6 posts tagged NYC

The mobile service Hot Potato launched at the RealTime Crunchup earlier today.  My first impression is that it’s a local and mobile version of Facebook Connect.  This is a good thing.  Similar to the way Facebook lets friends and strangers communicate around live events on major networks (e.g. Presidential Inauguration on CNN), Hot Potato enables people to communicate in real-time around local events (e.g. concerts, parties, etc.).

It’s another iteration of local applications. You can check into places just like you would on Foursquare, but the features don’t just stop there.  You can write messages, post photos, and communicate with fellow attendees.  Essentially, it behaves like a multimedia mobile chatroom.  TechCrunch describes it quite nicely:

Hot Potato uses events as its primary filter, and adds a social and geo layers on top. You sign in with your Facebook account so you can connect with existing friends easily. You can also add your Twitter account. When you send out a note or put up a photo, it can be shared on Facebook, Tweeted out, or shared via email with a link back to the original content. The link goes back to a Hot Potato website where all the links are hosted. Or you can simply share your Hot Potato status (attending, watching, following).

There’s a ton of hype around local and mobile applications right now, and I think Hot Potato is poised to make some noise.  I’ll be following this one closely.

Last week I posed a question regarding how to leverage NYC talent in the startup community.  Initially, the most obvious pool of candidates seemed to be talented analytical brains in finance and consulting.  Although I still think their skill sets are translatable to startups, there’s another group out there with serious potential: university researchers and academics.

NYC is home to some of the world’s top scientific institutions (e.g. Columbia University and New York University).  Each year hundreds of millions of dollars are injected into the research and development of new technologies, yet only 0.1% of funded basic science research results in a commercial venture.  The remainder of these projects inspire a piece of academic literature and are subsequently shelved.

Center for an Urban Future, a NYC think tank, recently published an in-depth study on the importance of developing a more robust and entrepreneurial research community.  It calls for a public institution somewhere between the EDC and SBS:

What’s needed is an office that builds linkages and structures to grow and retain the city’s own technology businesses, and not just in the life sciences.  We need an office willing to interact intensively with the universities - to be in their face all the time - and to court the entrepreneurial community.

Successful institutions like this exist in Philadelphia and the Boston area.  Why shouldn’t one exist in NYC?  They set tangible goals: raising the number of companies emerging from research at city universities from X to Y and increasing investments towards research commercialization.

This is a good idea, but I think an even better solution exists.  Public institutions are inherently inefficient - they’re bureaucratic by nature.  Same thing goes for major universities.  The opportunity exists for a group of VCs/entrepreneurs to develop tight-knit relationships with key players at universities.  If the private sector can tap into university academics, researchers, and inventors, fund them and help them bring their inventions to market, it would be an economic boon.  Simply raising the number of commercialized research projects from 0.1% to 1% would result in exponential economic and technological growth.

In order for this to happen universities need to relax their transfer office policies, embrace the private (and public) sector, and encourage communication and joint-entrepreneurship with seasoned professionals.  The major institutions win, the academics win, the entrepreneurs win, and NYC wins.

Here’s a response/question I posted on a thread on Nate’s blog.  There has been a lot of dialogue lately on the NYC startup scene and its potential.  I think this touches on one of the key issues at hand.

I agree that understanding programming (jargon and the whole works) is a necessity. It seems like that can be picked up in a basic CS101 book, reading the right blogs, and experiencing it firsthand. I luckily sit next to two very talented programmers who are more than willing to teach me about the different languages/uses/etc.

You began to address the primary dilemma before:
“Building a program which effectively identifies the best and brightest locked away in these industries, and providing the resources to turn their disruptive ideas into disruptive startups, is a big answer for me.”

I’m still not entirely convinced that learning code is the finite answer here. If I’m 2-3 years out of college working at the Goldman Sachs and McKinsey’s of the world and suddenly get the entrepreneurial itch, I can’t drop everything to learn to code. And even if I do, my code will never be as good or robust as that of a talented programmer who has been at it for years. Like you said, immersing oneself, eating and breathing engineering is a great way to start; however, I think there’s a lot more to it.

If the value-added of this particular demographic is not concentrated in product development, then where is it focused? How can you take the best and the brightest from the “Titan Industries” and focus their skill sets towards transforming the way startups grow? Chris Dixon also had an interesting post on this yesterday, but I’m still curious as to how and where this group fits in. I don’t think there’s one right answer, but it’s a question worth exploring in order to better understand how to leverage NYC’s competitive advantage in this area.

BLT Prime, 111 East 22nd Street (Park Avenue), (212) 995-8500

Cafe Cluny, 284 West 12th Street (West Fourth Street), (212) 255-6900

Cafe Luxembourg, 200 West 70th Street (Amsterdam Avenue), (212) 873-7411

‘Cesca, 164 West 75th Street (Amsterdam Avenue), (212) 787-6300

Degustation, 239 East Fifth Street (Second Avenue), (212) 979-1012

Eleven Madison Park, 11 Madison Avenue (24th Street), (212) 889-0905

15 East, 15 East 15th Street (Union Square West), (212) 647-0015

Harry’s Cafe & Steak, One Hanover Square (Stone Street), (212) 785-9200

Keens Steakhouse, 72 West 36th Street (Avenue of the Americas), (212) 947-3636

Locanda Verde, 377 Greenwich Street (North Moore Street), (212) 925-3797

Marea Restaurant, 240 Central Park South (Broadway), (212) 582-5100

Masa, 10 Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center, 4th floor (Broadway and 59th Street), (212) 823-9800

Minetta Tavern Restaurant, 113 MacDougal Street (Bleecker Street), (212) 475-3850

The Modern, 9 West 53rd Street (Fifth Avenue), (212) 333-1220

Momofuku Ssam Bar, 207 Second Avenue (13th Street), (212) 254-3500

The Odeon, 145 West Broadway (Thomas Street), (212) 233-0507

Peasant, 194 Elizabeth Street. (Spring Street), 212-965-9511

Perbacco, 234 East Fourth Street, (Avenue B), (212) 253-2038

Peter Luger Steakhouse, 178 Broadway (Driggs Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 387-7400

Porter House New York, 10 Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center (59th Street and Broadway), (212) 823-9500

Soto, 357 Avenue of the Americas (Washington Place), (212) 414-3088

Sushi Yasuda, 204 East 43rd Street (Third Avenue), (212) 972-1001

Vinegar Hill House, 72 Hudson Avenue (Water Street), Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, (718) 522-1018