by Brian Solis

While the state of the U.S. economy has many gripped with fear, the spirit of tech entrepreneurs appears to be alive and well, and perhaps most notably, determined to excel regardless of the hurdles that may lie ahead.

On November 11th in New York, Microsoft Startup Zone partnered with The TechSet (Stephanie Agresta and yours truly) to host Ignite New York to debut the newly launched BizSpark initiative. BizSpark is a comprehensive program that is dedicated to helping startups grow and succeed by offering to caliber services, resources, platforms and software.

The event was hosted at One Little West 12, an elegant and beautiful ultra lounge in New York’s stylish Meat Packing District – next door to the Hotel Gansevoort, made popular by the Sex and the City Franchise.

Close to 400 people celebrated the spirit of entrepreneurialism that night, which made for an evening rich with valuable and productive conversations and networking.

New York is the first in a series of events. Austin, you’re next! See you on November 20th. RSVP here.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Leora Israel

Stephanie Frasco

Aaron Brazell (technosailor)

Adam Hirsh of Mashable and David Parmet

Melanie Notkin of SavvyAuntie.com

Victor Karamalis

Laura Michaels and Bryan Thatcher of Fusebox and Empressr.com

Michelle DeForest

Karin Klein and Jennifer Klein

Peter Himler, David Parmet, Joe Ciarallo

Brett Petersel of Mashable stands out from the crowd

Stephanie Agresta and Steve Rosenbaum of Magnify.net

Jacob Mullins, Santiago Iturbe, Chris Brady

Victoria Stemmer and Paul Lewis of MTV

Mark Burstiner, Meghan Asha, and

Michael Lewis

Gary Sharma

Jonathan Dingman

David Blumenstein

RockBand – Kyle Sollenberger, Paul Lewis, Whitney Hess

Winner of the Twitter XBOX 360 contest

Arthur Boie, Chris Munns of Meetup.com, Damien Basile

Ari Greenberg and Bonnie Halper

Oz Sultan and Julia Johnston

Brian Solis

Brian August and Leora Israel

The Ignite Team, shot by Aaron Brazell

Earlier in the evening, team Ignite, attended the New York Newtech Meetup. To see my pictures of the meetup, jump over to my set on Flickr.

For more pictures from Ignite New York hosted by Microsoft BizSpark and TechSet, please visit my album on Flickr.

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Tagged as: bizspark, briansolis, bubblicious, gansevoort, Microsoft, New York, ny, NYC, one little west 12, startup, stephanie+agresta, techset, zone