Except to see more of this. (Photo: Guest of a Guest)

It's never too early to start speculating about the next election cycle. So we're calling it, less than a month into the new year: 2013 will be New York tech’s debut as a political force.

Tech moguls and politicians have always been willing bedfellows, of course. Last year, technophiles in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area outpaced "Hollywood celebrities and Wall Street moguls" in funding President Obama's reelection campaign, according to a report from MapLight.com. On the other side of the aisle--like far, far to the right--Facebook investor Peter Thiel "almost single-handedly" funded Ron Paul's super PAC. After his fringe candidate dropped out of the race, Mr. Thiel donated $1 million to Club for Growth Action, a Tea Party super PAC.

Locally, however, New York's tech set has been able to rely on the Bloomberg administration asking for their two cents on what might benefit the community. Cornell-Technion's applied sciences campus and the software engineering high school, for example, were responses to founders and investors bemoaning the talent crunch for engineers.

The dialogue was mutually beneficial. After Wall Street's collapse, New York City Economic Development Corporation president Seth Pinsky kicked off a number of initiatives, like funding General Assembly's urban campus and launching app competitions, in the hopes that a robust startup sector would mitigate losses in the financial industry.

But with the countdown clock ticking on Mr. Bloomberg's third term and the success of defeating SOPA/PIPA, New York's techies are taking a more proactive role in making sure City Hall is invested in their success.

This week, the New York Tech Meetup announced plans to host a series of candidate forums in advance of upcoming citywide elections. Leaders of the 30,000-member group are also soliciting input on seven proposals under the banner “Help Us Make NYC the Best City for Tech in the World!" The slate includes creating a deputy mayor for technology innovation and providing New Yorkers with the fastest broadband at the lowest possible price.

Local entrepreneurs and investors are also voting with their wallet, a pattern the Wall Street Journal says is "likely to continue as the campaign season heats up":

Kevin Ryan, chief executive of online luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, contributed $1,000 to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Democrat expected to vie for mayor, and gave the same amount to state Sen. Daniel Squadron and Reshma Saujani, two Democrats preparing to run for public advocate. Andrew Rasiej, chairman of New York Tech Meetup, gave $100 to mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio. Fred Wilson, of Manhattan-based Union Square Ventures, has contributed the maximum of $4,950 to Mr. Squadron and Ms. Saujani.

As Crain's later reported, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss--who have been hosting political fundraisers at the Hollywood mansion financed by their Facebook settlement--each donated $4,950 to Mr. Squadron's campaign as well.

In fact, the race for public advocate between Ms. Saujani, Mr. Squadron, and Letitia James--all Democrats--is an early sign of the tech sector's eagerness to flex its newfound political clout. Mr. Squadron has been involved in tech initiatives like successfully advocating for an applied sciences campus in Brooklyn. But Ms. Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer, has cultivated more visible ties to the tech world.

Last year, she founded the very well-regarded non-profit Girls Who Code, which secured backing from Twitter, eBay and Google to educate and encourage teenage girls toward careers in technology and engineering. At private fundraising events, Ms. Saujani has advocated for bringing the same energy and job opportunities in the Flatiron's tech enclave to the outer-boroughs. She recruited Uber to sponsor transportation for volunteers to Far Rockaway after Hurricane Sandy. Her husband, Nihal Mehta, is the founder of the successful advertising startup LocalResponse.

Indeed, while The Village Voice estimated that 40 percent of donations for her 2010 Congressional campaign came from Wall Street big wigs--in addition to high-profile support from Jack Dorsey, Chris Hughes, and Randi Zuckerberg--Ms. Saujani's campaign for public advocate has greatly benefitted from advocates in New York tech, beyond just the Fred Wilsons and Kevin Ryans. No surprise considering she was the first candidate, back in 2010, to accept donations using Square.

