Tipping Point Partners has a high-growth opportunity for a great Accountant.  We are seeking a full-time superstar to help manage our financial activities, keep our ‘trains running on time,’ and work closely with our portfolio companies in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment. This position will play a critical role in allowing us to build our business; we promise hard work, awesome obstacles, thrilling victories, and great satisfaction, alongside a supportive, fun-loving and smart team.  The ideal candidate is someone who is confident working in a start-up or small business, comfortable taking on a wide variety of duties, able to ‘go with the flow,’ and adapts quickly in a dynamic environment where things change fast!

YOU:

• Minimum of 4 years of experience in accounting
• Self-starter with fierce organizational capabilities
• Obsessively detail-oriented, unafraid of numbers, with exceptional analytical skills
• Common sense, limitless curiosity, sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd
• Roll-up-the-sleeves problem solver who is not afraid to ask for help
• Familiarity with Quickbooks accounting software
• Passionate about technology, and excited by the prospect of working with tech start-ups
• Project/percentage of completion accounting a plus

THE POSITION:

• Be the accountant for multiple companies
• Perform bookkeeping, including invoicing and bill-paying
• Perform monthly close activities, including bank and account reconciliations
• Maintain financial books and records
• Prepare financial statements and reports
• Competitive salary plus benefits and equity participation

US:

Tipping Point Partners is a New York-based “institutional entrepreneur” that serves as the founder and seed investor in software startups.  Our companies build bridges between new technology and human needs, using disruptive technologies to transform existing industries and make large organizations more effective.  Since 2005, Tipping Point Partners’ unique approach to start-ups has included co-founding, interim management, deal-making, financing, investing and strategy, generally all at the same time. Tipping Point believes that great software, applied intelligently, can result in positive social and economic change.

INTERESTED?

In one page or less, tell us how you embody the qualities listed above, and describe a situation in which you brought these qualities to the table to solve a problem or make a difference.  Please include this with your cover letter, resume and anything that you think will help us get to know you and what you can do, in an email to amanda AT tippingpointpartners DOT com, cc’ing stan AT tippingpointpartners DOT com.

NEW YORK, March 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – AppOrchard, the leading Enterprise iOS services and software company, today announced that CTO Scott Penberthy will join senior executives from around the world as a featured panelist at the ninth annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. Dr. Penberthy, who has over 18 years experience building Enterprise software and leading engineering teams at IBM, Photobucket and Gilt Groupe, will participate in the May 22nd panel, “Separating the Best from the Rest: The Next Generation of CIO Leadership.”

“Companies want transformational use of iPads and iPhones in their business – across the board – and are struggling to find the balance of innovation and clear-cut operational expertise to get it done,” said Penberthy. “CIOs have their hands tied and lack the tools necessary to build, deploy and operate secure business apps that frankly, don’t suck. These challenges must be met head on.”

The audience, comprised of close to 700 CIOs and senior IT executives, will be encouraged to participate in a discussion about the challenges – and opportunities – of leading increasingly mobile, cross-generational, geographically and culturally diverse Enterprises. “Millennials are having a dramatic impact on the workplace, a cultural divide as great as the introduction of rock ‘n roll in the 1950s,” Penberthy added. “I’m excited to discuss these issues with such an august group of tech leaders.”The panel will take place Tuesday, May 22, 2012, at 12:30 pm at Kresge Auditorium, MIT (77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA). Dr. Penberthy is one of more than 50 presenters from a wide range of industries, including leading academics from the MIT Sloan School of Management, who will address the Symposium throughout the day.

About AppOrchard
AppOrchard is an iOS services and software company that bridges the gap between consumer Apple devices and the needs of Enterprises. Our team of former Apple and NeXT engineers is the most experienced group of iOS developers outside of Apple today. Our software addresses the challenges of operating iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices in secure Enterprise environments.

About the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium

The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is the premier global event for CIOs and senior IT executives. This annual event offers a day of interactive learning and discourse on the future of technology, best practices and business in a changing global economy. It is organized by members of the MIT Sloan Alumni Club of Boston, the MIT Center for Digital Business and the Boston Chapter of the Society for Information Management.

