• by Persia Tatar , May 29, 2013

New York -- On Thursday, May 23, I joined 100 advertising-tech lovers at 360i’s Curation Nation, a special Internet Week installment of 360i’s Startup Outlook. The industry-renowned program facilitates closer collaboration between brands and startups. As part of the program, the agency publishes a Startup Outlook report each month featuring five new companies, and hosts quarterly educational events nationwide. This was the first one that I was (almost) invited to, so I wasn’t going to miss it!

When my plus-one and I arrived in Soho for #CurationNation, there was a big line snaking around the building for iHeartRadio’s Jay-Z event on the ground floor. When we were offered entry, we said “Screw Jay-Z -- aren’t start-ups the NEW rock stars anyway?”

When we arrived upstairs, we were greeted by a huge buffet of snack foods and some really good beer options, all the perfect pre-game fodder for chatting it up before the panel session. In attendance were smarties from NBCUniversal, Infosys, Night Agency, Time Out New York, eMarketer, Dots (iOS game) and The Huffington Post.

The presentation soon began, hosted by the Dean of 360iU, Mark Avnet. Four start-ups (at various stages of funding) demo’d their products -- developed to help brands and consumers surface content more efficiently -- and then took part in a panel discussion. These companies essentially have the Internet’s stamp of approval (because they were selected by 360i’s David Berkowitz.) If you want to be on the leading edge of cool new technologies, then David is the man to follow. Tech rock stars unite!

If you want to up your content game, check out these companies from Curation Nation: 
RebelMouse
Mass Relevance
Waywire
Guide