What this section is about.
The Resources section is about sharing some of the interesting sources of information on the web about the New York startup community: links to information, lists of investors, workspaces, useful blogs and mailing lists, etc. We are trying to provide you with the basic information that can be useful when you are trying to navigate New York. It is not a complete list, but it is certainly a starting point.
Please add in the comments section the (many) things we are sure to have forgotten.
- Coronavirus: what startups will emerge from the crisis?
Is the coronavirus economic crisis similar to those triggered by the terrorist attack of 9/11 and the financial collapse 2008?
If true, it should inspire us a pinch of optimism: from those crises new ideas emerged, startups that became a great success, because they responded to real needs and had to focus their resources well in a difficult climate, with little money available.
“9/11 inspired innovation” was the headline of a FastCompany article on 9/9/11 An example? Meetup, born from the rubble of the Twin Towers to help people organize themselves in communities based on shared interests: today it has 44 million members in 2,000 cities in 190 countries in the world, and is part of the AlleyCorp group led by one of the veterans of the New York startups , Kevin Ryan.
Another example is Kickstarter, the platform where creatives from all sectors seek lenders for their projects: it was born on April 28, 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession. In recent years, 18 million people have used it to make their “dreams” come true, raising $5 billion for nearly 200,000 projects.
Here is the story of Meetup as Scott Heiferman told us in “Tech and the City”.
But a far more devastating tragedy still was to befall New York and Silicon Alley: the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. An absolute evil that, however unintentionally, generated a good seed.
Scott Heiferman: “I was on a bus, going from the East Village to my house in NoHo that morning. I heard the news on the radio of the first aircraft hitting the Twin Towers and I decided to go on the roof of my apartment building. I arrived a few seconds after the second plane had hit. And then I lived through this experience I often talk about, of having more conversations and talking to more people in the hours and days after 9/11 than I had in all my previous years in New York. And that was intriguing because until then I had no particular interest in my local community. After 9/11, I became interested in the simple pleasure of talking to neighbors, to get to know them. And I understood how powerful people can be when they get organized. In those days we saw lots of vigils and support groups and I became interested in how people can get to know more neighbors, how in the future they could organize local communities about anything, and that led to Meetup: use the Internet to organize individuals in a community. A concept that then, well ahead of Facebook and the emergence of the term ‘social media’, seemed ridiculous.”Continue reading →
- Coronavirus: quali startup emergeranno dalla crisi?
La crisi economica da coronavirus e’ simile a quelle scatenate dall’attacco terroristico dell’11 settembre 2001 e dal crollo finanziario 2008?
Fosse vero, dovrebbe ispirarci un pizzico di ottimismo: da quelle crisi sono emerse idee nuove, startup diventate poi un grande successo, perché hanno risposto a bisogni veri e hanno dovuto focalizzando bene le loro risorse in un clima difficile, con pochi soldi a disposizione.“9/11 inspired innovation” was the headline of a FastCompany article on 9/9/11 Un esempio? Meetup, nata dalle macerie delle Torri Gemelle per aiutare la gente a organizzarsi in comunità basate su interessi condivisi: oggi ha 44 milioni di membri in 2.000 città di 190 Paesi nel mondo, e fa parte del gruppo AlleyCorp guidato da uno dei veterani delle startup newyorkesi, Kevin Ryan.
Un altro esempio e’ Kickstarter, la piattaforma dove creativi di tutti i settori cercano finanziatori ai loro progetti: e’ nata il 28 aprile 2009, nel mezzo della Grande Recessione. In questi anni l’hanno usata 18 milioni di persone per realizzare i loro “sogni” raccogliendo 5 miliardi di dollari per quasi 200 mila progetti.
Ecco la storia di Meetup come ce l’ha raccontata Scott Heiferman in “Tech and the City”.
Su Silicon Alley, e su tutta New York, doveva ancora abbattersi una tragedia ben più devastante, l’attacco terroristico dell’11 settembre 2001 (9/11). Un male assoluto che, però, gettò anche un seme buono.