Adam Seifer, co-founder and former CEO of Fotolog.com, one of the oldest and most popular photo sharing sites on the net, said: “I frequently find myself trying to convince partners, advisees, etc., that one of the biggest risks a start-up has is to not launch anything at all—to get so caught up in talking about what you’re going to launch and so fixated on details that it feels like you’re making progress when instead what you’re really doing is moving asymptotically closer to something that doesn’t ultimately matter as much as you think it does.”

Some companies have truly embraced the world of continuous testing, also called “using your customers as test subjects.” Google’s Gmail was listed as a “beta” or test version for about five years. Apple’s “Siri” voice service is still considered a “beta” (and given that it works for me about half the time I’d say that is an accurate label.) But are these kind of tests for everyone?

“Not so fast,” said Art Chang, CEO and Founder of Tipping Point Partners, a New York City-based “institutional entrepreneur” that serves as a seed investor and founder of software start-ups. “Siri is a ‘feature’ on the iPhone, but the iPhone works. Gmail is an extension of the Google brand, and though it started a little shaky, by the time it came out of beta, it was solid. If you’re an established brand you can experiment, but for a traditional start-up, that first product represents a brand promise. So, it may be better to reduce features and functions to have a product that works really well, and does what it is supposed to do. Twitter and Evernote both started as very simple products, and expanded after they got the core right.”

Read the full article here!

YOU:
A generalist who is comfortable doing a variety of tasks that could range from working on user interface to contributing to frameworks and libraries that support our applications. Diving into lower levels doesn’t scare you. You have excellent skills in object-oriented software design and programming, experience working on user interfaces of consumer oriented applications, and developing concise, consistent and developer-friendly APIs. You are someone who can step back and look at a problem in different light to identify an approach that improves performance and uses as few resources as possible, while still being responsive to users.

YOUR EXPERIENCE:
• BS Degree in CS, ME, EE or equivalent
• Strong object oriented programming and design skills
• Experience at app and user interface level with at least one of the following: Cocoa, Java, C++, C#, Android, Win32 or Windows
• Performance analysis and tuning experience including memory usage, CPU utilization, leak checking, etc.
• Excellent problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills

BONUS POINTS:
• Worked on iOS or it’s predecessors at Apple or NeXT
• Knowledge of Objective-C
• Knowledge of Apple’s development APIs (Cocoa Touch, Cocoa, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, etc.)
• Experience developing reusable APIs
• Experience shipping consumer oriented products
• Familiarity with Unix, especially Mac OS X
• Experience writing multithreaded code
• Experience and interest in Enterprise data management
• Passion for the mobile platform and writing simple, elegant software that is easy and fun to use

THE JOB:
Responsibilities will include developing new features, maintaining existing code, fixing bugs and contributing to overall design. Performance analysis and tuning will also be a significant part of your job. Sound like you? Send us your resume!

Food+Tech Connect and Gojee are bringing together journalists, technologists, designers, policy makers, and food data specialists to develop tools and visualizations that help the public better understand how the Farm Bill impacts our lives. The Farm Bill affects us all – influencing what we eat, how much it costs, and how our food is grown. Thus far, there is little in the way of visually interesting and informative media about the Farm Bill. The hackathon is happening now at the Tipping Point Workspace as part of the International Open Data Hackathon. Follow today’s events on Twitter using the hashtags #foodtech and #odhd, or join us in person – we’ll be here till 10:00pm tonight!

Testimony of Art Chang
Chair
New York City Voter Assistance Advisory Committee

City Council Committee on Governmental Operations
September 22, 2011

Good Afternoon Chairwoman Brewer and Committee members. I am Art Chang, Chair of the Voter Assistance Advisory Committee (VAAC). With me today is Amy Loprest, Executive Director of the New York City Campaign Finance Board. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.

As you may know, the Voter Assistance Advisory Committee was created by an amendment to the city Charter last November. I also serve as a member of the Campaign Finance Board. I thought it might be helpful for me to tell you a little about myself to help provide context for the comments I will offer shortly on the ballot and voting process. I formed my company, Tipping Point Partners, in 2005 to bring together technologists, entrepreneurs and investors to create and grow Internet and mobile startups that can provide the tools to transform the nature of work in and the way people relate to large enterprises, including government. But you don’t have to be a professional to recognize the tremendous potential of technology as a vehicle for change.

