Ignite NYC: Not your usual conference topics

On July 29th, Ignite comes to NYC.  What's Ignite?  It's 16 5-minute presentations that geeks will love, plus a soldering competition.

 

RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming.

 

I'll be speaking there, but I'm even more psyched about the other speakers.  Check these out:

* Tom Igoe - Physical Computing's Greatest Hits (or Misses)

* Tony Bacigalupo - NYC's Startup Scene: Where are the geeks?

* Jessica Bruder - How to be an Undercover Hooker (reprising her talk on taking an NYPD course)

* Karen McGrane - From Typing to Swiping: Interaction Design has come a long way!

* Rose White - Weird and wonderful knitting -- graffiti and science and art combined!

* Audacia Ray - Porn as a front runner in technology innovations

* Charlie O'Donnell - Shaving your head: When to start, how to maintain, and to BIC or not to BIC?

* Charles Forman - How to date celebrichauns with founder fetish

* Natalie Jeremijenko - A bomb shelter for the climate crisis

* Pat Allan - So you're a kick-arse coder...

* Joel Johnson - Indie Games: At Least They're Free!

 

Details:

The first Ignite NYC is going to happen 7/29 at M1-5. We are going to feature 16 speakers. Each speaker will get 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of five-minutes. Ignite is free and open to the public -- you're on your own for drinks. We're also going to be joined by Ignite co-creator, Bre Pettis. Bre is going to lead us in a creative soldering contest. RSVP at Upcoming or Facebook to let us know you are coming. The night will begin with:

7:00PM - Doors Open

7:30PM - NYC Soldering Championship:

With solder irons blazing, and the power of molten metal at their finger tips, New York City's electricity enthusiasts and hardware hackers will connect components to complete circuits for the glory of being the fastest soldering gun in NYC.

On stage and under hot lights, contestants will complete an electronics kit in the shortest time possible while still maintaining the integrity of the circuit. Who will be New York City's soldering champion? You'll need to be there to find out!

To solder you'll have to pre-register, but anyone can come enjoy the opening contest. After the contest, there will be:

8:00PM - Ignite Talks

Cities based on ideas are made of straw... and why Paul Graham is wrong about New York City

Paul Graham recently wrote a piece about cities.  He puts forth Cambridge as a city of ideas, New York as a city that is all about money (where people doing startups are second class citizens) and the Valley as a place for startups. 

I’m not about to start comparing the Valley to New York City.  That’s just silly, because the Valley has a multi-generational head start on creating tech startup companies.  However, given that, it does make me wonder why Cambridge and the Boston Area is so far behind the Valley, because Route 128 has been a tech center since the late 1950’s.  I mean, “Harvard and MIT are practically adjacent by West Coast standards, and they're surrounded by about 20 other colleges and universities,” as Paul puts it.  Perhaps he should be explaining why his City of Ideas gets less than a third of the venture capital investment that the Valley does.

I think the fact that Cambridge is a city of ideas is exactly why you could say it’s questionable how great a place it is to do a startup.  In an environment dominated by academia—where you lack time pressure, a sense of immediacy—you’ve probably got just as much of a chance of creating an interesting intellectual exercise in burning cash as you do building anything that resembles a real company.  I mean, have you ever tried collaborating with an academic institution if you’re a business?  Your startup would run out of cash before they figured out the right academic chair to lead the effort and which pool of research money to allocate for you.  It’s no accident that startups need to be spun out of these institutions to be successful.  Plus, seen any hugely successful companies come out of university incubators lately?  (And no, Zuckerberg’s dorm room does not qualify as an incubator.)

Also, think about it another way.  What are the last 10 or 20 really novel "ideas" in the startup world?  Things that required a leap of thought...   We can debate it and certainly I'm up for creating a list, but when I think of good ideas, I think of del.icio.us, Skype, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bug Labs, Slingbox, Google (b/c of the biz model)...   Hardly seems like Cambridge has a lock on the idea generation market in the startup world.

