Last week, Anand Chopra-McGowan (Business Development for General Assembly) gave a short presentation about General Assembly, start-up needs in general, and the start-up community in New York City specifically. This blog post gives some of the snippets of information that I found useful or interesting.
General Assembly started as a place where start-ups could meet up to share ideas and support each other as a co-working site. Now they have added training courses which seems to be the bulk of their business now. They have locations in the UK and other US cities and will be opening a new location in Brooklyn soon.
The US has been a leader in entrepreneurial start-ups for many, many years. One of the biggest reasons is that in the US, it is OK to fail. If your start-up fails, you have still learned many skills and lessons from it that can be applied to another company.
Each city with a start-up community seems to have its own specialties. For example, Boston mainly has enterprise software and biotech start-ups, and New York City has start-ups that apply interesting ideas to legacy industries. For example in New York City, Warby Parker makes inexpensive eyewear that can be easily ordered online and makes returns easy as well so you can try out many pairs at once. Similarly, Art.sy has changed how art is purchased, and ZocDoc has changed how doctors’ appointments are made. All of these industries (eyewear, art, and medicine) have been around a long time, but these start-up companies have added different spins to them. Given this type of start-up that is common in New York City, they generally do not require excessively large amounts of capital to be successful. Many times only $500,000 to $1,000,000 is needed to support the business for quite a while, and there is lots of investor money available in New York City.
As the start-up team proceeds to develop its service or product of the business, it will inevitably change; therefore, start-up investors are not as interested in the product or service idea as they are in the team involved in the start-up. They want to know the team members, their experiences, and how they work together. Since start-ups are generally just a handful of people, cultural fit is critical to success, so investors are most concerned about how the team members work together.
Some of the many suggestions given to those wanting to start-up a business:
1) Be willing to learn new skills and be humble. Most start-ups are doing things that haven’t been done before. And if your company hits big quickly, you still have lots to learn to manage its quick growth appropriately. Consider this all a learning experience.
2) Make sure and give back to the community. As you meet with people to get advice, information, or funding, remember to give back to the community with your advice, information, and funding.
3) Remember that your idea is 1% idea and 99% effort. Don’t use non-disclosure agreements to discuss your idea with others. First of all, they have their own ideas that they are working on and don’t want yours. Second, an idea is nothing without effort, so just the idea itself is not worth much. Third, it puts ups an immediate wall to trust and discussion. There are times when NDAs are needed, but most of the time they hinder the process rather than help.
4) Get involved and go to events. Many things happen just by showing up!
5) Don’t forget about the government. They are critical to your success so get involved, get to know your representatives, and keep informed on legislation.
Anand ended the talk with suggested newsletters to subscribe to (Gary’s Guide and Charlie O’Donnell’s This Is Going To Be Big…) and several blog sites to read. For a list of internet start-ups in New York City, check out NYC Tech Meetup’s Made in New York section.