I’m not here to repeat the excellent testimony of Assemblyman Kavanaugh or the specific and excellent work of the Brennan Center, but to raise more fundamental questions about voting technology, which is the interface between the people and the democratic process. In the last fifteen years, we’ve witnessed a revolution in the way people access, receive, and share information. Technology has fundamentally transformed American life; making it easy to connect with old friends, share opinions with strangers and simplify and streamline our lives from shopping to banking to filing our taxes, electronically. No institution touches our daily lives as much as city government, yet the ease and accessibility of these tools has yet to transform the way citizens connect with their representatives and leaders at the local level, or for that matter, at any level. Now is the opportunity for government to apply the people-focused principles of Web 2.0 technology widely available in the consumer sphere to give New Yorkers the great voting technology we deserve.

Technology is not a solution; it is a vehicle to this end. Ballot design, for example, is a critical aspect of improving the voting process. But it must be supported by a system that accurately and efficiently records our votes. If votes are cast electronically, we should not have to count paper ballots. Imagine a system that enabled us to count electronic votes as they are cast, and report results to the public more quickly. This would be a great step forward, increasing efficiency and transparency in the voting process.

While I understand that this issue is largely out of the purview of the City Council and the city’s Board of Elections, I’d be remiss not to take this opportunity to publicly comment that the city deserves a voting system that offers its citizens the same ease and accessibility that they may find elsewhere in their everyday lives. The potential to apply simple technology to invigorate and inspire more citizens to register to vote and to participate in local elections is great. We must leverage our city’s technology expertise to explore new ways to simplify and streamline the most fundamental elements of voting, starting with voter registration through the casting of votes to the counting of ballots. We, as a community, must pressure the state to allow for the flexibility to easily incorporate new tools and technologies that will drive these improvements.

We hope the state finds a way to enable the Board of Elections to make the ballot clear and legible, and further urge the Council to continue the conversation about how to employ widely accepted and adopted technology to our voting process. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify about the proposed resolution. I am happy to answer any questions you may have and I look forward to continuing this conversation in the future.

Cookstr Launches New Digital Recipe Collections Exclusively on Apple’s iBookstore

NEW YORK, July 19, 2011 — Cookstr, the world’s #1 collection of cookbook recipes available online, today launches its first original offering of curated recipe content exclusively on Apple’s iBookstore. Created as a model for Cookstr’s collaboration with book publishers, the company’s iBookstore offering includes curated sets of 10 recipes ($0.99), 50 recipes ($3.99) and 250 recipes ($9.99) that invite readers to choose between whole books or shorter form sets and chapters, to build their own a la carte cookbook and recipe libraries.

Cookstr is honored to present award-winning chef and cookbook author Rozanne Gold’s The 1-2-3 Collection as its premier offering. The 1-2-3 Collection is now available at www.itunes.com/rozannegold for purchase and download on Apple’s iBookstore, via the free iBooks App for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

Fifteen years ago, Gold started a revolution around the idea of simplicity in cooking. Today, her dynamic three-ingredient recipes are breaking new ground in a format designed for in-kitchen use. Each recipe is 140 words or less and can be viewed on a single screen, with mouthwatering images and brand new notes by Gold that flow beautifully on the iPad’s stunning display. Gold’s The 1-2-3 Collection is also the first digital cookbook to incorporate Cookstr’s proprietary search standards and technology, currently used by a growing number of America’s leading media, consumer and healthcare brands.

“We believe this platform has the potential to benefit publishers and home cooks alike,” said Cookstr CEO Art Chang. “We are using technology to enable publishers to sell a wide variety of books and booklets created from the best recipes in their catalogs and upcoming books. Cookstr believes you can maintain the highest standards for food and nutrition andgive the home cook more choices when it comes to quality, curated content. Most importantly, we can continue to reward the cooks and authors who create the recipes, and the publishers behind them who play such a key role in the identification and support of talent.”