Ideas today are a commodity.  Anyone can have an idea, so being the Capital of Ideas is pretty much equivelent to building your city of out of straw.  If I were a co-founder of 3PigsTech.com, I’d think about building somewhere whose choice of building material was more formidable. 

Which brings me back to New York City.  By saying that “New York tells you, above all: you should make more money,” Paul Graham is basically admitting that he’s never been north of Central Park, on the Lower East Side, or out into the Boroughs.  I grew up as a finance major in NYC and I made the same mistake that Paul makes.  It wasn’t until I finished school and got about three years into my career that I soon realized that there was a lot more going on in NYC than just Wall Street. 

When I think of ideas, I think of creativity, not just scholarly research and publication in academic journals.  An idea has no value unless it’s either a) new or b) executed.  If execution is a business phenomenon, I can’t imagine a better place to execute than NYC (or the Valley, if you’re a tech startup), but in terms of new ideas being generated from creative people, I wouldn’t exactly hold the ivory towers of Ivy League schools up against the creative culture of NYC.  New York City is a mecca for design, fashion, dance, art, film, theater, international relations—it’s not difficult to imagine that this stew of creativity rubs off on other industries. 

Hedge funds, for example, are a great example of creativity leaking into another industry.  The most forward thinking, creative investors break out of old institutions to play markets in out of the box ways at hedge funds.

We even solve creative engineering problems here.  Peter Semmehack from Bug Labs, an open source hardware company pushing the limits of creativity in the consumer electronics space, has always said that he has found the best and most creative engineering talent here in NYC.  Need to explore a completely unfamiliar environment millions of miles away?  That was the challenge for the Mars Rover, and it’s no accident that much of it was built here, by HoneyBee Robotics. 

Paul also makes the point that someone creating a startup in NYC would feel like a second class citizen.  I have to be honest—I’ve felt that way several times, but mostly from people outside NYC.  Within the city, I’ve actually felt really supported.  Most of my 21 angel investors are not only in NYC, but they’re either NYC natives or have lived most of their lives here.  Among my large diverse group of friends (I grew up here, went to school here, never lived anywhere else, and know tons of people doing very different professions), I’ve received fantastic support.  No one ever asks me why I don’t just go into investment banking or trading. 

In fact, most of my friends aren’t even in finance at all.  Some of my closest friends are a magazine publisher, a lawyer, and a producer for televised mixed martial arts.  I play on a softball team with two PR folks, a clinical psychologist, a chocolate retailer, two IT guys, another lawyer, a teacher, a media buyer, and oh yeah, one guy in finance.  Most of the volunteers at the kayaking program I participate in don’t even have regular 9–5 jobs.  The other day, I was out on the dock with a guy that resells guitars and plays in a band, a former non-profit exec, a public health researcher, and another IT guy.   And these people don’t all live in big luxury apartment buildings in midtown.  They live with roommates in Astoria, in studios on the Lower East Side…  just scraping by but still loving every minute of it.  And we haven’t even mentioned all the actors and actresses.  Surely they’re not in it for the money, right?

So, the idea that NYC is just all about the money is just ridiculous…. just as ridiculous as this:

“One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.”

How about we make the list “number of restaurants that don’t require jackets for men”?  I have a feeling NYC would lead that list, seeing as the total number of restaurants in NYC minus 13 is probably more than SF and Boston combined.  Is this really how Paul thinks his YCombinator startups should make decisions on where to build their business?  By restaurants with jacket requirements?

But rather than argue about whose city is better, which is similar to the arugument about what language to code in, go with what you know.  Generalizations will get you nowhere.  It would have made no sense for me to build Path 101 anywhere else but NYC, because my network is here.  I found a great technical co-founder, two amazing developers whose experience could not be any more well-suited to their tasks, and a slew of supportive angels.  That doesn’t mean all this stuff comes in a box if you move your startup here, but if you can say the same thing about your neck of the woods, be it Louisville, Miami, the Valley or Cambridge, stay put, keep your head down, and build like the dickens.  Your city is what you make of it and how you build your network, not what the pundits tell you it is. 