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, Ms. Saujani has raised $759,711 to Mr. Squadron's $820,008. But Ms. Saujani got a last-minute boost from techies, using the mediums they love best: 150 of her donations were made in the final hours via Twitter and Facebook. Mr. Mehta galvanized last minute social media efforts while he was at Summit Series' mountain in Utah. Gary Vaynerchuk, Adam Braun from Pencils of Promise and Scooter Braun Project CMO Brad Haugen, who has nearly 60,000 Twitter followers, tweeted out their donations, encouraging others to join.

That's in addition to support and fundraising efforts from Gotham Gal and angel investor Joanne Wilson, who donated $4950, as well as Google's community affairs manager Alex Abelin. Last Spring, Gilt Group's Alexis Maybank also headlined an event for her campaign.

"I think with a new mayor there's an awareness in the tech industry that things could change in the relationships between city government and the community--whether it's getting RFPs for incubators or partnering on the academies," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat. It was a morning after the Presidential Inauguration and Ms. Saujani, a former bundler for President Obama, had been in D.C. for the inaugural ball, followed by a party hosted by Electronic Arts. "The change presents a real opportunity for people in the tech sector to be active in the 2013 elections, like we're seeing with New York Tech Meetup and with supporters of my Public Advocate campaign," she continued. "So there's a lot of excitement too."

The startup sector likes to present itself as a positive force for world change. But with more political lobbying, is there a danger, we asked Ms. Saujani, of the tech sphere seeming more like a special interest? "The conversation about innovation in New York City is not just happening in the tech community in Manhattan--it's happening in all five boroughs. Elected officials citywide are interested in bringing more 21st century jobs to their communities, and that means partnering with tech."

Those divergent conversations are part of the reason tech voters are unlikely to present a unified bloc. As Anil Dash told the Journal: "It's venture capitalists and 23-year-old graphic designers in Bushwick. It's labor and management. It's not traditional allies."

The cause for celebration was two-fold. The first was showing off demos from its inaugural class of 20 girls, who represented all five boroughs and some disarmingly ambitious ideas. (We're still scratching our head at Cora Frederick's plan to use data mining and machine learning to classify tumors.) The second was to announce an audacious new goal: to train one million girls in computer science by 2020, starting with a national expansion outside New York City next year.

The nonprofit organization, founded by former deputy public advocate Reshma Saujani and run by former Jumo managing director Kristen Titus, offers teenage girls an eight-week, full-time education in robotics, web design, and mobile development, with mentorship from engineers and executives at Twitter, Google, ZocDoc, Gilt Groupe, and more. In fact, Ms. Saujani noted last night, CEO Dick Costolo volunteered Twitter's first philanthropic donation to Girls Who Code, although she politely declined to specify the dollar amount.

On stage, Ms. Saujani pointed out that of the 8 million girls in high school right now, only 3,769 took the AP Computer Science exam. What's more, only 0.3 percent of female high school students decide to major or minor in computer science. But after this summer's session concluded, all 20 girls committed to studying computer science--a small, but integral step toward filling the 1.4 million tech jobs that expected to open up by the year 2020. "That pipeline begins in high school," she told the crowd gathered between the blank screens and buzzing monitors that make-up the floor of the stock exchange after hours.

Girls Who Code sponsors Jack Dorsey and Chris Hughes, who also supported Ms. Saujani's 2010 bid for a Congressional seat, weren't able to make it to the party. But plenty of founders and technologists flocked to the feel-good event, including Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and General Assembly cofounder Matthew Brimer, just in from a conference in Dublin (one of the few cities without its own GA, judging by the startup's rapid expansion). Also in attendance were Foursquare's lead iPhone engineer Anoop Ranganath, Raptor Ventures VC William Peng, former ICM prodigy Kate Lee, New York City's chief digital officer Rachel Haot, Ms. Saujani's husband and LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta, and Alex Taub, head of biz dev at Dwolla.

