Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O’Donnell pulled out a basketball to show the Observer during a recent visit to his office in Gowanus. It’s the special basketball sold by DribbleUp, which analyzes a users ball handling with an iOS app. “It’s really hard to monetize apps,” O’Donnell said. “It’s not hard to monetize basketballs.”
He used DribbleUp, founded by a team from Midwood, as an example of how good first-time founders in New York City have become. O’Donnell said he was impressed when he met its co-founders by how many players in the local ecosystem they already knew about. “The really dumb mistakes of newbie entrepreneurs 10 years ago, you’re not seeing those,” he said.
