NYC Entrepreneurial Scene: Culture
Lots of people spend time wasting oxygen when debating between Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley. I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter whether you’re here in the streets of NY reading Silicon Alley Insider or out in Menlo Park reading Valleywag; what matters at the end of the day is execution and entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs tend to get wrapped up in the product/service/business model which is extremely important, but don’t take time to define a culture for their business or participate in the larger culture which is the ecosystem that surrounds New York and the boroughs. Culture is similar to a financial analysis in a way… you can take a top down or bottoms up approach.
Top down: Defined clearly and with a strong fist from upper management or the original founding team. For more established companies like Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, American Express, this comes from years of legacy and history.
Bottoms up: No real definition of what the corporate culture is, everyone does their own thing, and it tends to sometimes be sloppy (not necessarily in dress, but overall).
They do not have to be mutually exclusive either. You can have a hybrid approach which could make total sense.
Anyway, the point to this posting is that sometimes, you need to remove yourself from your startup or company and participate in the larger “cultural” scene. Charlie (Path 101), Nate (Bricabox), Michael (Worth1000), Ali (Google), Brian (SportsVite), and others have teamed up to play in the ZogSports Dodgeball league. You may not realize that dodgeball is a sport, but apparently, there are 105 teams signed up to play in the league which represents over 1,000 NYC inhabitants. Not bad, eh? Our team is effectively called Dodgeball 2.0, which is probably the geakiest name around, but we’re having a terrific time. My other half blogged about our game from last night… her first dodgeball experience in a long time.
The scene for entrepreneurs here in NYC is picking up. The NY Tech Meetups are packed, the Web 2.0 Meetups are attracting many folks, I’m getting quite a few invites for digital media happy-hours, and so on. It’s one thing to set a company culture, but also, be part of the larger picture. Lets keep contributing to the industry culture as we’re in the early stages of shaping it. We can do a lot here for New York.