On stage, Twitter engineer Sara Haider and Twitter program manager Olivia Watkins, who closely mentored the girls, praised the program's many virtues. But nowhere was the upside more evident than in a speech from 15-year-old Julia Geist from Brooklyn, who recounted her transformation from the shy kid who liked physics into what Ms. Saujani called a "change agent" for her family of five siblings.

"I learned about Girls Who Code from my librarian, who noticed that I spent all of my days and much of my lunch time on the computer at the library," Ms. Geist told the beaming crowd. "I quickly learned everything from how to build mobile apps to becoming a master of user experience to building video games in Javascript." Ms. Geist is currently working on three separate freelance web development projects and teaching her dad how to code. "He is now working to become an IT professional to replace his substitute custodian job. My sisters are next on the list. Some say I’m a natural coder, but I say I’m lucky to have been a part of Girls Who Code."

For anyone inspired to donate after hearing Ms. Geist, or other equally as moving teenage technologists, there were Square devices on hand to swipe donations right from the NYSE.

Even without a horde of face-palming stock traders, the floor of the exchange is still an intoxicating milieu. Proximity to all those literal levers to the public markets were irresistible--and stern instructions from the guard not to push any elevator buttons didn't help. Mr. Newmark himself seemed tempted toward a little mischief, although he cautioned that anything untoward should only be performed with the benefit of a mask. "Did you see the Batman movie?" he explained, covering his mouth like the villainous Bain. Mr. Newmark was in the midst of this twice or thrice annual trips to New York. "I tend to stay near the K-Mart downtown and that’s where I shop," he said, admitting to a little anxiety about leaving his customer service post. "I’ve been offline for, what, two hours now? People will be nervous."

Luckily, we faired better than TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis, who got kicked out the NYSE for an offhand joke involving spilled liquids and Facebook stock manipulation.

The juxtaposition of tech and Wall Street was as symbiotic as we've ever seen it. A Credit Suisse exec eagerly passed Ms. Saujani his congratulations and business card. While waiting in the lobby, we chatted up a Goldman analyst (who has her own startup, natch). Surely, the release of Greg Smith's tell-all must be a startup recruiter's dream? Not so much, she said with a shrug, describing life inside the House of Lloyd yesterday as "pretty normal."

Towards the end of the presentations, Ms. Saujani pulled an Oprah, distributing presents from President Barack Obama to all the girls who joined her on stage. "We have signed letters for each of you! It’s better than One Direction and Justin Bieber, right? I think so too!" she said with pride. "I dunno, Bieber would've been good?" a fellow audience member quipped next to us. "Pandemonium in the stock exchange!"

Thanks to the startup scene's growth spurt, New York City has not been short on well-intentioned initiatives to right the ratio and close the gap for tech talent. Girls Who Code seems to get many of the basics right: The organization reaches out underserved students, who defy the pattern-recognition that plagues the tech industry and its financiers. It also addresses the problem early, and offers sustained training with a practical bent toward employment.

"I wish I had majored in computer science," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat in a trading booth after the speeches. "I wish I could go home and build a mobile app on immigration and undocumented students--build an app on 'Stop and Frisk.' But I’m also taking lessons from the girls and I don’t think it’s too late for me to learn how to code either." Girls Who Code, she said, is an example of the type of initiatives she wants to spearhead in her campaign to become Public Advocate in 2013. "I was talking at some of the community colleges, like if you can teach 15-year-old girls how to code, you can teach adults how to code. And there are so many jobs that are open," she said, noting the 50,000 new jobs added in mobile development.

During the program, Ms. Saujani added, visits to Gilt Groupe and ZocDoc piqued the girls' interest. "I think a lot of them thought initally, I want to be a doctor and didn’t realize the connection between healthcare and technology, and medicine and technology."

On our way out, we asked Ms. Guest, who received her first job offer after the Girls Who Code graduation at Google's Chelsea outpost, where she'd like to work. While Google, Gilt Groupe, and Twitter feel "like a second home," she said, "My dream is to start my own company." Oh man, just wait 'til Peter Thiel hears about her!

