Don’t forget boys and girls, New York Tech Meetup is tomorrow and there ain’t many seats left for ya: 

This beer drinking duo seems to be the most popular pic for the “This Week in Silicon Alley” post so far. Should I keep it the same or keep changing it around?

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.