 

 

Building the Team: A nextNY Community Conversation about Startup Hiring

Go in alone or with a partner?  How do you find and recruit a partner?

Need a business person?  A developer?  Where?  Who?

How do you know if they're the right person?  What do you ask on an interview?

And what do you pay all these people??

I've covered some of these issues in the posts below, but if you'd like to discuss startup hiring issues with a great group of up and coming entrepreneurs, you should definitely come to nextNY's Building the Team Community Conversation.

 

We'll be discussing, with the help of some great conversation leaders (entrepreneurs, a recruiter, a VC), the ins and outs of startup hiring. 

Please join us!

Nouncer Post-mortem: Eran explains why he pulled the plug and what he learned

Eran Hammer-Lahav has been a really active member of nextNY.  He recently pulled the plug on his startup midway through his friends and family funding for a host of reasons that touch on a lot of the issues talked about in that group:  hiring, competition, product development/management, etc.   He's moving on to become an Open Standards Evangelist at Yahoo!, but he's learned a lot of lessons and has agreed to talk about them at a small group event this Thursday night (5/1) at 6:30PM here at Path 101/Return Path.

There are a lot of people looking for partners, trying to figure out competition, or just thinking about starting companies here on this list.  Eran's advice could be invaluable.  There are 13 people signed up and we could squeeze up to 30 people in the room.  This is a must-show for anyone in the very early stages of their business as far as I'm concerned and want to encourage as many people as possible in that position to take advantage.

Here's the link to the event:

nouncer.eventbrite.com

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Come hangout with nextNY tonight at our 2 Year Anniversary

Tonight, at Antarctica Bar, is nextNY's 2 Year Anniversary.  Yup, that's the place we first got together back in February of 2006.

Come and catch up with people you haven't seen in a while, people you've never met, or people you'll be hanging out with for the 4th time this week because of all the other tech parties going on in NYC this week.

Antarctica is located on Hudson Street, between Dominic and Spring.   The closest subway is the Spring St. C, E.   We'll start showing around 7PM.

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nextNY Holiday Party Monday night after ITP Show

At first, we weren't sure if we were going to do a holiday party, because there were so many going on, but we had so much fun last year and it was such a great turnout that we decided to do one again.  The best part is that it coinsides with the ITP Winter Show, and so you can go to that, and then meet us for drinks at Apple Bar right around the corner.

Here's the RSVP list... you can show up anyway, but its always nice to let others know you're coming.

Monday, December 17th.  7PM - 10PM

Apple Restaurant and Bom Bar:
http://www.applerestaurant.com/
located at
17 Waverly Pl. Between Green and Mercer

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BDI Convergence Conference - Discount to nextNY members

nextNY is helping BDI get the word out about its Convergence 2007 conference this Monday, and in return, all nextNY members are getting a discounted rate to the conference.  Check it out!

