New York Start-Ups Aiming to Create Jobs

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The Startup Foundation, a program designed to help cities foster entrepreneurship and ultimately create jobs, invited a dozen of New York's most promising start-ups on Thursday to demo their businesses.

As national unemployment continues to hover around 9%, start-ups are being touted as the most important sources of new jobs.

According to a study by the Kaufman Foundation, new firms add an average of 3 million jobs per year, compared to existing businesses which shed 1 million jobs annually.

Here's a peek at some of our favorite New York-based start-ups from the event, all of which are hoping to add new members to their teams in the next year.

KeyWifi

KeyWifi is a new service that allows anyone, from consumers to small businesses, to rent out their excess WiFi bandwidth to others. The company's mission is to "bridge the digital divide" by allowing even those people who can't afford WiFi in their homes to have access at a low cost.

The service works like this: Say you're the owner of a coffee shop whose WiFi connection is only utilized during business hours. Through KeyWifi you can rent out your connection to others (i.e. an apartment complex nearby) during non peak hours. A KeyWifi user will pay $10 per month, two thirds of which will go to the coffee shop ("the supplier") and the remainder which will go to KeyWifi.

"This isn't about yuppies in Manhattan getting online," said CEO Adam Black. "This is about 15-year olds who wouldn't typically have access."

Around 21% of the U.S. market is not online, according to the Pew Internet and American life Project, presenting a large market opportunity for KeyWifi.

The company has six employees but is looking to add 10 to 12 in the next year.

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