I said earlier this week that in addition to spring fever in NYC, we have startup fever. There is so much good stuff happening in NYC right now.
I'm not talking about fundings and such. The financial markets come and go. Boom today bust tomorrow.
I'm talking about building a foundation that will allow the tech sector in NYC to survive these booms and busts and thrive for the long term. The foundation comes from great programs like Techstars, InSITE, HackNY, PairUp, Founder Labs, etc, etc.
Today I'd like to talk about a couple more great programs happening in NYC this spring and summer.
Last summer, SeedStart ran an accelerator program in NYC that produced a number of interesting startups. This summer, they are doing another program but it will be focused on emerging media companies. The program is called SeedStart Media and has big media companies like AOL, Hearst, News Corp, MTV, NY Times, Time Warner, and a bunch more involved as corporate partners. Here are some details from their website:
We are inviting technology companies willing to spend the summer in New York City that are concentrating on [the media industry] to apply to SeedStart. The program will give up to 10 companies $20,000, office space, and time in exchange for a small piece of equity (5%). At the end of the 12 weeks, SeedStart features an investor day where companies will have the opportunity to present to seed and early stage investors as well as potential partners and customers.
Info session: March 29th at 7pm, 160 Varick St. 12th floor, New York, NY.
All mentors, participating corporations, & SeedStart Media applicants are invited to attend.
Please RSVP at [email protected]
Another big problem we have in NYC tech is funneling top college graduates into the startup sector. Very few tech companies have the size and scale to run proper college recruiting programs. So the sector needs to cooperate and form recruiting efforts together. One such event is happening soon.
The second annual NYC Startup Job Fair is happening at AOL's headquarters on Friday April 8th. It will be engineers only from 1pm to 2:30pm and then everyone from 2:30pm to 5pm. We have encouraged our portfolio companies to attend and I am certain that some of them will. The list of participating companies (as of now) is here. If you are graduating from college or grad school this spring and want to join a startup, you should seriously consider showing up at AOL on Friday April 8th.
These are just two of the many great programs going on in NYC right now. We are building a fantastic ecosystem and I am so excited to see this happening.