Present Convergence 2007 The Future of Advertising, Communications & Media

About The Event This full day conference will gather the best and brightest minds to explore how the communications industry is converging. The internet's impact on advertising, pr, and media continue to create major changes in the way organizations and individuals interact. Businesses and consumers are embracing social media, web video, and environmentalism. Communications professionals are challenged more than ever to measure ROI on their initiatives while embracing new and sometimes immature cutting edge tactics. We will explore case studies and provide a platform for highly regarded thought leaders to share their successes, failures and lessons learned. We will also invite the best of breed product and solution providers to share their perspectives on the changing face of communications. Case Study: Harnessing the Power of User Generated Media at Toyota Motor Company Bruce Ertmann, Corporate Manager, Consumer Generated Media, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc. As a global leader, Toyota is on the forefront of innovative ways to support its brand and deepen relationships with consumers and dealers. Bruce Ertmann will share his case studies and lessons learned about how one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world embraces consumer generated media as an important part of its overall branding and communications strategy. Case Study: Results through Convergence: McDonald's Use of New Communication Vehicles to Engage Consumers Heather Oldani, Director of Communications, McDonald's As an industry leader, McDonald's continues to seek new ways to reach consumers in order to meaningfully engage them with the brand and to drive awareness and trial for new products and promotions. With the media landscape continually changing, as well as consumers' preferred channels for receiving information, the Communications Team at McDonald's USA has gone beyond traditional media relations to new communication vehicles to help launch new products and to help build brand trust, often times in close collaboration with marketing. The case study presentation will focus on the results delivered from this close collaboration combined with the use of vehicles for two product launches and the company's efforts to reach Moms with brand trust messaging. Case Study: Casio's Partnership with YouTube To Launch The "YouTube Camera" Melissa Keklak, PR Director, Casio Casio has teamed up with YouTube to help establish itself as an innovative company among younger consumers by equipping some of its newest digital cameras with a YouTube Capture mode. The electronics company secured an exclusive agreement with YouTube to provide software on four of its cameras. "We've always been a youthful-type, trendy company," Melissa Keklak, PR director, Casio told PR Week. However, some of Casio's innovations have been overlooked in the competitive digital camera market, she explained. But with this effort, Casio's PR goal is to be known as "the YouTube camera" and the first in the market to offer this technology, Keklak added.Outreach efforts include promoting the agreement to print, broadcast, online, and new-media outlets. The second phase of the campaign involves giving cameras to editors to review the YouTube mode. Later this year, Casio will launch a contest to raise awareness about the YouTube-enabled cameras. Case Study: Social Networking Meets Madison Avenue - Future Opportunities & Lessons Learned from myYearBook.com, the fastest growing social networking site on the internet Geoff Cook, CEO, myYearBook.com style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'" >www.myYearbook.com is the fastest growing social network on the Internet for 13 to 21 year olds and the only one started by 2 high school students.  They recently announced that the site logged a phenomenal 70 percent increase in traffic over the course of just one month from 2.8 million unique visitors to an astounding 4.6 million.   Geoff Cook will share the inside scoop on how to create and execute successful marketing partnerships between online social networks and brands.  He will focus on how to best work with social networking sites from both pr and advertising perspectives.

Details Monday, December 3, 2007 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. The Graduate Center/CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue; New York, NY 10016 Registration Fee: $395, to receive a discounted rate of $345 enter promo code CONCO when registering. http://www.bdionline.com/convergence2007 Additional Speakers Robert Aitken, Broadcast Product Manager, AP Online Video Daryl Battaglia, Vice President, Nielsen Tracking System Stephen Berkov, Director, Brand Innovation, Audi of America, Inc. Jack Berkowitz, Senior Vice President, ALM Media Karen Bloom, Principal, Bloom Gross & Assoicates,Inc. Gigi Carroll, VP Concept Director, DraftFCB Michael Clemente, Executive Producer, ABC News Paul Dunay, Director Marketing, BearingPoint and Author, Buzz Marketing for Technology Bart Feder, Chairman, The FeedRoom Adrienne Garland, Vice President Marketing, PR Newswire Association LLC Mindy Gikas, Managing Director, Human Resources, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide Scott Goodson, Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Strawberry Frog Dan Greenfield, Media Consultant and former Vice President, Corporate Communications, EarthLink James Gregory, CEO, Corebrand Monica A. Hand, Manager, New York Metro Area, Public Affairs & Communications, United States Postal Service Dena Helf , Executive Producer, Video, Vault.com Inc. Peter Himler, Flatiron Communications & President, PR Club of New York John Kaponi, Managing Director, Infocis Press Monitoring Meg Kinney, Executive Vice President, Strategic Planning, Integer/TBWA Jessica Luterman, Managing Director, DeSilva and Phillips Russell Meyer, Chief Strategy Officer, San Francisco, Landor Dori Molitor, CEO, Womanwise Christine Nevin, Director, Business & Media Relations, ConEdison Solutions Stacey Prenner, Talent Management Director, DDB Jason Rissman, Google Stuart Schwartz, The NewsMarket Hank Stewart, VP, Strategic Messaging, Green Team Gus Warren, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Spot Runner, Inc. Alyssa Waxenberg,Senior Director of Westin and Element Interactive Marketing, Starwood Hotels Sponsors

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Tired of TPS Reports? Join a Startup - MatchupCamp

"Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday, and you're not feelin' real well, does anyone ever say to you, 'Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays'?"

