This blog celebrates New York’s entrepreneurial community. It is also a companion piece to our book, Tech and the City, being published in the US and Europe in March/April 2013.
Having lived in New York for many years and having participated in the first wave of NY startups, we both felt that a book discussing the origins and the development of the NY tech community (a young but powerful one!) was timely. New York’s ecosystem is not as developed or established as the ones of Silicon Valley and Boston, but New York is special: it draws from the diversity of its population and industries, delivering a special mix of business, finance, arts, media, design, advertising, fashion and, yes, technology.
The New York tech community is quintessential New York, bringing together people with different backgrounds and experiences, very different from what you can find in Boston or San Francisco, in a city that’s as resilient as they come, where entrepreneurs, investors and the City of New York itself have come together to break down barriers and help one another.
The purpose of this blog is to continue sharing stories, ideas, interviews, pictures and videos of the events we attend and the people we meet, if they are relevant and complementary to the New York entrepreneurial story.
This site is also meant to be a source of information and guide for the entrepreneurs who want to move to this City and need help starting up. While it will never be complete, we hope it will be a good starting point for many.
Alessandro & Maria Teresa
Maria Teresa Cometto is an Italian journalist with more than 25 years in the media industry. Since 2000 she has been based in New York, covering business, financial markets and high-tech, and writing for some of the most important Italian papers such as Corriere della Sera, which is the daily with the largest circulation in Italy, and Il Mondo, the most authoritative Italian business magazine. She is well known for her articles on the US technology industry and for her many interviews with leading economists, including 14 Nobel Laureates. Maria is also the author of several books, among which Figli & Soldi (“Kids & Money”, 2008). Twitter: @mtcometto
Alessandro Piol is a New York-based venture capitalist and angel investor with over 30 years of experience in the technology industry. Alessandro is a Partner and co-founder of Vedanta Capital. Previously he was a General Partner of Invesco Private Capital where he headed the technology practice. Prior to joining Invesco, Alessandro spent 10 years with AT&T where he co-founded AT&T Ventures, the venture capital arm of AT&T where he focused on early-stage new media investments, as well as Pixel Machines, an AT&T-backed startup in the graphics super-computing business. Alessandro is President of the New York chapter of TiE, a global organization fostering entrepreneurship; he serves on the Entrepreneurial Advisory Board and the Board of Visitors of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering at Columbia University; and he is a mentor, advisor or board member of various private companies. He received an BS and MS in Computer Science from Columbia University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Twitter: @ilmago