La testimonianza è di Scott Heiferman: “Ero sull’autobus, andando dall’East Village a casa mia a NoHo, quella mattina – racconta -. Ho sentito la notizia del primo aereo nelle Torri Gemelle e ho deciso di salire sul tetto del palazzo del mio appartamento. Ci sono arrivato pochi secondi dopo l’impatto del secondo aereo. E poi, ho vissuto quest’esperienza di cui parlo sempre: nelle ore e nei giorni dopo 9/11 ho avuto più conversazioni con un numero maggiore di vicini di casa che in tutti gli anni precedenti a New York. Prima, non avevo un interesse particolare nella comunità locale. Dopo 9/11, mi ha colpito il semplice piacere di parlare con gli altri, di conoscerli. E ho capito quanto la gente sa essere potente quando si organizza. In quei giorni si vedevano innumerevoli veglie e gruppi di aiuto reciproco. Da lì mi è venuta l’idea di Meetup: usare Internet per organizzare i singoli in comunità. Un concetto che allora – ben prima di Facebook e dell’emergere del termine social media – sembrava ridicolo”.Continue reading →
- It’s Made in NYC a new low-cost ventilator
Manufacturing is alive in NYC, it’s smart and helping fight Covid-19.
A new type of low-cost ventilator – priced at $3,300 vs standard ventilators, which typically cost more than $30,000 – has been developed in only one month thanks to two New York based entrepreneurs: Scott Cohen, co-founder of the technology center New Lab, which is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Marcel Botha, founder and CEO of 10XBeta, a “product development firm creating future-shifting products where speed-to-market is paramount,” which is in the New Lab.
The Spiro Wave, a low-cost automatic resuscitator, Made in NYC Early March, Cohen and Botha got a call from an Italian friend warning that a shortage of ventilators was a critical problem in Italy, and that it soon would be in the United States, too, write the New York Times. So Cohen and Botha accepted the challenge to urgently build a ventilator: first, they found a design that was developed in 2010 by the class of Alex Slocum, a renowned mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and got Mr. Slocum and a group of other M.I.T. faculty and students work to upgrade the design to help coronavirus patients. Second, they found the place where to buld the ventilator: a former perfume factory in Long Island City, Queens, that is now home to a high-tech manufacturer, Boyce Technologies: it’s a 100,000-square-foot facility that combines engineering and production with robots, a clean room, and circuitry and software design departments.
Boyce Technologies Pearson Place View Cohen and Botha also convinced the New York City’s Economic Development Corporation – an agency of the city government – to back the project: NYCEDC gave the startup a $100,000 research grant and then a nearly $10 million agreement to buy 3,000 of the basic ventilators.
The Food and Drug Administration has already allowed the use of the Spiro wave under FDA Emergency Use Authorization during the COVID-19 public health emergency.In the meantime New York city’s situation is getting better, hospital admissions are trending down, and intensive-care units seem to have enough ventilators. So the Spiro Wave can be send to other parts of the US in need or even abroad.
You can say that the NYC startup community is able and willing to BUILD, as Marc Andreessen encourages America to do.
Boyce Technologies Continue reading →
- From Brooklyn to the world, Fluidmesh acquired by Cisco
Its worldwide headquarters are in Brooklyn, New York and its heart is in Italy: Fluidmesh – that was founded in 2005 by four Italian engineers, the brothers Umberto and Cosimo Malesci with their friends Torquato Bertani and Andrea Orioli – is being acquired by US tech giant Cisco.
“Our goal was to reliably deliver fiber-like performance via unlicensed wireless spectrum – providing connectivity for mission critical video, voice, and data,” reads Fluidmesh website. “Fluidmesh wireless products are the enablers of outdoor and large-scale applications of the Internet of Things: smart cities, urban video-surveillance, connected vehicles and trains, and industrial automation. Connecting things – it’s what we’re about!”.
