Last night Mobile Monday held a CEO dinner in at il Buco in NYC, sponsored by Gunderson and moderated by Dan Frommer from Business Insider. It was attended by CEOs from some of the hottest mobile companies in the city including:
Foursquare
RRE
Venmo
Skyhook
Socialight
Centrl
Peek
HowCast
Hunch
MediaLets
GoMobo
UpNext
Groop.ly
Betaworks

Check out the article Dan wrote about the dinner here.

This event was by far our biggest ever, and quite possibly one of the biggest MoMo events in any city across the globe.  We had great demo tables, great networking and perfect weather.  Thanks to Kathryn Koegel, Crisp Wireless, Jumptap and Admeld.

In the first half of the decade, venture capital funding for New York mobile firms started modestly with 4 million in funding in 2000. Before 2005, mobile funding had peaked at 30.5 million in 2001, remaining well below that level with 14 million in 2002 and 22 million in 2003. 2004 marked an all time low for New York mobile funding, ending this five year stretch with 0.2 million. During this time period the region was very immature with only software/application developers, ad firms, and hardware firms receiving funding.

The latter half of the decade quickly outpaced the first, with 68 million in 2005, beating the previous high in 2001 by nearly 40 million. 2006 continued this growth with 90.4 million. New York maintained this growth through 2008, receiving 85.6 million in 2007 and 90.25 million in 2008. During the period from 2005 to 2008, application development was the only category to experience consistent growth, going from 19% of total funding in 2005 to 58% of total funding in 2008. Example software/applications firms in this time period include buzzd, Rave Wireless, Sense Networks, Thumbplay, Social Bomb, and Roundbox. The services category of firms also consistently received a significant percentage of funding in the same time period. Example services firms include Jumptap, Cellfish Media, July Systems, and Thwapr.

The global economic crisis finally caught up to Silicon Alley in 2009, dramatically decreasing venture capital funding for the sector. This decrease is paralleled by decreases in most U.S. tech regions, including Silicon Valley and New England. Funding dropped from 90.25 million in 2008 to 34.77 million in 2009. Firms in the software/applications and services sectors again accounted for majority of funding with a small segment going to ads firms.

-by Amir Shaikh