Nate is a Co-founder of Anyclip.com, organizer of New York Tech Meetup and Advisor to Flybridge Venture Partners.

In Part 3 of 3 Nate talks about:

• what he’s doing for Flybridge Captial in his role as their New York advisor
• how to get involved in the New York tech community that helped him go from a mostly unknown to one of the more recognized people in the community
• the goal and future of the New York  Tech Meetup, that now stands at 12,677 members and over 800 attendees per month and growing.

Sean: There seems to be a lot more activity in New York from venture capitalists. There’s a first round coming from Philadelphia opening offices…

Nate: Flybridge…

Sean: …Flybridge hired you

Nate: Polaris….

Sean: …. So talk about what you are doing for Flybridge.

Nate: … for Flybridge? Well, I’m technically an advisor to Flybridge, and what that means is, for the most part is, when it comes to New York investments, I’m both helping them source deals as well as due diligence o n deals and then on their investments, help make connections. You know I think that it’s really something that, you know… I put, at the last New York Tech MeetUp, I put DreamIt Ventures up on stage to announce their new fund. I don’t think we should be, you know… I’ve been accused before of being a bit “chest-pounding” about the New York tech scene…

Sean: mmm-hmm

Nate: But at the same time, I don’t think it’s bad to have competition or more investors in New York looking at New York companies and focusing here. In fact, I think it’s a really good thing for the ecosystem, with the full disclaimer that I’m being paid to say that. Right? (chuckle) We’re not paid, but obviously I have skin in the game here.  But…

Sean: But at the same time, the reason the [Silicon] Valley is so successful is because there’s, you know, an ecosystem, and the idea behind a community here is get, build the same kind of ecosystem and you’ve got to support it…

Nate: Here’s the thing… part of the ecosystem is diversity. And the thing that really excited me at first, besides once I met with the Flybridge guys, they’re all just top-tier guys. They are just great, great people. Everybody involved in the firm. And I vetted them with Tengen. I made sure to talk to, you know, Union Square Ventures to talk to them about their co-investment with them and I made sure to talk to Dwight Merriman and a number of the Flybridge guys were at Greylock, which backed DoubleClick, so I vetted them. Something that excited me, beside the fact of who they were as people was the fact that they were doing investments outside of New York that don’t look like New York investments, in that they… As a Boston VC firm, versus a New York VC firm their investing in medical devices, they are still doing semiconductors – there’s still innovation in semiconductors – there’s all these technologies that New York isn’t necessarily strong in, and therefore New York-centric VC’s aren’t focused in. Where if you … When you plug in a VC from outside of the area, you’re getting all sorts of, intellectual capital that you wouldn’t have in this ecosystem anyway. So, you know, First Round Capital goes the same for them. They are more plugged into what’s happening in the [Silicon] Valley than any other, I think, VC firm that’s operating in New York City.  And so they are they’re bringing in all sorts of intellectual capital from Josh [Kopelman] and Chris’s [Fralic] and Howard’s [Morgan] experiences outside of New York and we’re better off for it. So that diversity, those outside agents, these agents that operate primarily in other ecosystems with different components in them are hugely, I think, adding to what we do. Having them here is really good.

Sean: So the whole Idea here is to promote the ecosystem.

Nate: mmm-hmm

Sean:  So for those who are outside of the community who are wanting to break in and get involved, what would your advice be?

Nate: Of course, I tell people to come to the New York Tech MeetUp every month, but I actually tell them that that should be… that’s sort of your staple. That’s your daily vitamin, I guess, but you’ve got to do more than that. … There was a time, not too long ago, that I knew nobody in this industry, and where I found the most amount of value were all of the niche, smaller events that are going on. The smaller groups; the more focused ones. Those were the places where I would go and I’d meet one or two people in these smaller setting where it was easier to do so. So that when I did show up at the New York Tech MeetUp, I could leverage those connections. That was the best way to leverage a crowd of (at the time) 400, 200 to 300. Right? Walking into a room that size is pretty intimidating, even for some outgoing people like most entrepreneurs. I suggest people go to Garysguide.org, subscribe to Startup Digest or Charlie O’Donell’s weekly email blast. You know, pick out some of the smaller MeetUps, whether it’s the Video 2.0  MeetUp, if you’re into video,  or the Fashion 2.0, or the Gaming 2.0 MeetUp, or TechAviv if you are into Israeli startups. Just like there is a Boston…  a different profile for Boston MeetUps, there’s a different profile for Israeli companies that operate in NewYork City. Right? Where we are more interested in, sort of, computer vision and advanced algorithms than amazing interfaces.  So I would just think about the different niches that you’re most interested in. Or you might find that it’s sort of like dating, right? You want to hang out at the bars and the cafes where you think you’re going to meet the most compatible person. And then come to the New York Tech MeetUp and you’ll feel like you’re more at home and you can better enjoy the, sort of, grand scale of the New York Tech Meet Up.