Indeed its technology is successfully used by subway systems, ports and even mines. That’s why Cisco is interested in it. “Cisco will use Fluidmesh’s products – explains Liz Centoni, Senior Vice President and General Manager
Cisco Cloud, Compute, & IoT – to extend its industrial wireless leadership position to on-the-move applications and where reliable backhaul is mission critical, including: – Rail and transportation: Provide high-speed and reliable connectivity between the trains and the trackside eliminating potential gaps in data transfer, all without the need to stop even when traveling at high speeds. – Mining operations: Improving worker safety with ultra-reliable communication systems for remote operations of mining equipment, eliminating the need to send workers into a potentially hazardous environment. – Manufacturing and industrial automation: Increased productivity with autonomous moving robots operating on a resilient and low-latency wireless network.”
The acquisition is expected to close in CYQ2 2020, subject to customary closing conditions and required regulatory approvals.
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Fluidmesh has its European headquarters in Milan and a research team is Pisa, the Tuscan city famous for its University System specializing in computer science and technology research.
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- Cuebiq, based in NYC & created by Italians, helps fight coronavirus
Data are so important to understand and fight coronavirus. The NYC based startup Cuebiq is helping thanks to its “COVID-19 Mobility Insights“: “We understand this is a tough time for businesses as well as consumers. As part of our commitment to sharing data for the greater good, Cuebiq is providing free access to mobility and store visitation patterns during the COVID-19 crisis to help businesses as they look to adjust their strategies to meet this new and uncertain market.”
The NYTimes used Cuebiq data to analyze how the stay-at-home orders have or have not halted travel for Americans. “The divide in travel patterns, based on anonymous cellphone data from 15 million people, suggests that Americans in wide swaths of the West, Northeast and Midwest have complied with orders from state and local officials to stay home. Disease experts who reviewed the results say those reductions in travel — to less than a mile a day, on average, from about five miles — may be enough to sharply curb the spread of the coronavirus in those regions, at least for now.”
Cuebiq’s data were used also in Italy by the University of Turin to study Italians’ movements during the coronavirus emergency.
Cuebiq is an offline intelligence and measurement company helping marketers understand the true impact of their cross-channel advertising in the offline world. Four young Italians – CEO Antonio Tomarchio and EVP of Product Ecosystem William Nespoli, both alumni of Politecnico di Milano, with Chief Information Security Officer Walter Ferrara and Chief Innovation Officer Filippo Privitera – founded the company in Milan in 2015. They decided to have their headquarters in New York to develop the business on a global scale, while maintaining R&D in Milan. Right now they are hiring both in the US and in Italy.
From left, courtesy of StartupItalia: Filippo Privitera, William Nespoli, Antonio Tomarchio, and Walter Ferrara Continue reading →
- Amazon.com expands in Staten Island
Did you know that Amazon.com is Staten Island’s largest private sector employer? Since 2017 Jeff Bezos’s company operates a $100 million, 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center that employs a 4,500 full-time workforce. Now Amazon.com has leased a second warehouse in the borough for distribution purposes. The new 450,000-square-foot building will be on Staten Island’s West Shore in Matrix Global Logistics Park, next to the first one.
Last year, Amazon abandoned its plans to locate a second headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City after facing a backlash over a state and city package of up to $3 billion in financial incentives. Although the company pulled the plug on that project, it said it would continue to add jobs in New York City, writes the WSJ.
Seven years ago, when we wrote “Tech and the City”, Staten Island barely existed on the digital map of New York. <<It’s too “uncool,” – we noted. – It has no appeal for the young people who are at the core of the metropolitan startups.>> The Staten Island’s best-known startup was the one founded in 1871 by Antonio Meucci, the Italian inventor of the telephone: it was a failure! We recommended a visit to Meucci’s museum to understand that even the most brilliant idea is useless unless it can find the capital to finance it.
