NY Web Guy

Another NY-based blogger, Hank Williams wrote a post about NY Tech Scene and how he feels it’s lacking. I wrote a post which I think is a bit too long, so I’ll break it up into several parts and post it over the next week or so.

It’s something I have been thinking a lot about as well. To be honest, I am not sure where I am on this issue. I am definitely interested in growing our community and recognize that it’s not as big as it could be. On the other hand, I feel we’ve been experiencing somewhat of a renaissance with all the community-based activities and meetings going on.

I have been in NY for a while, but only joined the startup community in the last few years. I know for smaller companies it’s very hard to find good people since I felt that pain at my previous company. Our CEO even came up with a pretty brilliant idea called Tour of New York, where they would cover all relocation expenses for good candidates and give them a corporate apartment in exchange for coming to New York for a year. The idea was to make it as easy as possible for somebody who has dreams of New York to get here.

In today’s New York Times, there is an article on how Seattle Tech community is booming. I found one paragraph especially disturbing:

“During the last 12 years, venture capital investment here has more than tripled, to about $1 billion annually. Last year Washington tied with Texas as the third-largest destination for venture capital money nationwide, behind California and Massachusetts.”

The fact that New York is not even vying for fourth place is unfortunate. In many ways, we are the capital of the world, never mind the United States. New York should be competing with Silicon Valley, not with cities a fraction of our size.

Universities

This whole conversation made me think back to Paul Graham’s essay on what it conditions need to exist for a Silicon Valley to flourish. According to Paul, two things make a “silicon valley” – rich people and nerds. Nerds congregate in Universities. NY Times Article specifically mentions the role being played by University of Washington. Stanford’s entrepreneurial past is well known.

In New York, I am just not aware of a significant role that Universities play. I know Polytechnic has been making some great overtures to the tech community, especially with their sponsorship of the Startup Weekend and BarCamp. Maybe with NYU – Polytechnic Merger NYU would become more prominent in this area as well. I know NYU has an interesting Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) program that hosts popular shows. I also know that Yale has a program designed to encourage their students to start companies, but I haven’t seen that get down to New York yet. Cooper Union (my alma mater) has hosted some NY Tech Meetup meetings, but I suspect that is because of Sanford Dickert’s own efforts as opposed to a push from the institution.

I see an opportunity to create a consortium of NY Metropolitan Area Universities to unite their efforts related to fostering entrepreneurial culture. We would have quite a nice representation:

• Princeton University
• Yale University
• Columbia University
• New York University / Polytechnic
• Many others, such as Cooper Union, Fordham, Baruch, City College, Pace, etc.

Additionally, if these universities take more of a leadership role this can also play back into the rest of startup community, by helping us with spaces to meet, for example. They could become resources to the community.

Career Options for Students

Also, by simply making students aware that career paths other than “corporate IT job” exist, they would be adding people to the startup hiring pool. My guess is that few career counselors steer students towards starting their own companies. In New York, I am not sure how sexy it is to say “10% of our graduates make less than 20K their first year because they are founders of their own companies”. Many poeple get corporate jobs simply because at career fairs, only bigger companies are represented. Who is there to tell people of their options.

As a Tech Community we need to band together and educate students of their options. We need to give them examples of entrepreneurial successes. We need people at the career fairs advocating for people to start their own companies as a career choice. One possible driver of this might be NY-based Venture Capital Funds, since having more startups means more opportunities to invest in. I am not quite sure if we have other organizations that might take the lead on this.

* In next few installments, I will write about how I think that in NY tech is overshadowed by other industries core to the city economy, decry lack of “anchor” companies that educate the next crop of the CEOs, and finally end on a more encouraging note of how we can parlay New York’s strengths into more engagement and startups.

Your comments are very welcome. As a relative newcomer to the scene I am sure there is just a lot of information and resources I am simply not aware of.