New York Startup Scene is Hot
- December 3rd, 2009 /
Peter Bodenheimer and I went up the the Web 2.0 Expo the week before Thanksgiving, and spent the week hanging out with some pretty impressive folks. It’s clear there is a lot of energy in the NY startup scene right now, it reminded me of the first FOWA conference in 2006 where the Web 2.0 energy was palpable in San Francisco.
It’s important for me and Flatsourcing, TribeCon, and Launch Pad to be connected to New York. As strong as the New Orleans startup movement has been, its critical we maintain our direct ties to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley & New York. We need to know what they are up to and vice versa. In this post, I’ll summarize some of the exciting things we saw and people we met. In addition, I’ve got a proposal that I want to float to continue to build our ties to NY.
First, what we did and what’s happening in NY:
- Monday night we went to Ignite NYC and ran into Elliott Adams (good to see the state going to these conferences). This was my first Ignite, and we saw some great presentations in preparation for the launch of Ignite NOLA in February which Adele Tiblier and Chris Boudy are leading the charge on.
- Spent Tuesday hanging w/ Andrew Hyde, he’s just ran the NY Marathon and is hard at work on his new startup which I’m trying to twist his arm into locating to NOLA. (He hates winter weather. Advantage: NOLA)
- Watch the keynote by Tim O’Reilly for a great overview of the state of the web. He’s concerned that we may be entering another “closed garden” period.
- Chris Brogan was surprisingly Zen in his presentation, but and great. It reiterated to me how great it was to have his co-author of Trust Agents at Tribecon. Favorite quote: “The difference between audience and community, is which way you turn the chairs”
- Having the tweets running on the screen behind the speaker blew up with the final keynote. IMHO this is a bad idea, and I was glad we didn’t do it at TC.
- Tuesday night Pete and I went to the Net Neutrality Tech Debate at IAC. It was fascinating to see the policy makers who will shape the FCC legislation debate in this forum. Thankfully, the need for net neutrality won the debate with the more convincing argument.
- On Wednesday we went to the Launch Pad to watch startup pitches by 5 companies: Foodspotting, Apstrata, Earth Aid, Neighborhoodr, & Set Jam. All the pitches were strong, and it really pounded home to be how tight a pitch needs to be and how well the constraint of 5 minutes worked.
- Baratunde Thurston brought down the house with his keynote on Wednesday: “There’s a hashtag for that” If you watch one thing I’m posting, make it this.
- The conversation with Caterina Fake (founder of Flickr) was interesting for her commentary on the NY tech scene, and the reasons why she chose to locate her new startup Hunch in NYC.
- I really enjoyed the conversation with John Borthwork, founder of Betaworks. This is probably the most startup company/incubator going right now, and is an inspiration for me for where I want to take Voodoo Ventures. If you like Tweetdeck & Bit.ly, you’ll like where he thinks the web is headed.
- Wednesday night we met up with Mike Karnjanaprakorn, its exciting to hear about the success of By/Association and his understanding and use of the importance of mystery, human curation, and exclusivity.
- He soon spotted a check-in from Foursquare founder Naveen Selvadurai at a nearby bar. The power of Foursquare to connect people was quickly evident as it seemed every startuper in the city was there within 15 min. Chatted with Tantek Celik and Richard Blakeley. I think I finally grokked hype-local from Richard. Basically, the concept behind Neighborhoodr, is that the more granualary you slice a community the more you care about it. You may not care about everything going on in New Orleans (perhaps just the tech scene), but you care about everything going on on your street.
All in all a great week. I know the bullets review like an itinerary of “here’s what we did,” but I’m trying to convey the energy we felt being up there. Some of the clear concepts were mobile, hyper-local, and simplicity of concepts. I heard on more than one occasion from people that they hear “New Orleans has something going on…” but they all wondered “who was our signature startup?” Who is our signature startup? Not just a company that we all know about… a startup that everyone knows about.
So, what about the NOLA -> NYC connection you mentioned?
Well, we’re conjuring up an idea, and though its not ready for launch yet, I am interested to get feedback on it. It is based on a conversation that Brian Oberkirch, Perry Chen and I had at TribeCon. The idea is theirs, I’m just hoping to help implement it:
A visiting scholar program for startups.
The idea would be to bring startup CEO’s down from NYC to NOLA to work here, interact, mentor, and learn about what people are doing down here, and then take that gospel back to NY with them, spreading the seeds of what is happening here. Basically a direct, personal, mentorship and marketing program.
Take it a step further, and reverse it, sending Louisiana startup CEO’s up to NY to work, learn, and engage. Then we’ve got the sharing going both ways.
Economic development agencies like GNO & LED are already spending a lot of money on familiarization tours. I wonder if a program like this would qualify under that kind of budget? My guess is that using the lean, mean, startup fundamentals we all know so well, that we could create a very effective program.
What do you think? Would you support a NOLA-to-NYC visiting scholar program?
Random Posts
- categories: All, Entrepreneurship /
Dec 03, 2009 at 4:33 pm
So you go to NY and don’t bring back any present for us? Shame, shame.
But seriously, I do like the idea but what about virtual mentoring? I’m thinking of the cost, time and effort it would take for a NY startup CEO just to “visit” for a couple of weeks. Why not an ongoing relationship between NY startup CEO & NOLA biz that lasted months through virtual mentoring? With the use of video conferencing, collaborating of business plans, and a good source of advice it would be a win-win. A strong NOLA/NY connection could be established. NY startup CEO is always welcomed to NOLA for business or pleasure.
NY startup CEO could still talk up NOLA to his business partners to spread the seeds.
But I think that you are hitting on a more important topic. That New Orleans really does need to be connected to other cites. Foster relationships that can build trust and all that good stuff.
Dec 04, 2009 at 12:18 am
Chris: why not try both physical and virtual? Start with a physical, NOLA up-and-close immersion, and then continue the relationship using virtual tools. That’s really how we create, build and maintain powerful relationships these days. I’m not sure mentorship is really what a startup founder needs from NOLA, though; more powerful is access to talent, money, users and customers; a stronger relationship with another city would help on a couple of those fronts. And really, NOLA won’t grab you until you’ve been there.
Chris: It’s like taking the Startup Founder Visa program to the local level, the Startup Founder Exchange. My guess is that the economics would be harder to sell to GNO/LED et. al., but that could be countered by keeping costs low, structuring the immersion experience differently, and focusing on the experience startup founders really want.
Perhaps we could float the idea to the Hacker News community and see what they think / see what it would take to bring an early-stage founder down for a bit?
Dec 07, 2009 at 3:18 pm
@Chris – thanks for your comment. In terms of virtual versus in-person, I really think that the value of this program will flourish with real face-to-face interactions. A major part of the inspiration for the program is the interest that CEO’s have in visiting NOLA, working here, and mentoring folks here.
IMHO, I think that real life collaboration initially, followed by virtual follow up would work really well. A virtual relationship would sustain things after people meet.
@Taylor, you’re exactly right, it is like the Startup Founder Visa program. I think the idea of the “Exchange” makes lot of sense.
Thanks for both of your input. I’ll keep pushing it forward and keep y’all posted.