The 20 Girls Who Code participants working out of AppNexus's Flatiron office (Photo: girlswhocode.tumblr.com)

“Maliyah, step away from the mouse!” called Ashley Gavin, a software engineer at the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and instructor at the Girls Who Code summer program. Maliyah Greene, the recipient of Ms. Gavin's reprimand, reluctantly tore herself away from Photoshop to come and talk to Betabeat. We were sitting in AppNexus’s Flatiron office, watching her fellow Girls Who Code students work on virtually tagging brick walls with their names. “It’s not as hard as I thought it would be,” Ms. Greene smiled.

She is one of 20 high school girls who gave up summer vacation to learn about app development, robotics, web design and other topics at Girls Who Code, a summer computer-engineering program for girls.

Though this is its first summer in existence, Girls Who Code already boasts executives from Gilt Groupe, Twitter and General Electric on its board and has been working with AppNexus and other New York startups throughout the summer.

Girls Who Code isn't the only high-profile effort to make coding more female-friendly. Other programs have also received financial backing from fellow startups. Earlier this year, New York City-based Hacker School, a freeform three-month coding workshop for adults, announced a partnership with Etsy, Yammer and 37Signals that would provide 18 grants to women who wanted to attend the program. Girl Develop It, a group that arranges coding workshops for women around the country, has also hosted meet-ups at the offices of Etsy, Twitter and Google. With few women pursuing programming careers, this move is an act of survival for many companies, who hope to increase the size of the talent pool--and maybe even grow revenue by leveraging an XX-perspective on innovation.

Indeed, labor conditions have made tech executives, in a word, desperate. As the Girls Who Code website points out, projections suggest that by 2018, there will only be enough computer science graduates in the U.S. to fill 29 percent of related job openings. Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s director of corporate development, told The New York Times that each engineer was worth $500,000 up to $1 million. And in an industry where the majority of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Etsy users are women, a female programmer could help companies to develop features that better fit that demographic's needs.

One of Hacker School’s backers, 37Signals, does not currently have any female programmers on staff. Hardly uncommon in the business world, where only 18 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women. As we've noted, the gender gap among the top venture capital firms is even more abysmal.

“It’s self-serving in that sense: showing women that they can be successful ... means that we’re going to have many, many more really qualified engineers down the road,” said AppNexus co-founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley, adding that some female workers in the office were even inspired by the Girls Who Code students to learn more about computer programming. “It’s really just shown our employees, if a bunch of young women can learn to code, you can too. It’s really empowering.”

Of course, this all hinges on whether the students and women who enroll in these programs will choose to pursue a career in computer-related fields. While Ms. Greene is only a sophomore in high school, she said would like to look into studying graphic design in the future, and another student, Diana Navarro, said she is considering majoring in computer science. However, other Girls Who Code members are not so sure.

“I don’t know. I’m not very good at it currently,” said Lucie Pierre-Louis, a rising junior. Maria Gonzalez, a rising senior looking to go to University of Chicago, said she really wants to study business but might consider a minor in computer science.

“It seems like the number of the girls have family pressures not to remain in engineering and sciences,” said Alexis Maybank, the founder and CSO of Gilt Groupe and a board member of Girls Who Code. When they visited the Gilt offices, many of the Girls Who Code students asked Gilt Groupe's female engineering interns: “What do your parents think about it?”

Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the programming language PHP who now works at Etsy, visiting Hacker School (Photo: twitter.com)

If Hacker School's previous co-ed classes are any indication, the program could directly benefit Silicon Alley's startups. Five out of the six original Hacker School students later found a job in programming, and other graduates work at companies such as OkCupid, Betaworks and Tumblr. Startups including Bit.ly, Quora and Pinterest also pay Hacker School to recruit talent to their business.