Sean: Last question, what’s the goal for the MeetUp? Do you want to grow it?…

Nate: Yeah.

Sean: …Is it getting bigger? Is there anybody that can house it? (chuckle)

Nate: Yeah. Certainly we’re grow[ing]. It’s a hard thing to balance. Strike a balance, right? I think that the goal of the New York Tech MeetUp is to advance the New York technology industry for its people and the world. The goal of the New York Tech MeetUp is not to have more members or explicitly to provide more programs. One of the beauties of the organization, I think, is that everybody involved is doing it on an entirely pro bono basis. And I think everybody involved is doing it from a pretty legitimately good spot in their heart where they really care about this industry and they find that this is a good way to put that into action. So, how do we advance the New York technology industry?   Well I think that one ways is to play, sort of, partner to all the other people who do have ongoing initiatives. Outside of the monthly event, which we’ll continue to do, and we’re actually going to move to, this summer we’re going to move to the Skirball Theater at NYU, because they are right down the street from here, which will now host over 850 people (chuckle), and after that, I think it’s Madison Square Garden.  Right?

Sean: Nice!

Nate: No, no… I think we’ll be fine at Skirball. It’s a beautiful theater.  So, I don’t even know if you want to even have… you want to always accommodate everybody. You hate to turn people away, but at the same time it gets very big. So, what we are going to do in the background is we are going to leverage the community to fulfill, to support niche communities. So, for instance, the education space is really important to me right now and other members of the organization. We feel like there is something that we can do to help be, sort of, the connective tissue among all of the people in the university system as well as the startup ecosystem. Columbia and NYU already have an amazing infrastructure for doing that, whether it’s the Columbia Venture Network or… they sort of compliment that at NYU. But, there’s still a lot of things going on at Pace, and stuff that was going on at Apollo which is now slowly getting wrapped into NYU. Stuff at Fordham, you know, Stevens even. Even Yale – I ran into a student from Yale that was just at the Tech MeetUp because it’s just close enough.  And so I think that we can provide… we can, sort of, fill in gaps where other people aren’t providing services or aren’t actively getting startups into research labs or students internships into startups. One thing I’d really like to explore is providing a scholarship to come and study at universities in New York City and be a part of this community while they are in school. That’s sort of a long-term dream. I think that New York Tech MeetUp, because of its scale and because of the passion in its community, is better suited…and again, nobody… everyone involved, their only platform is to advance the community. It doesn’t write checks for anybody, and so that means that we can really play this sort of dispassionate middle for all of the different people involved in the community. So that’s really the goal is to leverage this to move the needle in the areas like education research that New York could use.

Sean: That’s great. Man, we could go on forever…

Nate: Yeah.

Sean: … I’ll have to bring you back some other time. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.

Nate: Thank You.

[END]

Nate is a Co-founder of Anyclip.com, organizer of New York Tech Meetup and Advisor to Flybridge Venture Partners.

In Part 2 of 3 Nate talks about what we all learned from the bursting of the bubble in early 2000’s, the infamous “RIP Good Times” meeting that Sequoia Capital organized for its portfolio companies back in 2008  and why the come back of Internet startups is sustainable this time around.

Sean: There was a famous, board meeting that Sequoia organized for all its…

Nate: Yeah.

Sean:  …for all its portfolio companies, of which we are one, that got quote/unquote “leaked.” It said “R.I.P. Good Times.”  This was October…

Nate: Yeah.

Sean: …November of 2008

Nate: Yep, yep. It was immediately after.

Sean: Basically saying that everybody needs to cut the fat, this looks a lot like 1999, however, what’s different is there’s a lot of companies creating a lot of value.  Buckle down.

Nate: That’s exactly… and I think that people paid attention along the entire chain. I think start-ups paid attention. I think that VC’s got more disciplined with their investments.  For instance, during that period of time, I was at Rose Tech Ventures, and we basically decided to only invest in companies which could be cash-flow positive with a million dollars or less. Which is a, filter that not many people were thinking about putting on their investments, because a part of the… This industry is attractive for many reasons, one of which is the, you know, the speculation that’s involved and the idea that you might need to take the ten million dollars of investments, or more, the fifty million dollar investment before you’re producing  a lot of cash. And so to think about this industry and the lens of getting cash-flow positive with a million bucks,  is just a type of discipline and a type of thinking that that scenario forced people into; both entrepreneurs and investors, whether it was that specific role or not.  And I think that produced just smarter companies and I think we’re better off for it.

