Tech and the City Quotes

“As Jerry Colonna likes to say, you have to be “pathologically optimistic and delusional” to be an entrepreneur.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“Who is then creating the future of New York’s foundation economy? According to Heiferman it’s companies such as Kickstarter, Etsy and Meetup: “We are really saying ‘screw you!’ to the traditional New York establishment. The future is empowering people to do things themselves. We have on the wall here at Meetup a big sign: not DIY, but DIO: Do It Ourselves. The main thing here is that we are not just changing or building a nice industry in New York, but we are changing the face and the nature of the New York economy, and that is going to be a hard job, it will take a few decades, and at the end of the day it is about changing the world the way it needs to be changed.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“The sort of candidate who might have benefited from such legislation is Boštjan Špetič, a Slovenian citizen, discussed previously. As founder of Zemanta, Špetič had opened his business in New York in 2009 with an L-1A visa, used to transfer a foreign company's top managers. Zemanta had an office in London and Špetič had moved to the USA from there. After a year, however, he was denied a visa renewal. “The US officers said that we didn’t have enough staff in the United States to justify a senior executive position,” recalls Špetič. “They stated that it was obvious from the organizational chart that we didn’t have an office manager, implying that no one was answering phone calls, and that’s why we could not claim a senior executive transfer. Somewhere in my office I still have four pages of explanations. At that point, I called everybody, the American ambassador in Slovenia, the Slovenian ambassador here, the Slovenian foreign ministry. My investor, Fred Wilson, got in touch with a New York senator, but no one could do anything.” Špetič therefore had to work from Ljubljana for the following three months, when a new attorney finally found the right bureaucratic avenue to obtain an L-1B visa, a specialized technology visa. “Personally, I want to move back home eventually,” says Špetič. “I’m not looking to permanently immigrate to the US. I prefer the European lifestyle. Nevertheless, this is absolutely the best place to build a startup, especially in the media space. It made so much sense to build and grow the company here. I never could have done it in Europe, and that is an amazing achievement for New York City.” For this reason, when other European entrepreneurs ask him for advice, Špetič always tells them to settle in New York, at least for a period of time, to gain American experience. And for them he dreams of creating a co-working space modeled after WeWork Labs: “Imagine a place exactly like this, but with decent coffee, wine tasting events in the evening and only non-US business people working in its offices,” explains Špetič. “There is a set of problems that foreigners have that Americans just can’t understand. Visa issues are the most obvious ones. Working-with-remote-teams issues, travel issues, personal issues such as which schools to send your children to… It’s a set of things that is different from what American startups talk about. You don’t need networking events for foreigners because you want people to network into the New York community, but a working environment would make sense because it would be like a safe haven, an extra comfort zone for foreigners with a different work culture.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“Bipartisan reform proposals recently have been presented in Congress: the Startup Act 2.0 wants to establish a new type of visa for those with $100,000 of capital and employing at least two US citizens in the first year of US operations, and five over the following three years. After four years, the owner is eligible for a green card. But”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“From 1995 to 2005, the immigrants helped found a quarter of all American high-tech companies, creating 450,000 jobs, according to the latest available statistics mentioned by Jeremy Robbins, Special Advisor on these issues for the Office of the Mayor of New York City, and Director of the Partnership for a New American Economy.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“Among the many private initiatives in this field, the latest, launched in the summer of 2012, is aimed at middle-school female students in New York. Girls who Code is a seminar, hosted by a startup (AppNexus in 2012), where 13-17 year-old girls learn how to write software programs, design websites, and build applications. Mainly, they learn that these subjects are fun and accessible to them, and not only to male computer geeks. “Girls who Code is not just a program, it's a movement to close the sexist gap in the technological sector,” explained the program’s two organizers, Reshma Saujani and Kristen Titus, to attendees of a big gala that took place on the evening of Oct. 22, 2012 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The occasion was to celebrate the success of the first edition of Girls Who Code and collect additional funds in support of the initiative. The first 20 “graduates” of the course spoke of their experience and their dreams for the future, while sitting at the gigantic table in the NYSE’s Board Room. Tomorrow, one of them could return as the CEO of a high-tech business, and perhaps ring the bell on the trading floor to inaugurate her company’s Initial Public Offering.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“There’s another thing about New York: the bar scene and the restaurant scene for the ‘kids,’” adds Brian Cohen. “There’s no better place to hang out than in New York. The city’s environment is so much more conducive to that. You can’t do that in Silicon Valley. You can’t walk from San Mateo to Mountain View, you know? If you’re in the city, you may go to 12 different bars, hang out with 40 different friends … it’s another matter. I think the real catalyst is that New York is totally walkable, you can walk anywhere, and every place is safe. Where would you go to live this life? Nowhere.” But even Cohen is worried about the after-Bloomberg: “There’s no businessman who could fit in his shoes. I think New York is going to go through a difficult time then. He’s had an impact in ways people have no understanding of. That will be gone.