The 1-2-3 Collection is comprised of 250 recipes ($9.99), which can also be purchased separately by theme:

• Quick & Easy 1-2-3, a 50-recipe collection ($3.99). Individual 10-recipe chapters are also available for purchase ($0.99), including: “Quick & Easy Mornings,” “Quick & Easy Appetizers,” “Quick & Easy Weeknights,” “Quick & Super Easy” (recipes you can cook with one hand), and “Super Quick & Easy” (recipes you can complete in under 5 minutes).

• Be Well, Take Care 1-2-3, a 50-recipe collection ($3.99). Individual 10-recipe chapters are also available for purchase ($0.99), including: “Be Well, Low Sodium,” “Be Well, Eat Light,” “Be Well, Gluten-Free,” “Be Well, Vegan,” and “Be Well, Healthy Heart.”

• No-Sweat Summer 1-2-3, a 50-recipe collection ($3.99). Individual 10-recipe chapters are also available for purchase ($0.99), including: “Summer Starters,” “Summer Soups,” “Summer Suppers,” “Summer Sides,” and “Summer Sweets.”

• Menus for Entertaining 1-2-3, a 50-recipe collection ($3.99). Individual 10-recipe chapters are also available for purchase ($0.99), including: “BBQ Menu,” “Al Fresco Menu,” “Fiesta Menu,” “Picnic Menu,” and “Labor Day Menu.”

• Dishes by Ingredient 1-2-3, a 50-recipe collection ($3.99). Individual 10-recipe chapters are also available for purchase ($0.99), including: “Poultry Dishes,” “Meat Dishes,” “Fish Dishes,” “Veggie Dishes,” and “Fruit Dishes.”

“The opportunity to create new cooking experiences that embrace technology is exhilarating,” said Gold. “My updated repertoire of three-ingredient recipes relies on fresh, unprocessed ingredients and streamlined techniques presented in a brand new form. The result? The revolutionary 1-2-3 Collection that mixes passion with practicality. It is designed to inspire a new generation of home cooks and professional chefs alike to keep it simple.”

Visit http://ibooks.cookstr.com or www.itunes.com/rozannegold for more information. A free sample of The 1-2-3 Collection is also available by searching for “Cookstr” or “Rozanne” on the iBookstore.

About Cookstr

Cookstr develops and delivers innovative products and technologies to market leaders in the media, healthcare and food industries, to support enjoyable and healthy consumer lifestyles focused on quality home cooking. Since its inception, Cookstr has introduced technology innovations that have significantly improved the inspiration and decision-making experience around recipes. Cookstr, founded by Will Schwalbe, and launched in 2008 with Katie Workman and Art Chang, has worked closely with the cookbook publishing industry to build a hand-curated database of thousands of cookbook recipes offered directly to consumers via the Cookstr website, www.cookstr.com. Today, Cookstr’s offering includes recipe curation solutions for the food media market, nutrition solutions for the health and wellness market and mobile solutions for the food publishing market. In addition, Cookstr has developed technologies that can improve expert content management for use in other markets.

About Rozanne Gold

Rozanne Gold is a chef, international restaurant consultant, author, journalist and four-time winner of the James Beard Award. She was the consulting chef to the legendary Rainbow Room and Windows on the World, and helped create three of New York’s three-star restaurants. First chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch at the age of 23, Gold has been known throughout her career for anticipating and inspiring food trends, including “The Minimalist” column in The New York Times, which was based on her cookbook Recipes 1-2-3, and the grazing craze, which was initiated by her cookbook Little Meals. Gold is the author of twelve cookbooks, including the award-winning 1-2-3 series. She was the Entertaining Columnist for Bon Appétit magazine for five years, and has written and produced stories for The New York Times, O Magazine, Gourmet, Real Food and more.

Contact

Follow us on Twitter: @cookstr
Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/CookstrCooks
Visit the Cookstr iBooks page: http://ibooks.cookstr.com
Press Inquiries: press@cookstr.com

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/16/ny-digital-city-road-map-2011/

Join us here at the Tipping Point Workspace, 86 Chambers Street, suite 704, on December 7th (starting at 2:30pm) and 8th (starting at 8:30am) to watch/co-work through the livecast with other members of the New York tech community. Visit: www.tedxtribecawomen.com for more information and to RSVP!