Co-authors Alessandro Piol and Maria Teresa Cometto discussed their new book, “Tech and The City: The Making of New York’s Startup Community” as part of the NYU Himelberg Speaker Series that was held on April 23rd and hosted by the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Allesandro has been involved in the technology industry for over 30 years. In addition to various executive positions, he was the co-founder and partner in AT&T Ventures, the venture capital arm of AT&T and is now the President, Partner and Co-founder of Vedanta Capital, a venture capital firm focusing on early growth technology companies. Maria Teresa has been a contributing writer to il Mondo for over 25 years and conducted the research and the over 50 interviews for the book that included entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalist and others.
“Tech and the City“ set for public release at the beginning of May tells “how New York in a short time has positioned itself as a thriving community of start-ups” as described by Alessandro Piol to an audience of NYU alumni and students. They began their narrative in 1994 when the NY Tech Meetup was first started with 4-5 people meeting in a bar under its prior name “NY Media Association”and then shared how it is now held at NYU”s Skirball Theater to an audience of over 500 that Maria Teresa described as the “most exciting Meetup in New York with 10 demonstrations of new startups and great networking.” With humor they described how only one person actually showed up for the first meeting—what may be the ultimate nightmare for any event planner.
Now three decades later “Tech and the City” describes New York as “the new world capital of the high-tech industry, competing with Silicon Valley to attract the best talent.” They frame out its emergence over three major crises: the internet bubble in 2000, 911 and the financial crisis in 2008. They described the role that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has had both as an entrepreneur when he founded Bloomberg News and then again in 2008 when the financial crisis impacted an important part of the New York City economy and spurred him to diversify the city’s economy by focusing on technology startups, incubators and the new tech campus being built on Roosevelt Island by Cornell University and Technion. The book also provides a guide to seven key neighborhoods in New York City.
Purchase and reviews of the book including comments by David Rose of New York Angels may be found on Amazon.