"No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man."

- Office Space

Do you or someone you know ever think about knocking down the walls of your cubicle and busting out?  Maybe you're coding backend trading apps for Goldman or doing UI for CondeNast.  Have you ever wished that you could join a small group of people and try to change the world.

That's great, because New York entrepreneurs, developers, and designers need you.  Maybe you have an idea and need a developer or you're a contract developer looking to dive into your own thing, but need a business person to join you.  Contract work is great, but why settle for working on O.P.P. (other people's projects)? 

nextNY is doing an event all around getting people who want to join startups together.  Best part is, you won't get hounded by recruiters or "venture vultures" looking to sell things to you.  Here, you'll just meet other people thinking about the entrepreneurial path.

Here's the info:

MatchupCamp – matchmaking for startups – is all about startup networking, creating a place for ideas and talent to meet. There are many events matching professional services to startups – this one will focus on those looking to get their hands dirty and build something new. MatchupCamp has the sole objective of bringing together people looking to start, expend, or join a startup in New York (and the tri-state area).

MatchupCamp is for those looking for others to work together building exciting ventures in New York. There is no requirement for full time commitment – anyone who wants to take part is welcomed, even if they only have a few hours a week. The important thing is that you are interested in taking part. If you got ideas or skills, come find others to share them with:

• People with ideas looking for others to develop it into a real product
• Anyone with some free time thinking about jumping into the startup world looking to see what’s out there
• Developers looking for cool part-time or full-time projects
• Startup founders looking for employees or co-founders
• Students looking for internships

There are many opportunities for large companies and vendors to recruit people and market their services, but this is not one of them. We are trying to create a different kind of event that is all about coming together and build something useful, from co-founders to full time employees, to a night-time hobby venture. So please, only come if you are representing yourself and only yourself and you’d like to explore the idea of joining a startup or are looking for people to help you with yours.

Details:

Wednesday, November 28 @ 7PM

For Your Imagination
22 West 27th Street
6th Floor
New York, NY 10001

."...We don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements."

- Office Space

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Two Perspectives on the NYC Digital Community

Seth Goldstein told CNN/Money that he, ""figured out a way to get companies started in New York." It was never easy, though. "People there are always dragging you down," he says. "They don't want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.""

He added, "Because New York is so mercenary, I always overindexed toward the missionary," he explains. "Out here, I'm way more comfortable being mercenary. Hyperbole and philosophy don't go very far in the Valley."

Meanwhile, Steph, a graphic designer muses about the difference on her blog:

"New York was more than warm, it is filled with more culture than Silicon Valley can point their mobile phone cameras at. Here, culture seems to revolve around facebook, tivo, and netflix. There, culture is a bar overflowing with music, style & conversation.

Going from coast to coast made me realize all the PRETEND culture here in Silicon Valley. We obsess over technology news. We build online profiles so we can network. We try to "manage" our RSS feeds so we can try to be on top of trends. Alas lets admit that this isn't actually culture, these are all solitary activities which don't require interacting directly with other human beings.

So I have to ask myself, is Silicon Valley the right place to practice user experience design? Shouldn't designers, move around and interact with real people to find out what real people need or want? How effective can enclaves of software developers actually be if everybody within the enclave can only focus on their (introverted) community, and not the long tail of the worlds cultural riches? "

Seth, if you like that scene better, you can have it, buddy. :)  We only ask that the "player to be named later" in the Seth to the Valley trade be Steph.

