but you should start off with a brief conversation about something other than your company. Be a human being and chat bout sports, music, or politics. Show what you’re thinking about and how your mind works. Most investors I’ve met have said they’re investing in a team. A team is made up of human beings, so be one!
7. Be a HUMAN, not a QUANT: A lot of investors went go to business school and a lot of them didn’t. I’ve heard from both types that they hate MBA speak, they find it pretentious and boring. Use regular language when possible but be passionate telling investors why your product is great, why consumers or businesses will use it and why they’ll pay for it. Investors want to know about the numbers, but please don’t talk about synergizing backward overflow.
8. Listen: If investors give you advice, listen and process it. You shouldn’t be pitching an investor who you don’t want shaping your company’s future. And they want to know you’ll listen after they cut a check.
9. Adjust and Follow Up: A no right now doesn’t mean it’s a no forever. Boxee pitched Union Square Ventures more than once before receiving funding. Boxee listened to investors and changed their business model.They ended up with an exciting business and funds to help it grow. It doesn’t mean you need to change the core of your business, but they want to see that you can adjust to customer feed back and be persistent in the sales process. That’s what fund raising is, sales, and investors want to see how you’ll execute after the funding round.

I’m by no means the first person to say any of these things. Most of it has been said before on Venture Hacks and other sites. If you have any thoughts or comments, leave them below.

Thanks for reading.

Note: ‘The Integration of the Day’ is where I take two or more web services and create a HYPOTHETICAL integration. This is not an announcement or breaking news, just the thoughts of a fellow entrepreneur. I’d like to thank Charlie O’Donnell (check out his blog) for the idea.

Today’s ‘Integration of the Day’ combines schedule-sharing tool Plancast with CRM platform Salesforce. Plancast is like a Twitter for schedules, allowing users to broadcast their plans and subscribe to the feeds of other users. Plancast currently is dominated by tech events, providing great business development opportunities for people in the sector. A Plancast integration with Salesforce’s CRM platform would allow Salesforce users to find events that valuable contacts are attending.

User Experience: I would sign in to Salesforce, buy the Plancast app from the appexchange. Salesforce would automatically import my current Plancast subscriptions, after which I would set up a list of companies and individuals that I wanted to do follow. Salesforce would use Plancast data to create a schedule of events based on my list. Salesforce could tell me of possible connections with individuals in organizations by matching our Plancast accounts. I could set up custom alerts to notify me of ‘hot events’ where a high volume of targets will be attending, or I could track where my competitors were going to make sure I had a presence at those events.

Monetization: A Plancast app developed on the Force.com platform would be a valuable premium feature for biz-dev and sales professionals in the tech/new media space. Plancast could sell it in Salesforce’s appexchange to monetize the service. Plancast would remain free, but aggregating the data and combining it with Salesforce’s robust CRM would be extremely valuable to biz dev, and sales departments.

Thanks for reading. To hear what I have to say in bite size chunks, follow me on Twitter. If you have any integration suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email me.

Note: ‘The Integration of the Day’ is where I take two or more web services and create a HYPOTHETICAL integration. This is not an announcement or breaking news, just the thoughts of a fellow entrepreneur. I’d like to thank Charlie O’Donnell (check out his blog) for the idea.

Today’s ‘Integration of the Day’ is a mashup of job search site Indeed.com with decision-engine Hunch. Indeed is an excellent job search engine, but it relies on prospective applicants entering the correct search terms and properly assessing their compatibility with the position. Job searches would be more efficient if potential applicants and employers could be better matched to each other before the official interview process even begins. An integration of Hunch and Indeed would give both the applicant and hiring organization a better idea of how they fit together.

User Experience: I would go to Indeed.com, which would ask me what kind of work I wanted to do. Hunch’s decision engine would figure out what types of positions I should search for, and then search the Indeed database. When I found positions I wanted to apply for, I would be asked to take a Hunch survey before applying. I would then answer questions supplied by different members of the interviewing organization involved in the hiring process.

If I were applying for a sales technician role, for instance, I would answer questions from individuals in the sales, engineering, product, marketing, and human resources departments. A question from an engineer might assess technical competency, while a question from a member of HR might determine how long I might stay before moving on to another position. Hunch’s decision engine would assess the likelihood I was a suitable applicant. Eventually, once enough data has been collected, job searchers could just ask, “what job should I apply to?”

Monetization: Hunch would provide a great filter for job applicants and companies looking to make hires. Indeed could allow employers who purchase sponsored jobs to utilize customized Hunch surveys, a valuable premium feature that would make the hiring process more efficient. Hunch could take a fee for every posting utilizing the Hunch feature while expanding its user base.

Thanks for reading. If you have any integration suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email me.