“I just hope that by helping we can increase the possibility that there will be some great female programmers out there who we might be happy to consider for jobs if they were to apply,” said 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried.

Other companies are motivated to fund these type of programs as a way to balance the scales.

“I think Etsy genuinely supports the cause of what we're doing in terms of a new type of programming education and one that's much more inclusive of women. They were very clear that they would be happy and see this as a success even if they didn't hire any graduates,” said Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock, a Hacker School cofounder.

Despite the increased support from the tech community, Sara Chipps, the co-founder of Girl Develop It, noted that this new breed of non-profit female-oriented educational programs sometimes has a more difficult time getting funded than their less gender-specific counterparts. She declined to comment on whether this was the case with Girl Develop It, but she did say similar initiatives have gotten stuck in the funding phase.

Ms. Chipps said she thinks this problem arises because “organizations that usually donate to nonprofits really don't have an understanding of what we're doing because it really hasn't been done before.”

She pointed to the difficulty Black Girls Code, a program that aims to educate female minority students in programming, faced when trying to raise $18,500 through IndieGoGo. While more than 400 individuals contributed to the campaign, the program only received about five donations over $150. Within 33 hours of closing, the campaign had only raised $12,477. The project eventually raised more than $21,000, but only after two local companies--RailsBridge and Blazing Cloud--agreed to match up to $2,000 of donations.

Black Girls Code had a harder time raising than similar IndieGoGo campaigns run by more general developer education programs. Another, non-gender-specific coding program, CodeNow, also launched a campaign this summer to raise $15,000 for their summer coding program. Unlike Black Girls Code, nearly 20 people contributed more than $150 to the campaign, including multiple $1,000 donations. CampInteractive, a technology education program for underprivileged youth, was able to meet their $20,000 through a lucrative partnership with Nokia, who matched $10,000 in donated funds.

Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, said she initiated the IndieGoGo campaign because her program wasn't raising sufficient funding through traditional methods, pointing to an "issue of cluster."

"Corporations are saying that they want to increase the diversity across the technology and STEM fields, but kind of only focusing on a couple of organizations to funnel their dollars to," she told Betabeat.

However, Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code who has close ties to the tech industry, said she did not have difficulty raising adequate funding for the program. Similarly, Hacker School was able to raise more grant money for women than expected. After admitting 23 women into the program, three more than initially planned, Hacker School realized more participants were requesting grants than the 10 they initially bargained for. Thus Etsy reached out to 37Signals and Yammer to provide funding for eight additional grants, bringing the total to 18. (Five women attended without scholarship money.)

Etsy has also allowed Hacker School to operate out of its Brooklyn office, a situation that Mr. Bergson-Shilcock said has proven very beneficial for the program’s participants. Working in Etsy’s office has provided “a lot of cross-pollination and mingling,” he said, noting that Etsy employees and Hacker School students have had a lot of time to interact during the twice-weekly companywide lunch called Eatsy.

Ms. Saujani said their partnership with tech companies has helped her students get a better, less stereotypical vision of what it is like to work in the tech industry. After touring Google’s plush New York office (which includes a tricked-out bistro, rooftop garden and gaming room), “One of the girls said, 'If this is work, I'm going to work everyday,’” Ms. Saujani recalled. The girls have also worked with a series of speakers and will eventually choose one of these speakers as their mentor.

“There's really this community of people that are coming around these girls and lifting them up and helping them,” Ms. Saujani said. “We're already changing the cultural stereotypes of what a computer scientist looks like or feels like or sounds like. And it's powerful.”

The Times tells us that the pair were wedded yesterday, at their home--excuse us, their "estate"-- in Garrison, New York. The announcement recounts their meeting:

The couple met in November 2005 through a college acquaintance of Mr. Eldridge’s at a brunch in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Eldridge was working as a customer service manager for a moving company in Somerville, Mass., and Mr. Hughes was a senior at Harvard, and already a founder of Facebook.

