Fixing New York!
So i’ve been working on helping build the community here for about 2.5 years. I’ve done it through my blog, 20+ events, conferences etc… and if you think about it, what have i accomplished? Nothing.
And there’s a very good reason for that - NYC is NYC, it is the hub for the world and its anonymous fort at the same time. NYC is not a community, it is a connection of groups. SV is a community. The only thing there is in the valley is a community around tech and so that’s the spirit of the place. NYC’s spirit is that it is the hub for disenfranchised masses and thus has no focus - nor likely will it ever.
There are 2 things needed to make our community have more teeth.
1. The investment community needs to actually connect with entrepreneurs.
It doesn’t right now. Not even close. In NYC, the venture association is VIANY (which Danny is on the board of) - VIANY does not do any events connecting its members with the entrepreneurial community. None. Now let’s look everywhere else. In LA, there is LAVA who does a lot of events connecting all sides. In the MIdAtlantic, there is MAVA, which has a tough job bringing together people from a myriad of places and does a good job. Both LAVA & MAVA supported my latest conference and I have a good relationship with both. VIANY did not despite numerous attempts at outreach. In the valley there are several organizations connecting everyone, the one that comes to mind the quickest is SVASE which has 10,000 entrepreneurs as members. They have more events than I can swallow and offer up their curriculum and coaching to people in other areas that want to develop the community. Guy Kawasaki did a road show across the world promoting it earlier in the year. What does NY have? Nothing. No one from the investment community has taken a lead at building the community. LAVA & MAVA are run by people in the investment community. SVASE has Guy, whose probably the most well known VC in the country. Who does NYC have?
The only person that really comes to mind for trying is Owen Davis at NYC Seed…he is in the right position to try and I absolutely love what he’s doing. But it takes more than that. It takes an ecosystem. It needs someone to step up and really build an organization bringing people together.
We have a number of organizations that try - NYSIA, SIIA, The Hatchery, NEXTNY (sorry Charlie), Connectors Group all have potential to do it but again, it’s a full time focused job to build a community. It just takes one person with the right drive and some support. Who wants to volunteer to lead the community? Without someone taking the reigns, it just won’t work. Why? I’ll borrow from my mentors book on this - most F500 companies use Open Source code. Most never check all of the code and are open to security breaches and end up fixing them after the fact - after the mess. An open source community works to a point but leaves a lot of big gaping holes. David Rose is trying to do this and he has a really great setup and structure going but it needs to go further.
I try - if you look at my events, we have as many cosponsoring organizations as guests sometimes but that only is a teeny tiny step - it needs to be someone in the investor side of the community and it needs to be someone to wear the mantle, not just support the cause.
Now, supporting the infrastructure needs to be better access to capital and more light on the process of raising it. We have tons of wealthy people in the tristate area who are in fact investors. We have in NYC, a number of angel groups (NY Angels, Golden Seeds, Connectors Group, Ivyplus) and several other organizations involved such as ASTIA. We have for the first time in a decade a number of seed investors in town. Owen & NYCIF at NYC Seed, Betaworks, Solidea, David Rose and his empire, Gil at Genacast, some of the former Quigo guys, Mike Walrath and Brian O’kelley from right media making investments, Esther Dyson & Jeff Pulver angel investing their eyes out, and going a step further we have the guys at First Round in PA. I remember talking to Owen a couple years ago when he was trying to raise what became NYCseed and he was worried if he could find enough companies to fund. And you know what - it’s really tough, there isn’t a lot of good ideas in nyc - because the ecosystem doesn’t support it - good ideas go to the valley. Lazer focused and advertising driven money making ideas tend to be in nyc. Good companies are built in NYC but not transformational companies. There isn’t enough support for transformational ideas here at the early stages. There just isn’t.
Here’s what I would do to jumpstart it - get together a small angel group and invite the 30 or so funds in town to come. Set up an office hours once a week where anyone can come in and pitch for 5 minutes. The good ideas then go out to the mailing list of everyone else and slowly but surely we have a central funnel where entrepreneurs know where to go for capital and an angel group supporting the infrastructure where there is a real chance of raising seed capital. In theory this is the NY Angels but they don’t actually make seed investments. A central resource is the key to organization. Open source is great if you can borrow components but did you know that most F500 companies use a lot of open source and that most F500 don’t know all the security holes in the code they have. There needs to be someone checking the code.
Looking beyond the centralizing access to capital. Let’s look a bit further …. there is no central mentor network (not that i know of) in NYC connecting successful serial entrepreneurs and investors with everyone else. Sure, you can pitch a VC and even build a relationship but that doesn’t mean there is an open channel of communication where you aren’t prejudged by the first version of your work in progress when in reality the core is looking for advice. Everyone pre-judges on first impression - yes - but the key is to formally set up the process of helping rather than asking as a one off. There is a reason for HS and College Guidance counselors. As much as we hated them, they served a very important purpose. Everyone needs someone to tell them they are full of shit from time to time and to help them get on the right track - not just tell them they are full of shit, close the door and say “come back when you’re no longer full of shit - maybe i’ll answer your emails then”….
Okay, say now have open communication and access to capital and advice from the seed stages on…what’s next? Well in the valley there is an ecosystem of big tech companies that buy everyone else or create channel partnerships and the like. In NYC, there is no ecosystsem, sure they are people that can do it but no structure. What does that take to accomplish this? Someone starting to do events and create a group to bring people together. We have SIIA, NYISA, The Hatchery all trying in some way but there needs to be greater outreach and it needs to go to every F1000 company with an office here and make the simple pitch “interested in new tech and potential acquisitions?” - well come on down, at least get on our email list so you know where to look. Most big companies don’t even know where to look until an investment banker shows it to them 3 years later. That process needs to change. The key to the city is that it is the worlds’ HQ. Why is it that when i go to just about any event in our “community” I see less than 1% of the audience representing all of these big companies?
What does centralizing information allow? A funnel and the ability to easily build buzz because you can reach the whole system in one click. That should be the goal. One Click New York.
That’s my 2 cents painfully learned from the last few years of trying to do this. It’s not even hard or very expensive. I’d say it requires someone stepping up, writing a $1MM check, getting a real driving force in the investment community and one person from the entrepreneurial side and one person from corp america behind it and then do it. Centralize the process so there is a funnel effect and at least so people know where to go for the first step.
So who wants to step up to the plate?
I’m the first volunteer to help whoever does.
Richie
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