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Tags: nextNYgraphicdesign web2.0 nyc

Free Business Plan: Give a desk, Take a Desk (or How to get space for startups in New York City)

Ever since we wound up at Return Path, I've been thinking a lot about the model of an incubator.  We heard at the recent city council hearing that incubators were tough to keep up from an economic perspective and required all sorts of subsidies, either from government or academic institution.

But my situation isn't like that.  Does having us use two empty desk cost Return Path real money?  Sure... but how much?  We use normal bandwidth for our regular office activities and hardly ever use the phone.  We borrow a conference room about twice a week and we probably take two sodas/juices a day each from the free machine.  I'd be surprised if our actual incremental cash cost was $150 a month.  That's because there's already an existing, revenue generating organization in place there.  When you try and create an incubator from scratch in an incubator-only space, you couldn't possibly get anywhere near that.

Think about the conference rooms alone.  We would have never rented a place on our own with conference rooms, because we'd never use them enough.  However, a mid-size company probably only use their own conference rooms, at most, half the time.

That's not to mention that RP could potentially get from us.  We do like to think of ourselves as two cutting edge startup guys that are "in the know" about things like social media, data (Alex's specialty), etc., and we're pretty well connected into the community of entrepreneurs.  I've already spoken some people here about doing some knowledge sharing sessions and we're happy to pitch in with some feedback where we can, because we're grateful for the space.

If we were social media consultants, what would that have cost the company?  Certainly a lot more than the desks did.   Seems to me that it could very well balance out if the exchange was a couple of desks for 5-10 hours of mindshare a month.  Now, Return Path may not need that from us, because they're pretty savvy themselves, but what about a big print media company looking to expand their web presence?  I'm sure Jeff Jarvis would agree that rather than move forward in an echo chamber, a media company like that might benefit from having a few startup folks around the office to help them out.  Perhaps they could be instilled as  VPs of Common Web Sense.

So here's the deal I propose that companies with 50 or more people think about:

Give:

• 1-3 desks per seed stage startup
• Internet connection for normal office usage
• Reasonable access to unused conference rooms (prob not more than 5-7 hours/wk, but could be more if they're usually pretty empty)
• Building security passes

Get:

• Goodwill in the startup community
• 5-10 hours of mindshare from people who are thinking out of the box (which is why it makes sense to find startups in your vertical, too)

Similar models have worked in the art world, where artists occupy unused commercial real estate spaces as studios and galleries. 

It's also a very green model, too, if you think about it.  It's about efficient use of existing space.

 

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?  Diggs?  Tags?  Any companies want to sign up?

nextNY Softball today - All geeks with gloves welcome

We might not score 30 runs, but at least we'll get in a few pitching position players. 

Come on up to Central Park's Hecksher Field #2, right by Columbus Circle at 6:15 today (Friday, August 24th).  We'll try and get the first pitch off at 6:30, but if we have some 1.0 guys, they might need a little more time to stretch.  :)

Feel free to pull friends and folks from your companies...   we have extra spots.

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nextNY Social:Rooftop 2.0 This Wednesday!

Want to meet cool folks in the NYC Tech and Digital Media scene?  Signed up on the nextNY listserv but haven't met us in person yet? 

Come to the LaQuinta rooftop this Wednesday night (6/27/07) at 6:30PM and hangout under the NYC sky.  It promises to be a great time.

Let us know that you're coming... RSVP here.

Big Media, Web 2.0, Meet your young users: A NYC conference/non-profit idea

Some unfiltered thoughts that bubbled up at the gym this morning:

• Anyone who has any interest in the future of NYC as an innovation center recognizes the importance of education--not just at the University level, but in high schools and elementary schools as well.  We can't just be a town that attracts smart people from elsewhere to educate them in technology... we need to foster the seeds of technology innovation from a very young age. 
• Couple that with the idea that internet, mobile,  and digital media related companies want better inroads into younger generations, for not just marketing, but for feedback and ideas.
• High school kids need jobs... and ideally more interesting jobs than working at McDonald's.