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“New opportunities for New York as a high-tech hub are related to the evolution of the Internet, according to Chris Dixon: “Imagine the Internet as a house. The first phase— laying the foundation, the bricks—happened in the ‘90s. No wonder that Boston and California, heavy tech places with MIT and Stanford, dominated the scene at that time. The house has been built, now it’s more about interior design. Many interesting, recent companies haven’t been started by technologists but by design and product-oriented people, which has helped New York a lot. New York City has always been a consumer media kind of city, and the Internet is in need of those kinds of skills now. Actually, when I say design, it’s more about product-focused people. I’d put Facebook in that category. Everything requires engineers, but unlike Google, their breakthrough was not as scientific. It was a well-designed product that people liked to use. Google had a significant scientific breakthrough with their search algorithm. That’s not what drives Facebook. In The Social Network movie, when they write equations on the wall that’s just not what it is, it’s not about that. Every company has engineering problems, but Facebook is product-design driven.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“There is more money in California, and there is more ease in giving it. In New York, there’s a lot of money, but there’s a different psychology. I’ll fund you: how much money do you need? Can you do it for less? In California, they’ll never ask you that question.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“indispensable element is the presence of excellent universities, and it’s a plus to have incentives from the local administration, but the difference then comes from the “character” of the place, and the generations of entrepreneurs who reinvest the fruits of their successes into new startups, whether their own or of others.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“This sad history offers the first lesson for those who would contemplate a startup today: get the best possible legal representation. The second lesson: get out of your comfort zone. And the third: speak really good English!”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“While he was still in college, Litman was lucky enough to go work for NeXT, the computer company formed by Steve Jobs in 1985 after he was fired from Apple. “What I learned from him is that you can’t build a successful company if you are easily pleased: you have to aim at being the best,” he adds.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“Josh Miller, 22 years old. He is co-founder of Branch, a “platform for chatting online as if you were sitting around the table after dinner.” Miller works at Betaworks, a hybrid company encapsulating a co-working space, an incubator and a venture capital fund, headquartered on 13th Street in the heart of the Meatpacking District. This kid in T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, and a potential star of the 2.0 version of Sex and the City, is super-excited by his new life as a digital neo-entrepreneur. He dropped out of Princeton in the summer of 2011 a year before getting his degree—heresy for the almost 30,000 students who annually apply to the prestigious Ivy League school in the hope of being among the 9% of applicants accepted. What made him decide to take such a big step? An internship in the summer of 2011 at Meetup, the community site for those who organize meetings in the flesh for like-minded people. His leader, Scott Heiferman, took him to one of the monthly meetings of New York Tech Meetup and it was there that Miller saw the light. “It was the coolest thing that ever happened to me,” he remembers. “All those people with such incredible energy. It was nothing like the sheltered atmosphere of Princeton.” The next step was to take part in a seminar on startups where the idea for Branch came to him. He found two partners –students at NYU who could design a website. Heartened by having won a contest for Internet projects, Miller dropped out of Princeton. “My parents told me I was crazy but I think they understood because they had also made unconventional choices when they were kids,” says Miller. “My father, who is now a lawyer, played drums when he was at college, and he and my mother, who left home at 16, traveled around Europe for a year. I want to be a part of the new creative class that is pushing the boundaries farther. I want to contribute to making online discussion important again. Today there is nothing but the soliloquy of bloggers or rude anonymous comments.” The idea, something like a public group email exchange where one can contribute by invitation only, interested Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and other California investors who invited Miller and his team to move to San Francisco, financing them with a two million dollar investment. After only four months in California, Branch returned to New York, where it now employs a dozen or so people. “San Francisco was beautiful and I learned a lot from Biz and my other mentors, but there’s much more adrenaline here,” explains Miller, who is from California, born and raised in Santa Monica. “Life is more varied here and creating a technological startup is something new, unlike in San Francisco or Silicon Valley where everyone’s doing it: it grabs you like a drug. Besides New York is the media capital and we’re an online publishing organization so it’s only right to be here.”[52]”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“A New Yorker by birth is David Karp, the child prodigy who at age 21, in 2007, founded Tumblr, whose headquarters are located just one block east of Hunch. The son of a composer and a science teacher, at 14 Karp began working as an intern in an online animation company; at 15, tired of traditional school, he continued to study at home alone, learning, among other things, Japanese; then he became the chief technology officer of the Internet site UrbanBaby and at 17 he went to Tokyo for five months by himself. In 2006, UrbanBaby was bought by CNET, and Karp used his share of proceeds to establish Tumblr, a blogging platform with elements of social networking that allows its users to follow other bloggers. Tumblr allows users to build a collection of content according to their own tastes and interests. Easy to use, with a format of short entries to be enriched with photos and videos, Tumblr has quickly gained many followers among the creative community as well as the public at large. Today it is home to nearly 70 million blogs, including those of Lady Gaga and Barack Obama, with a total audience of 140 million users. At 26, Karp is leading a company with over 100 employees, valued at more than $800 million, with shareholders of the caliber of Virgin Group’s Richard Branson. He defines Tumblr as new media, as opposed to technology, and seeks to attract non-traditional ads, inviting brands to create awareness and desire in their ads, rather than just trying to capture intent. Karp has already received several acquisition offers from other media groups, but he has always refused because he thinks big: he wants to reach billions, not millions of users and one day be in a position to acquire rather than be acquired. Meanwhile, in order to grow he is convinced that New York City, the capital of media and advertising, is the right city.