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- “People 4 Growth”: da New York una spinta all’Italia
Dalle startup italiane che hanno partecipato al Global startup program – e in particolare da quelle che hanno fatto il training a New York e intendono svilupparsi in America – e’ nata l’associazione “People 4 Growth“. Lo racconta Glauco Maggi su Libero: “l’obiettivo e’ ambizioso e punta a creare un circuito operativo organico che colleghi le diverse realtà di un eco-sistema in formazione: le startup, appunto, e con loro: studi legali, aziende di marketing e promozione, compagnie assicurative, banche, e soprattuto i venture capitalist e gli angel investor che procurano il capitale nelle diverse fasi di sviluppo di un’idea imprenditoriale”.
Il console generale a New York Francesco Genuardi si complimenta con le startup italiane “laureate” alla fine del Global startup program, 30 settembre 2019 Il Global startup program l’aveva lanciato alla fine dello scorso novembre a New York l’allora sottosegretario allo Sviluppo economico nel Governo Conte, Michele Geraci. In soli 5 mesi – un miracolo per la burocrazia italiana – il programma era partito lo scorso maggio e si e’ concluso il 4 ottobre, dopo tre mesi di training delle startup selezionate, in acceleratori di parecchi Paesi, gli Usa il più importante (33 startup sono finite qui, fra NYC, Chicago, L.A. e San Francisco).
Il governo italiano ha investito parecchio: circa 50 mila dollari – fra il costo della partecipazione all’acceleratore ERA e vitto/alloggio/voli aerei – per ognuna delle sette qui a NYC. Che presentando i loro pitch all’Ice di NYC, il 30 settembre, si sono dette ultra soddisfatte. Diverse fra loro stanno aprendo un business qui in America – come Doralia, Caracol, Criptalia, Gardenstuff – con buone prospettive di sviluppo (non sono startup ai primissimi passi, molte sono già operative in Italia e i loro fondatori sono serial entrepreneurs).Ovviamente non in tutte le città dove sono state spedite le startup le cose sono andate bene. Pare per esempio che quelle mandate in Cina, a Shangai, non hanno imparato niente…
Ma lo sforzo del governo di allora credo fosse nella giusta direzione: che cosa farà il nuovo governo? Ripete il programma? Geraci era in quota Lega e ora non e’ più sottosegretario; e l’Ice, che era sotto il ministero dello Sviluppo economico, e’ passato al ministero degli Esteri sotto Di Maio. Speriamo davvero che il cambio dei colori nel governo da giallo-verde a giallo-rosso non elimini il Global startup program. Mentre altre iniziative sembrano già in panne a causa dei cambiamenti nei palazzi del potere, come racconta Riccardo Luna su La Repubblica: “il nuovo Tech Hub italico in Silicon Valley, annunciato nel febbraio del 2018 come joint venture fra Cassa Depositi e Prestiti e Talent Garden, è ancora al palo, nel senso che sembra che sia sempre sul punto di essere sbloccato ma quel punto slitta ogni giorno. Così come il Fondo Nazionale Innovazione da un miliardo, la prima seria iniziativa per supportare la crescita delle startup. Previsto per legge dal dicembre scorso, presentato il 4 marzo, è in attesa che Cassa Depositi e Prestiti e il Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico ne scelgano i vertici. Ad agosto sembrava tutto fatto, ma il cambio di governo ha fatto saltare accordo e se ne riparla a fine ottobre”.
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- 7 Italian startups graduated in NYC with full marks
Congrats to the Italian startups Avatr, Caracol, Criptalia, Cydera, Doralia , GardenStuff concluding 3 month training at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator led by Murat Aktihanoglu and Iynna Halilou with #GlobalStartupProgram launched by Michele Geraci at Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico, and managed in NYC by ITAtradeagency.
They are ready to grow business in America with support by Consulate General of Italy in New York and Italian Embassy in Washington, DC.
The Italian Consul General Francesco Genuardi addressing the Italian startups Here you are their pitches
Criptalia, crowdlending with blockchain Avatr, telemedicine AI platform GardenStuff, gardening IOT system Cydera, health care tech device Caracol, 3D printing and robotic manufacturing Doralia, Italian jewelry ecommerce Continue reading →
- Will NYC become a hub for the biotech industry?
