DealBook: Start-Ups Vie for Attention at the Venture Capital Table

The recent initial public offerings by Internet companies including LinkedIn and Yandex are grabbing the attention of investors and making headlines, but small technology start-ups are expecting more than just scraps from the venture capital table.

Instantly recognizable companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon have no problem getting financing, but these smaller companies are hoping to prove they have what it takes to become essential services. At TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in Manhattan, DealBook spoke to executives from three start-ups about their plans for raising capital.

Guillaume Balas, chief marketing officer of 3Scale, described his company’s “unique architecture” for managing application programming interfaces, or A.P.I.’s, which allow different software programs and applications to talk to each other. He said that with the growth of mobile Internet use and connected applications, A.P.I.’s were moving into the mainstream and making his company’s services essential for businesses with an online presence.

Andy Leff is the founder of Meporter, a company that has developed a mobile application that he described as taking “local citizen newsgathering to the extreme.” It allows users to post photos, video and articles to a local map — posts that can then be added to by other users.

Finally, Jaafer Haidar is a co-founder of Socialseek, an aggregation site that allows people to create sites following unique topics. He said the site has the potential to allow brands to “connect with users directly.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4c0202459b2df8e972e8f08e5b7ab751