So, what about some kind of a program whereby startups and large companies alike targeting the high school/college audience engages the schools in an educational manner, in terms of talking about the technology, the business, product management, etc. of their products, and then "hires" these students for both feedback and marketing purposes during the summers.  So, maybe during the year, they do a six week program about all the aspects of their service, and then the students spend the summer providing feedback, helping to market, etc.

Is there anything out there like this?

Filling the Angel Gap in NYC (if there is one)

So here are some meandering thoughts about the current state of the NY Angel market that I don't have the time or the intellectual capacity to synthesize into a coherent thesis/essay:

• People, including myself, say that there is an angel funding gap in NYC.  The reason why is that they cannot readily identify very many firms or individuals who are known to do angel investing.
• At the same time, I don't know of any really fantastic startup companies in NYC who are struggling to get angel money raised.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I know of several companies who are raising or have raised significant angel capital just through their own network or introductions.  Many of the investors have been people who do not usually do angel investing or at least don't have a shingle out to do so.   So, angel gap or no?
• If there was an angel gap, how best to fill it?  Early stage firms could go earlier.  A USV incubator perhaps, a la what Charles River is doing? 
• How about banding groups of angels together in a fund or group?
• What about other types of incubators?  Corporate?  CBS Interactive incubator? 
• Well, we know from the last go around that anyone who doesn't have a larger fund who isn't 100% in the main business of venture investing over the long term are the first ones to get wiped off the face of the earth in a bubble...  does that make them inherently bad structures or just more risky?
• There's a lot of money in NYC that isn't connected to the entrepreneur community...  hedge fund and banking money.  Would it be wise for someone to package up $5-10 million of that to do seed stage financing at 50-250k a pop?  Who should do such a thing?  Isn't a small investor like this going to get crushed in latter rounds because they don't have the money to maintain ownership positions?  That brings us back to the USV incubator idea... and also brings us back to the "Why would USV be interested in entrepreneurs who aren't savvy enough to raise 100k on their own?"
• Is "professional" angel investing, i.e. someone setting up a smaller fund to invest in people not necessarily known beforehand, adverse selection?  If an entrepreneur has never been successful before and isn't connected to enough powerful industry people with a compelling enough product to get backing from community insiders, what are the chances they'll be able to build a successful company?  Same thing with incubators.  If you can't find a space to build your business, how are you ever going to actually build a business?

nextMadisonAve: A Free nextNY Community Conversation on the Future of Digital Advertising

With Microsoft now rumored to be buying 24/7 Real Media, the arms race is at full throttle.  For nextNYer's, the question of "Where will I be working in five years if I want to work in online advertising?" becomes more interesting everyday. 

I'm sure these topics will be covered at the Future of Online Advertising conference, but if you don't have a $995 to drop and you're looking for something a little more conversational, check out nextMadisonAve, next Wednesday, May 9th, at 6:30PM (22 West 27th Street Bet. Broadway/6th - 6th Floor).

nextNY's "Community Conversations" are done in the round (or rectangle, if we're in a conference room) and are an open forum for discussion for the up and coming members of NYC's digital media and technology market.  We invite prominent thought leaders to help lead the conversation, but they're very participatory.

So, if you want to meet with other digital media entreprenuers and professionals to talk about where the advertising and technology market is converging (other than in investment banker wallets) please join us! RSVP Required on our wiki (just click edit and add your name).

Also, if you know of anyone you think would make a great conversation leader for this event, we have some outstanding invites, but I think we'll have an additional slot or two open.  Please let me know at charlie.odonnell@gmail.com.

Gettin' Outta Dodge: Crowley Leaves Google

If you're a young entrepreneur tempted to get bought by a big company because you think it will be a safe, supporting place to help nuture your idea, talk to Dennis Crowley:

"It's no real secret  that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected.  The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us..."