Sean: I agree, but what do you think about the ‘Twitters’ and the ‘Facebooks’ who…

Nate: Well listen…

Sean: …probably want to miss those, right?

Nate: But, of course, Twitter didn’t take investment until it had… outside of the founders… I mean, it’s up to the founder’s prerogative. I think that if you’re sort of Evan Williams, you’ve made your money, and you can afford to buy back oddeo or Odeo, and reinvest in this concept that you really believe in, that’s sort of an entrepreneur’s prerogative.  It would have been, you know… could I speak for Chris Sacca for putting in the angel money at what point, you know, I’m not sure. But they had a prototype out there; they had some sort of adoption indication that this was interesting. I don’t necessarily think that… And then by the time they took serious venture capital money the growth curve was, was predicting this sort of, or you could at least imagine, this sort of scale. So, and again like Foursquare is a great example of that, too, where they, you know, Dennis [Crowley] had a success and he and Nuveen [Investments] were able to be very responsible, almost too cau[tious ]…  I mean, they could have raised money much before. So I think the investment community was almost, was… they probably would have passed their sniff-test too early, if they have even pushed it. I think, they were very smart to get it out there, see it ramp. And, sure, those two companies are examples of companies that aren’t looking, or aren’t monetizing, heavily monetizing right now. They likely won’t be cash-flow positive, or… Twitter certainly wasn’t on its first VC investment, Foursquare might not either. But these are like, again, these companies have growth curves that, I think, allow you to justify, sort of, other types of investments.  The rule that I like to remind people of is that we’re not all Foursquare and we’re not all Twitter, and that’s not the only way that value is created on the internet.  And people, I think, sort of forget that.

Sean: Yeah. What I think is unfortunate is that those are the ones that people…  Those are the exceptions and people hold on to those, because that’s the ones they find out about…

Nate: Well that’s a part of “the Dream,” you know. It’s like, when you go into this world you sign up for “the Dream,” and, you know, it just so happens that “the Dream” comes in all sorts of sizes, but like the default, sort of,” the Dream,”  the one that you read  most about is, again, that one model.  So you never read about, or you rarely read about “the Dream” which is the AnyClip model. And If we are successful we’re going to be, sort of, much more like, let’s say,  Zappos. Right? Zappos is a great example, where here is an existing sort of struggling company and, you know, which was then taken over by really smart, innovative entrepreneurs.  They didn’t hang out in any garage to sort of get Zappos up and running, but they are the fou[nders]…they would be considered founders and certainly any catalyst for its success. So I think that the more you become, I think, a dispassionate observer, of the industry, you sort of see that there’s lots of stories, there’s lots of ways. There’s people who work on an idea but don’t quit their job for two years, then all of a sudden it’s the right time. I think Yipit is a great sort of example of something that where you know, Jim [Moran] and Vinny [Vacanti] have been like super-patient with it. And I really think that it’s going to come into its own.  It’s a great… I think their building … I don’t know much about their traffic, but it seems to me, I just feel like that they must be doing well right now. And it took them some time to figure out exactly what that meant and I don’t think they over-invested in the company before that happened, which makes them smart and makes this industry, you know, all the better for it.

Nate is a Co-founder of Anyclip.com, organizer of New York Tech Meetup and Advisor to Flybridge Venture Partners. In Part 1, he talks about AnyClip, why New York is a great place to be an entrepreneur and the reality vs hype of what is going on in Silicon Alley.

Update – A transcript can now be found directly below the video. Thanks for your patience.

Sean: So we’re here with Nate Westheimer.  The… a lot of titles:  co-founder of AnyClip[.com], organizer of  the New York Tech MeetUps, and the newly appointed advisor to Flybridge Capital.

Nate: Yep.

Sean: You’re a busy guy so thanks for stopping by.

Nate: My pleasure, yeah.

Sean: (Laughter) So, let’s talk about the New York Tech community, in general, but as probably a good specific example maybe you could tell us a little bit about “AnyClip.” Maybe just like the elevator pitch…

Nate: Yeah, that elevator pitch that I give for “AnyClip” is  the only one I’ve ever given that gets a round of applause…But, it’s the index of the world’s films so people can search for and find any moment from any film ever made, instantly.

Sean: Oh, so that favorite food fight from Animal House?

Nate: Food fight, Animal House,”BAM! Gas station scene, Zoolander, “Roll on Shabbos,” “Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Sean: That’s awesome.