“State and city officials, along with business leaders, have for years pushed to take advantage of the expertise at hospitals and universities in the area and diversify the local economy with biotech.”, write the Wall Street Journal today. “Yet efforts have faced barriers including scarce, costly real estate and a laboratory’s specialized ventilation and other needs, as well as a smaller pool of health-care venture investors compared with Boston and San Francisco.”
But yesterday health-care investment firm Deerfield Management Co. announced a move that could indeed help New York become a hub for the biotech industry. Deerfield “is investing $635 million to create a transformative life sciences campus in New York City, designed to integrate the capabilities of innovators from academia, government, industry and the not-for-profit sectors to tackle unmet needs in healthcare. Deerfield additionally announced that it intends to commit more than $2 billion in research and seed funding by 2030 to develop much-needed new and innovative medicines and treatment solutions.”
Deerfield has acquired the 345 Park Avenue South property (more than 300,000 square feet) that will become a “NYCLifeSci campus”.
345 Park Avenue South The building construction and programming is being backed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Industrial Development Agency. It is expected to be in move-in ready condition for Deerfield and other innovators in healthcare by early 2021.
Deerfield, which manages nearly $10 billion, said it is aiming to repeat the success of the Alexandria Center for Life Science, among the first projects to bring drug-company laboratory research to New York City.
“Yet challenges remain for New York,” points out the WSJ: “San Francisco and Boston-area companies received more than two-thirds of life-science venture capital in 2017, and more than twice the number of life-science doctorates are earned annually in the Boston area than in New York, according to research by real-estate firm JLL.”
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- L’Erasmus delle startup promosso a New York
Le startup italiane crescono a NewYork. Migliora la loro qualità: idee, business plan, atteggiamento. Lo dimostra l’esperienza delle sette startup che da luglio si stanno “allenando” all’ERA, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator di New York. Partecipano al Global Startup Program, creato mesi fa dal Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico italiano e dall’agenzia Italtrade: il sottosegretario Michele Geraci, presentandolo qui a New York, l’aveva chiamato l’ “Erasmus delle startup”. E stanno facendo fare “bella figura” all’Italia. Lo si e’ visto alla loro presentazione, il 17 settembre al Consolato italiano.
Le loro idee sono davvero innovative e chi ci lavora sta assorbendo come spugne gli insegnamenti che offre la tech community newyorkese, ha detto Iynna Halilou, la Global Program Manager di ERA che li sta seguendo e che ha curato programmi simili con molti altri Paesi, quindi può fare confronti. “Gli italiani sono particolarmente brillanti e creativi”, ha sottolineato.
“Il problema delle startup italiane e’ che non pensano abbastanza in grande – ha osservato Jeffrey Libshutz, Co-Vice Chairman della telecom italiana Linkem e suo investitore con la società di private equity ArmaVir -. Sono abituate al mercato italiano, scarso di fondi di venture capital. Ma quando vengono qui devono puntare in alto: gli investitori americani sono disposti a rischiare importanti cifre se credono nelle potenzialità di un’idea di business”.
L’ecosistema delle startup tecnologiche di New York e l’intera città sono molto accoglienti, ha raccontato Valentina Corbetta, italiana venuta a NYC nel 2014 e ora affermata imprenditrice digitale con la sua agenzia di comunicazione C.R.E.W. Collective, nonché mentore di altri giovani con la piattaforma www.micromentor.org/business-mentor-ny . “L’ambiente e’ cosi’ eccitante e pieno di stimoli che un mio problema all’inizio era la paura di perdermi gli eventi importanti”, ha detto Valentina.
Le sette startup sono: Avatr (intelligenza artificiale), Caracol (stampa 3D e robotica), Criptalia (investimento e crowdlending con blockchain), Cydera (assistenza sanitaria), Doralia (e-commerce di gioielli), Plus Biomedicals (apparecchi sanitari) e GardenStuff (giardinaggio con IOT, Internet of Things).
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