When many think of the most popular destination for technology start-ups, typically the first location that comes to mind is Silicon Valley, Calif. However, an increasingly popular trend is companies starting off in the greatest city in the world in my opinion, New York City of course.
Yesterday, at Startup 2012, an event sponsored by Business Insider, participants joined together for a session titled “Building the Next Big Thing” where they discussed the main reasons behind everyone trying to take a big bite out of the Big Apple. Weighing in was Michael Barrett, CEO of Admeld; Brian Bedol, co-founder and CEO of Bedrocket Media Ventures; Habib Kairouz, management partner of Rho Ventures, and Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane.
According to Barrett, back in 2002, when the technology bubble popped it was around the time that New York was just starting to create its infrastructure and network and the city was hit extremely hard, being forced to almost completely reset. It wasn’t until four years later that a new wave of folks began to build up the base and create systems that eventually would provide the platform for bigger businesses to be built upon.
However currently this concrete jungle where dreams are made from is now acting as second location for many big named companies that once only stayed on the West Coast, including Google who is now opening a new location in the city that never sleeps.
Brian Bedol, the man behind a growing media firm stated, “In this city, people are more serious about building and sticking with their start-up, rather than getting a quick hit. The life cycle of businesses in New York has long been a city where real estate and talent combined are huge incentives as to why you should be starting your business here. In particular, media businesses benefited from being located here because the industry is now intersecting with technology and benefitting highly from the scale and platform that technology brings.”
H e added, “Everything happens faster now with scale and technology and New York is historically the best place in the world to build big business.”
Many on the panel agreed that people in New York definitely have the ambition to start companies here and that in fact, “ambition has never been lacking,” according to Kairouz.
In the near future, all of the thought leaders were again in unison that you no longer need to be in the Valley to have a successfully technology company and that a new wave of great entrepreneurs are now rising up, waiting to leave their mark on the industry.
“I think the next phase should not be to aim for a big exit, but to build for sustainable companies. What I would like to see more of in New York is people that are to stay, not to flip. With Facebook building an engineering location here, it is meaningful,” Kairouz said.
New York has some of the greatest companies of the world headquartered here and it is just a matter of time until technology firms here are considered to be the outpost of real business.
Edited by
Carrie Schmelkin
