Techcrunch Dis­rupt brought over 100 new star­tups to Brook­lyn NY from May 9^th the 11^th 2016 for three days of pre­sen­ta­tions, meet and greets and new ideas.  Media Jobs talked with a num­ber of them.

Here is our first sam­pling of some of the inter­est­ing inno­va­tions we came across:

Lumenus @lumenuslife start­ed by an avid moun­tain bik­er, Jere­my Wall, is all about bike safe­ty.  Jere­my and his part­ner cre­at­ed cloth­ing and a Blue­tooth app that com­mu­ni­cates your route to oth­er motorists using lights in your out­er­wear.  Jere­my launched the busi­ness by sell­ing his first 325 jack­ets in a Kick­starter project that raised $55,000 which paid for the app and the development.

How would you like to spend the same amount of mon­ey this year on your cred­it cards but earn three times the points?  That’s lots more free trips for doing noth­ing dif­fer­ent. Except one thing of course, join­ing Birch­fi­nance.  Accord­ing to Alex Cohen @alexcohenbirch, founder of Birch with his part­ner Alex White­side, the Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, there is a very lucra­tive audi­ence of points afi­ciona­dos’’ who will be very inter­est­ed in their pro­gram.  If the results sub­se­quent to their pre­sen­ta­tion at Dis­rupt NY 2016, where 186 peo­ple signed up with­in an hour after they left the stage, were any indi­ca­tion Birch Finance could be the key to your next free vacation.

If you thought that drones only flew then you nev­er heard of this pre­sen­ter, SeaD­rone.  Here is a craft that focus­es on under­wa­ter explo­ration. Con­trolled by a tablet app the SeaD­rone is pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed for work more than play being focused on mar­itime and sea based farm­ing appli­ca­tions.  Accord­ing to Eduar­do Moreno, co-founder of O‑Robotix, they are pri­mar­i­ly focused on “…aqua­cul­ture, because they’re the ones that require the most fre­quent dives,” 

But the big win­ner at Dis­rupt NY 2016 was a com­pa­ny tied to one of the most ubiq­ui­tious of activ­i­ties, gam­ing. Beam was found­ed by 18 year old, Matt Sal­samen­di @MattSalsamendi, who is the CEO (and this was not his first start­up which he found­ed when he was 14), is all about improv­ing the online expe­ri­ence by pro­vid­ing a low-laten­cy chat plat­form for live streamed games which also lets view­ers inter­act with the games.  Some con­sid­er Beam like a Twitch WePlay that actu­al­ly works.  Matt and his team walked away with a check for $50,000 and lots of notoriety.

How­ev­er my bets are on the use of the new low-laten­cy tech­nol­o­gy for oth­er live events includ­ing sports, the­atre, tele­vi­sion and oth­er enter­tain­ment. I’ll be on the look­out for future sto­ries about Matt vis­it­ing Hollywood.

There were many more com­pa­nies at Dis­rupt NY 2016.  Look for our upcom­ing series of pod­cast inter­views in the next few weeks.