[47]”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“So, I applied to the Harvard Business School and got in. I remember reading all these business books like Barbarians at the Gate, Liar's Poker, and thinking ‘what the hell is this?’ I enjoyed it. Business school was interesting. I learned a lot of stuff.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“capital expenditures required in Clean Technology are so incredibly high,” says Pritzker, “that I didn’t feel that I could do anything to make an impact, so I became interested in digital media, and established General Assembly in January 2010, along with Jake Schwartz, Brad Hargreaves and Matthew Brimer.” In less than two years GA had to double its space. In June 2012, they opened a second office in a nearby building. Since then, GA’s courses been attended by 15,000 students, the school has 70 full-time employees in New York, and it has begun to export its formula abroad—first to London and Berlin—with the ambitious goal of creating a global network of campuses “for technology, business and design.” In each location, Pritzker and his associates seek cooperation from the municipal administration, “because the projects need to be understood and supported also by the local authorities in a public-private partnership.” In fact, the New York launch was awarded a $200,000 grant from Mayor Bloomberg. “The humanistic education that we get in our universities teaches people to think critically and creatively, but it does not provide the skills to thrive in the work force in the 21st century,” continues Pritzker. “It’s also true that the college experience is valuable. The majority of your learning does not happen in the classroom. It happens in your dorm room or at dinner with friends. Even geniuses such as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, who both left Harvard to start their companies, came up with their ideas and met their co-founders in college.” Just as a college campus, GA has classrooms, whiteboard walls, a library, open spaces for casual meetings and discussions, bicycle parking, and lockers for personal belongings. But the emphasis is on “learning by doing” and gaining knowledge from those who are already working. Lectures can run the gamut from a single evening to a 16-week course, on subjects covering every conceivable matter relevant to technology startups— from how to create a web site to how to draw a logo, from seeking funding to hiring employees. But adjacent to the lecture halls, there is an area that hosts about 30 active startups in their infancy. “This is the core of our community,” says Pritzker, showing the open space that houses the startups. “Statistically, not all of these companies are going to do well. I do believe, though, that all these people will. The cost of building technology is dropping so low that people can actually afford to take the risk to learn by doing something that, in our minds, is a much more effective way to learn than anything else. It’s entrepreneurs who are in the field, learning by doing, putting journey before destination.” “Studying and working side by side is important, because from the interaction among people and the exchange of ideas, even informal, you learn, and other ideas are born,” Pritzker emphasizes: “The Internet has not rendered in-person meetings obsolete and useless. We chose these offices just to be easily accessible by all—close to Union Square where almost every subway line stops—in particular those coming from Brooklyn, where many of our students live.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“His biggest hit so far is making the first investment in Pinterest, the popular social network used to share photos, organized as collections of pictures on a pin board. Launched in March 2010, it has become one of the most visited sites, with 23 million users in 2012 and a valuation of over $1.5 billion. Pinterest was founded in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, by three youngsters under 30. “I helped them start and guided them as a mentor to become what they are,” says Cohen. “With this single investment I’m done. As soon as I get my liquidity event I will party like there’s no tomorrow.” All the angels dream of “the big hit,” says Cohen, who has written a book on the subject.[24] They are the ones providing 90% of startup capital, by writing checks out of their own pocket. But they don't do it just thinking of financial returns. “I think we do it because it’s fun. There’s no question that everyone thinks he or she is smarter than everyone else,” the Chairman of the New York Angels says half-jokingly. “In reality no one makes money, although some are luckier and hit the jackpot. Then there is the fashion factor. Everyone today wants to be an angel because it is cool. In other words, we are the prima donnas; we have a big ego. But there is also the idea of doing good, to have the satisfaction of helping start new emerging companies.” The pleasure of giving back: an important part of Jewish culture, and of American culture in general.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“But Bloomberg still talks about it as the lucky break of his career. “After all, losing a job can be a golden opportunity to start your own business. (Thank you very much, Salomon Brothers),” said the Mayor in his speech to the Economic Club of New York on March 23, 2009, at the height of the great recession (lasting from December 2007 to June 2009, according to official statistics of the National Bureau of Economic Research). He explained how his administration intended to overcome the crisis by encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit of the City, with many new initiatives to attract “the best and brightest” brains and help them build their startups.[13]”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“Josh Kopelman, who ended up partnering with Morgan to launch a new venture capital firm at the end of 2004, First Round Capital, focused on startups, especially in New York. “Today we have over 50 New York companies in our portfolio, including Fab.com, a great success in the design and fashion industry,” explains Morgan. “We usually are the most active venture firm in the city in number of new deals.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community

“Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Media Lab at MIT, told me that during a meeting with some of the Internet pioneers in 1993 he asked how many computers they believed there would be in the year 2000. The highest number he was given was 30 million. In reality there were going to be 500 million.”
― Maria Teresa Cometto, Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community