If there is a single word I could try and find to describe New York: it'd be "alive".
I spent this holiday season in New York City with my family. It's the
first time in years that I haven't been in Costa Rica for the holidays. It also
happens that I first lived in New York city exactly. 10 years ago,
So I want to tell you a few stories from that summer, because that summer
would define me as a person. It would translate into the death of my first startup,
but it would also plant the seeds for what eventually Slidebean would become.
And it is probably the reason why I'm sitting here talking to this camera. And beyond that
in the last few months, we've seen this wave of entrepreneurs and VCs moving into the city.
I also spent some time with a few venture back companies to try and understand why they want to be here,
not just us and why venture funds seem to be following sue. The center of so much
happens in New York. That's very special. Like I've lived in other cities and major
cities in the US and I think if it's the first city you begin in the bar is
so high. Now you're just looking for something different, but nothing can
compare the center of the universe is here. New York, the new place to be for startups.
In 2012, my friend, Philip and I had come up with this mobile game idea. So,
so we decided to put that on Kickstarter and by this very strange. This reporter came across
the project. So I wasn't, I wasn't Costa Rica at the time kind of got this weird phone call
and it was Josh giving me a call to tell me that he had written an article about our game.
Now get this. I was so far so disconnected. So unaware of the startup world that he had
to spell the website for me. So I could find the article and the website was, was TechCrunch.
In a matter of hours. We hit our Kickstarter goal and we suddenly were bombarded by investors
asking us what the size of the round was, what the terms for the round were for this startup.
I didn't know that what we were building was a startup. So that's how it landed here.
We decided to stay at the NYU summer housing, which is NYU university, which is buildings all
over the city of these buildings are empty during the summer. Cause old students are on vacation.
So they rent those apartments out those bedrooms out. If you want to stay there,
we moved across the street from Washington square park,
but the point is, this is one of the fanciest most expensive areas in town.
Even to this day, I could not afford to live here. So the contrast was,
was moving from Costa Rica. First I'm living in New York and I just came and lived here.
I remember that summer, we, we found this meetup group
to watch the transit of Venus, which is this thing that happens once every a hundred years.
We figured that we wanted to just to be a part of it. And we found
a meetup with not dozens, thousands of people who got together to sort of watch this event.
Those, you can find those sorts of things in the city. You're the best in the culinary arts
is here. And of course you can find a tribe of entrepreneurs.
We originally moved to the city to be part of this. Startup accelerator program called DreamIt.
DreamIt gave us $20,000 in cash and they give us the advice of their managing partners.
And they gave us an office which was there. But the point is accelerators are a bridge
to a network, especially if you're from outside of town or in our case,
complete foreigners through the start of. But even if you're not in an accelerator,
there's still a huge meetup scene pre and hopefully soon post COVID.
You can find meetups almost every night with free beer and free pizza and a network which were
completely necessary for us to survive in how cash strapped we were back in 2012,
there's this massive tribe of entrepreneurs and hustlers, engineers... getting together and
building things and those connections happen and they turn into real.
I basically went and got a desk at the first WeWork and they have a Facebook group and I go,
and I write a post, Hey, I'm looking for a backend developer, blah, blah, blah, blah. I hit enter.
I wait about 20, 30 seconds and somebody pops over the screen and he goes, "are you Pete?"
Nobody knows this story yet. We spent all summer pitching investors
and we were absolutely sure that we were going to raise money.
So when, when summer ended, I figured that I had to stay for a few extra weeks
to kind of close these deals. The school year was starting. So we got kicked out of our dorm.
And I had to find a new place to stay. And we were funding everything at this point
with my credit card, not with, not with cash, we run out of cash again, it's just expensive
housing, all the services and the SaaS stuff that we were paying that was all on my credit card.
What are the biggest mistakes we made through that process,
but I had to find a new place to stay and I couldn't find anything.
So I crashed the office for two weeks. Nobody who was my little secret. So I would stay. Up
until 11 or 12 or everybody left. And after everybody left, I had my shit in the closet.
I would go get my pillow and a blanket and it was just crashed the couch early morning,
6:00 AM. I'd wake up. And I just had, I paid the subscription membership to a nearby gym.
So I would go do a little routine, take a shower, and then get back to the office fresh
For a new day at work. Uh, this was for like two weeks.
Cash to pay rent or many of our apartment, even at that super
broke, I don't have any money time. Uh, I still didn't want to leave.
In Latin America, culturally, it's accepted to live with your parents until you're 25. That's
just normal. So your gen X parents are likely to have an extra bedroom,
so where you can set up an office and run, it started from there. And this causes,
this phenomenon started zombies or started cockroaches, which are companies that should be.
That are not really moving anywhere, but that are still alive because you can go into cockroach mode
and survive and you can't do that in New York. You have a few months to make it or break it.
And if you want to stay in the city, you need to quit and find a job and make money. Otherwise.
The city will run you over the energy in New York is unlike any other city because every
person you look at is going, you assume, at least going to do something important.
And I think that it's a being around an energy like that is, uh,
really plays into my competitive kind of background and, and, uh, nature.
Would you take a job in San Francisco or even the bay area? Would you, would you move. No.
70 to 80% of venture capital firms in the U S are in the west coast.
And yes, VCs love California because the bay area has this full on concentration of
tech talent. There's a network effect. There's the legislation. We, we made a whole video about that,
but the bay area is not without its problems and it's not just the crazy. So the startup,
the hustle, the culture in the bay area translates sometimes into this toxic work culture and these
crazy hours, and people just sorry, living and breathing their companies all day.
And so startups and firms have looked to the east
and they figured that New York also has this combination of things that makes it a
great, fantastic hub for startups. By September 2021, startups in New York city
had seen investments of $39 billion. And that number shatters the previous record by 154%.
Now the unicorn count this year is at 56. So it is kind of happening
finally. Because so many factors make New York a great place for startups. Now,
some of this stuff is natural. I guess it inherently happens
because of the type of city that New York is. But some of that is intentional and very deliberate.
After the 2008 financial crisis, this small group of analysts in the Bloomberg administration,
they started this a very aggressive effort to promote policies that focused on
technology that would end up paying off years into the future. I.e, today.
We announced some steps were taken to help connect New York.
To tech jobs and to help the city's booming digital sector growth. And we from further
now, 10 years later, venture capital loves many things about New York,
but one of them for example, is FinTech and. Perfectly compliments, the finance,
the media, the consulting companies that have been around New York city for decades so much.
So that, for example, traditional finance jobs have declined in New York in the
past couple of years and local technology employment has increased. Not only that,
but FinTech jobs are also on the rise. Another key factor is how much of a hub
New York is you have direct flights from almost anywhere in the world.
The time zone is more compatible with Europe than the west coast. And honestly, you just can't find
that mix of variables that easy. So NY killed my first company.
But at the same time, it gave me the experience. It opened my mind.
To start this one and as much as closing down and running out of money hurt,
and it was super painful as much as paying that credit card debt took me years.
I would not be here if it wasn't for that summer10 years ago,
this holiday trip was this whole month with my family. And I'm honestly tired.
I need a few weeks of the Costa Rican pace, but this balance of two cities and two environments
I believe can be perfect for a startup. I truly envy the people who grew up here.
Imagine growing up with this, this around you growing up at this pace,
I think it can be a critical move for any startup to spend some time here. And
you don't want to leave everything you got. You don't want to finance things
with your credit cards, but consider what the city can do for your company.
Thanks all for watching guys. Remember it's like being, we help startups pitch
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