Nate: Yeah, it’s… the movies as a medium are just an, incredible force. I mean it’s almost the most democratic form of culture and of art. And so working with films is just a delight.

Sean: So you have an office in New York?

Nate: Yep.

Sean: And Jerusalem?

Nate: Yep.

Sean: Uh, And we were talking a little bit about the story behind how that came to be and I think it is a really good and interesting story that entrepreneurs would enjoy.  So maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background.

Nate: Yeah. I think, you know, what entrepreneurs can take away from the “AnyClip” story is that it’s not the traditional “two guys and a bowl of Ramen, in a garage” story that I think has been, sort of, canonized. You know, it is the “Google” story, and it is down to the “Foursquare” story, and it’s the “Tumblr” story. And that’s amazing for a number of reasons – those types of stories that’s;  capital efficiency, sort of being or having all of the skills in-house,  all of those things that help small ideas, or big ideas start small and then grow to be big. But “AnyClip” is a different story that people say an existing company that had tried something in the movie space, and knew wasn’t working with their current idea, with their current management, but, they had assembled a great team and the investors wanted to keep going. The investors, themselves, were quite passionate about the space for a number of reasons.  And so they were actively recruiting new management and they got around to my friend and co-founder, Aaron Cohen, who… he and I sort of talked about that opportunity.  We were sharing different opportunities. I was on my way out of Rose Tech Ventures. My term as EIR was coming to a close. He had been out of Menu Pages, he was the CEO of Menu Pages [inaudible] with New York Magazine. He had been out of that for about six months, sort of thinking about his next thing. We started talking about ideas. We took a look at this company together and decided that, you know, we had an Idea – the idea of “AnyClip” – that would be really, really compelling and that we would enjoy working on. So we took that back to the investors and they decided to hire Aaron and including myself to come in and, turn it around and, that was almost a year ago in a couple of weeks.

Sean: And, what happens in New York and what happens in Jerusalem?

Nate: In Jerusalem, the two main functions of everybody in Jerusalem is engineering and data engineering: so software engineering and data engineering.  When we say indexing the films, there are some things that we do logarithmically, but there is actually a huge manual component to that.  And then from an engineering perspective, we have sort of three teams, people on the core data, API and search teams, and then people on the web and product teams, and some on the Flash and development, which happens in both camps. In the [United] States, it’s more on the product side. So, I run product and technology for the company as a whole and Gabby Moore, our lead designer, sits next to me in New York.  So she is the main interface between, sort of, product and code because she is a developer, a former developer. Then in terms of business functions:  Aaron, our CEO, our head of licensing is in New York. And actually our head of business development is in L.A., so we kind of have an office in L.A.  And then we have a number of support staff here in New York as well. So we’re about 20 people – about half New York and Jerusalem.

Sean: Yeah. What do you think about building an engineering team here in New York?  What’s kind of the pros and cons?

Nate: Well the pros are… I adore my team in Israel and I couldn’t see doing this project without them. Of course it has its difficulties – to be so far away – and so I think that most people should and would be wise to look for building their team locally. And I think that in terms of – and not always, but in a lot of cases – start lean. Lean start-ups  can really… it might be cheaper in other places. Certainly that’s not a reason to be in Israel , but in other places in the world– it’s cheaper than New York. But you lose a lot in just that, sort of, having zero-latency in getting feedback, and brainstorming, and all that. So New York is the place where I think you’d want to be building your engineering team. And the question is, “Can you?” and I think, “Absolutely!”  It’s not that… There is no reservoir of engineers, nor should there be. Right? Engineers are highly skilled individuals and so it’s going to be tough, no matter where you are to find the right set of skills for your start-up.  I don’t think anywhere else in the world there is this reservoir that you can just dip into.  And so what you have to do is, just like any other place, you have to convince people to work for your company where you are. Well I can’t speak for your company, you know, but in terms of New York, it’s been increasingly easy to convince people that New York is a pretty awesome place to do work. And the quality of life here – what I put in a recent blog post and sort of made myself chuckle was– “where else can you live a life of such luxury and have a smaller carbon-footprint  than anyone else in the country?”

[laughter]

Sean: Yeah. You can live in box and have the best life ever.

Nate: Yeah, it’s true. That’s one of the appeals of living in New York. You, both, can take public transportation everywhere and you‘re actually living well and doing good at the same time. The lifestyle is just hard to beat. Outside of just business, right,… the MoMa, the entire city. So it’s easy to recruit people to come here and then a lot of those people are here anyway. I don’t think you generally have to hire somebody, convince somebody to come in from Chicago or Atlanta or San Francisco to move here. A lot of those people have decided that New York is going to be their home anyway. And so New York is a great, you know, a great feeder itself for talent.