Dennis had hinted about his departure back at SXSW and I'm sure the growth of Twitter didn't help make him feel any better about being stuck in a place that wasn't helping Dodgeball innovate. 

I think it's fair to say that if you get your startup bought by someone, you should pretty much consider it to be the end of innovation and, if nothing else, the beginning of monetization.  That's why  I hope Ev and Biz  take an investment from a VC for Twitter (I hear there's a great VC firm in NYC, btw...)  and get enough resources to help it really grow.  Let it ride boys... because no one likes wondering what coulda been from inside a big corporate cube.

nextNY Members: Now that's some steady growth

I don't even think I could draw a line straighter than this...   Here's the growth of nextNY over the last year+.  We started out with 79 interested members, and we're at about 780 at the moment.

Reprise Bought by Interpublic

Reprise Media just got bought by Interpublic.  That's really fantastic and I can't say enough about Pete and Josh and the rest of the Reprise folks.   They really know their market and obviously Interpublic recognized this.  There are a lot of players in the SEO space, but few as sophisticated and thoughtful about their business as Reprise. 

Good luck with Phase 2 and congrats!

Incubate This!

There is lots of debate as to what the bottlenecks for innovation are in NYC.  Space.  Cost.  Money.  Professional services with startup knowhow...     And one approach at solving this is the incubator.

Ahhh, yes... the incubator. 

Because there's nothing better than a machine that grows babies, chickens, and startups. 

But seriously, what exactly does an incubator do and where are they in NYC?

One thing that really struck me was that, when I was at USV, incubators didn't seem to get prominent attention in the startup world.  I found them tough to locate and I wasn't always aware of what was going on in them.

I'm curious about people's experiences with incubators and if there isn't something that can be done to elevate awareness about them here in NYC.   

Here are a few that I know of, but would like to know more about:

NYSIA Incubator
NYU Stern Incubator
Polytechnic Incubator
Second Century (Pace)

Perhaps it is worth doing some kind of nextNY event where reps from all the incubators can get together and just tell people what they're all about?

If you've been involved with one of these, you should join nextNY, b/c we're a group that really wants to know about these sorts of things and could be where you get your future tenants.

The Difference Between the Media/Marketing Community and the Tech Community

YouTube.  Yahoo!  Google.   Technology companies or media & advertising companies?

Very quickly being in tech on the web, unless you're building hardware or web-based application software, it's becoming pretty much the same thing. 

That's why I'm excited to be in New York....   because there are so many media and advertising folks here, it's only going to make NYC's potential to have a major impact on the web that much bigger.

But yet, despite a lot of noise, nextNY doesn't seem to be adding many digital media or interactive advertising people to its ranks...  still very tech heavy.  I feel like a lot of people on the other side of the table feel like they're just not in the same community as we are, which is a little strange to me.   

This is completely generalizing, unscientific and anecdotal, but I feel like the tech community is actually that, a community.  Tech people are just used to collaborating more.  There's more freelancing going on and so they're used to working with people from many companies, often at the same time.  Plus, anyone who has ever coded or designed anything has often depending on their network of knowledgable friends to help them out with a line or two or a rounded box here and there. 

Could you imagine agency folks e-mailing a listserv saying, "Hey, what's funnier?  A talking monkey or a talking fish?   I need to get the answer to this for a 10AM presentation to a client...  can someone help me out?" 

They might reach out to their friends about that... but other professionals?  Just doesn't seem like there's that kind of dynamic.

And on the media side, when CondeNast folks get together with their counterparts at NewsCorp, do you think their first thought is, "Hey, how can we work together?"   It's just a very competitive industry that has a zero sum approach to collaboration.

I hope I'm wrong about this... and in the coming months, you'll see some nextNY events that attempt to bring agency and media people into the fold... to talk about the future of those industries as they relate to the disruption caused by technology.   If you're in the agency or media biz, you should definitely check out nextNY.  We're not just tech people... we're digital builders, consumers, enablers, financiers, etc...   and unless we realize that we're all in this together, not a lot is going to get done.