Last night, Spark Capital graciously hosted InSITE fellows for an intimate panel discussion on venture capital in New York City. Our own Craig Wilson proctored the conversation between Micah Rosenbloom from Founder Collective, Josh Guttman from Softbank, and Matthew Witheiler from Flybridge. While Josh has been a member of the New York tech community in various capacities since 2001, both Micah and Matt recently relocated to NYC. Matt’s example of continuously increasing his time allotment to “bridge and tunnel investing” from his Boston office is particularly illustrative of NYC’s maturation as a startup hub.
The central theme of the conversation was the rapid development of the New York City tech ecosystem. The panelists posited that this trend is best exemplified by 1) west coast powerhouses establishing offices in New York 2) the wide array of industry verticals NYC tech companies are leading (fin tech, ecommerce, healthcare) and 3) the escalating interest in the tech industry by the government and community at large. Despite NYC’s promise as a tech hotspot, all of the panelists agreed that the city would benefit from a big exit, more engineering talent, and experienced non-founder tech company managers. Hopefully we will see some InSITE fellows fill those roles!
(photo courtesy of Spark Capital: http://sparkcapital.tumblr.com/)
This post was written by Nolan Walsh, Columbia MBA 2015.