Sean: So what do you think, about what’s happening with the New York, sort of, tech scene in general? We were just talking about how in 2006 we would go to these MeetUps,  New York Tech MeetUps, with about 100 people give or take.  Now there’re 800 people – you’re organizing them.

Nate: Yeah.

Sean: What do you think is going on?

Nate: I think a number of factors.  I think even in that 3-year period of time, or 3 ½ -year period of time that I’ve been involved, just the things that I’ve seen happen are… we had a sort of a bubble, we had a fever-pitch, I think, of you know like a year ago where… I’m always sensitive to the amount of publicity or attention given versus how much is deserved.  And I think it’s ok to have, sort of, one the formerly the later. Right? It’s ok a little bit more attention but not too much.  And I feel like we were, maybe 2007, things were getting a little out of control because of Tumblr and Digipop and started… I think they were the main two; the main brands that people were recognizing that were coming up in consumer internet. And consumer internet drives a lot of the perceived hype and awareness of the industry.  I think what’s changed between you know’06 and then ‘07 and sort of now is that everyone sort of is doubled, sort of reinvested the attention that they got, reinvested in really creating value.  People, I think, go to less parties because they are working harder, and that’s really healthy.

On the heels of posting part 2 of my interview with Charlie O’Donnell of First Round Capital about why New York is a great place to start a technology company The New York Times published an article in today’s Technology section about the very subject.

Yesterday I interviewed Nate Westheimer, the Executive Director of the New York Tech Meetup, co-founder of Anyclip and advisory to Flybridge Capital. In that interview, which will be published here later this week, Nate also talks about why New York is the best place to start a technology company.

In the meantime, here are my favorite excerpts from today’s NY Times story:

Of course, services can be developed anywhere. But because so many industries now grappling with the Internet are based in New York, the city is finding surer footing among its peers as a thriving tech hub.

“Book publishing, advertising, media and even the fashion industry are all located in New York. These are the main industries that are being reshaped and redefined by technology and the Internet,” says AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies regional economics and technology entrepreneurship.

To get a vivid snapshot of this new generation of Web innovation, one needs to look no further than the portfolio of Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures and a force within the New York start-up scene. Run through a list of Web darlings here — Boxee, software that pipes video from the Internet to a television; Tumblr, a microblogging platform; and Foursquare, a mobile social network — and Union Square is an investor.

“The software business has morphed into the Internet business,” Mr. Wilson says. “Ten years ago, maybe 80 percent of software was being built for enterprise. Now, it’s being written for consumers and is more media-centric than ever. And, historically, those have been New York’s strongest sectors.”

Champions for New York’s continued evolution as a hotbed for digital innovation say that the proximity to industries ripe for innovation helps draw companies in those fields.

Kevin Ryan, former chief executive of the ad company DoubleClick and founder of Gilt Groupe, a Web site that offers discounted luxury goods, knows the importance of having prospective customers in his backyard. “We need to be here because the people we’re hiring are coming from Saks and Dolce & Gabbana, and they are all in New York,” he said.

…………..

HELPING to cultivate New York’s revival, entrepreneurs and investors say, is the proliferation of early-stage investment firms, start-up incubators and the cadre of successful serial entrepreneurs choosing to set up shop within the five boroughs of the city.

Ben Lerer, a co-founder of Thrillist, a popular daily e-mail newsletter aimed at hip urban men, recently raised $7 million for an investment firm he runs with his father, Kenneth. The two men plan to make as many as 25 investments in tech start-ups this year, 80 percent of which will be in New York, they say.

The elder Mr. Lerer is a co-founder of The Huffington Post. He also is an investor in Betaworks, an incubator housed in the meatpacking district that has helped nurture roughly 25 companies since it started in 2007, including the online tools Bit.ly and Tweetdeck.

Adding to the momentum are cash infusions from noted venture capitalists based elsewhere. Ron Conway, a San Francisco financier who was one of the earliest investors in Google, Twitter, Facebook and Zappos, says his fund has 25 investments in New York that account for roughly 20 percent of his portfolio.

“Just a year ago, it was less than half that,” he said in an e-mail message. “New York has become a hotbed of innovation,” he said. “Many start-ups there have as much promise as the best start-ups here in Silicon Valley. And the ecosystem of entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and other players is growing at a pace similar to Silicon Valley when it first got started.”

Read the full story on the New York Times here