Posts from New York

Fast Company is doing a five part series on startup hubs outside of Silicon Valley. Part one was Boulder, Colorado, featuring my friend Brad Feld. I know there is a piece coming on Seattle and two other cities that I can't recall right now.

Part two was published yesterday and is about NYC. I talked to Laura Rich last month and she did a great job of capturing my thoughts on why you should start a company in NYC.

If you are in the startup sector in NYC or are thinking of relocating here to do a startup, you should read the piece.

I'd like to highlight one part of the article. Startup hubs take time to develop. You do need infrastructure and that takes time to build, but more importantly, you need mentors and role models. And that's what we have now in NYC that we didn't have ten years ago:

we're into the second decade now, and what the second decade is really turning out to be is serial entrepreneurs who've done it one, two, three, sometimes four times now, who can bring teams together very quickly, often teams that have worked together very quickly, can get on opportunities fast, can get money raised fast, can build companies pretty fast.

And now you have role models. So the first time entrepreneurs can find angel investors. It's exactly what has been going on in Silicon Valley for three, four decades now. Marc Andreessen becomes hugely successful, makes a bunch of money, becomes an angel investor, backs a bunch of people, mentors them, becomes a VC. That migration path is now playing out here in New York, and so most of the investments we do at the first angel-round stage is ourselves and a bunch of serial entrepreneurs in New York who are now making twenty-five- to fifty-thousand dollar investments as angels in these companies, sometimes acting as informal advisers and mentors to the first-time entrepreneurs.

So now we have the best of both worlds. We can back first-time entrepreneurs and have mentors and role models for them and we have those role models in their second, third, and fourth startups and that's the magic–that creates a sustainable startup economy that Silicon Valley has had for four decades now. We're three or four years into our second decade and I think it's going to be a great period for New York. I feel like we have just taken it to another level sometime in the past couple of years.

I'm very pleased to see Fast Company highlight startup hubs like NYC, Seattle, and Boulder. All three cities have nicely developing startup communities that are poised to produce some big companies in the coming years. Entrepreneurs and developers don't have to move to Silicon Valley to chase their dreams anymore. They've got options to fit their work to their lifestyle. And that's a good thing.

Back in April, I posted an exciting e-commerce job opportunity on this blog.  It was the first time I had used this blog to help fill a position in one of my portfolio companies.

It worked like a charm.

A bunch of people read the post and contacted me.

And then Indeed crawled my blog, picked up the job in their index, and a bunch of people clicked through from Indeed job searches and contacted me.

One of them was the perfect fit, he accepted the job, and has been doing a great job for our company.

So with that success in mind, I am giving it another try.

We have a very exciting product management opportunity in one of our portfolio companies.

The details are as follows:

Vice President, Product
Management

As a member of the Company’s senior management
team, the Vice President of Product Management will be responsible for managing
existing products and services as well as new product development.  Managing a
team of four product managers, will develop road maps for the improvement of
existing products based on input from clients and the sales/customer support
departments. 

Strong Product Management leadership experience in
web-based (ASP) products and services

· Ability to manage multiple projects
simultaneously

· Ability to work with multiple functional departments
within the organization as well as work directly with customers

· Excellent communication and presentations and
comfort in sales settings

· Act as senior sales/product management liaison with
the development team

· Establish strategic vision for product development
efforts related to all offerings

· Ability to recognize opportunities and create new
products/features

· Contribute product and functional thought
leadership

The opportunity is in NYC and the compensation is attractive with an equity upside.

If you are interested or know someone we should be talking to, send me an email to [email protected].

All correspondence regarding this opportunity will be held in complete and total confidence.