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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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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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 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!

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.

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.