“He was very intelligent and charismatic,” Mr. Hughes said of Mr. Eldridge. “He was very kind and politically engaged, and he cared about the world around us. All of that was very attractive to me.”

Aw, it's almost enough to make us forget we find the Vows section even more agonizing than the Modern Love column!

A source tells Betabeat that while the wedding itself was intimate, at around 75 people, the party was a blowout, with something like 400 guests. Mark Zuckerberg attended, as did fellow Facebook cofounder Andrew McCollum and his wife Gretchen Sisson. Misters Hughes and Eldridge are quite connected in the city's Democratic circles, which probably explains what Nancy Pelosi was doing at the party, getting down to "All The Single Ladies."

Arianna Huffington put in an appearance at the couple's wedding dinner at Cipriani--and couldn't resist tweeting out a photo of herself with fellow guest Senator Charles Schumer. Senator Chris Coons likewise attended, betraying an endearing sentimental streak (or maybe just a sweet tooth) by tweeting out a picture of the wedding cake.

Mr. Hughes may be busy recruiting for The New Republic in his new role as media mogul. But there were plenty of friends from the tech world in attendance as well. LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta and his wife Reshma Saujani were both there and tweeting their congratulations--no great surprise given Mr. Hughes' support for Ms. Saujani's 2010 Congressional campaign. Ms. Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code; the program's executive director Kristen Titus was also among the guests. We heard that Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley of Upworthy (which aims to "make important content shareable") were in attendance as well, and that Olivia Ma of YouTube did a reading.

Alberto Ibarguen, head of the Knight Foundation, and Ivanka Trump also attended. (Ms. Trump is married to Jared Kushner, head of the Observer Media Group, which owns Betabeat.)

Of course, Mr. Hughes' nuptials follow hard on the heels of those of both Mark Zuckerberg's surprise wedding and Andrew McCollum's seaside affair. Starting to reconsider that bachelor lifestyle, Eduardo? Inquiring minds want to know.

With contributing reporting from Nitasha Tiku.

(Photo: twitter/reshmasaujani)

On its blog today, Twitter announced a new partnership aimed at changing that ratio. The company will be investing "time, energy and money," to partner with Girls Who Code, a intensive program designed to get New York City high schoolers comfortable with software development.

Girls Who Code was launched by Reshma Saujani, a former deputy public advocate under Bill de Blasio. Ms. Saujani, who is running for Public Advocate in 2013, has strong ties to the tech community both here and in the Valley. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes both came out to support her (ultimately unsuccessful) bid for a Congressional seat from New York in 2010. She also recently married LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta. (Mazel!)

On July 9th, Girls Who Code will kick off with an 8-week program to "teach basic principles of computer science and coding as well as sessions on design, research and entrepreneurship." Participants will be matched with female mentors from tech companies. Judging by the founder-heavy crowd at a recent campaign event for Ms. Saujani, we doubt she'll have any problem sourcing volunteers. Later this week, for example, she'll be cohosting a breakfast with Gilt Groupe founder Alexis Maybank.

As for incentivizing young ladies to the summer program, how about the possibility of a job @Twitter? Engineer Sara Haider writes:

We cannot wait to see what the future holds for Girls Who Code, and we certainly hope to hire at least some of the participants in a few years.

Pro-tip: Equity, girls. Ask for lots equity.

In seven hours, he managed to raise $5 million.

The press has focused on high-profile attendees like Deepak Chopra and Russell Simmons, as well as the turnout from the upper echelons of Wall Street. Indeed, Republicans would probably love to make stumping in front of an $18,000 piece of driftwood this season's $400 haircut. But under the radar, New York techies also showed up--and paid up!--for the Democratic cause, and the ancillary bonus of getting to watch Questlove bang on some drums.

For all their willingness to weigh in on what the federal government is doing wrong, direct party affiliation isn't something one hears that often in tech circles. (There are exceptions: TheLadders CEO Marc Cenedella planned on running for a Republican Senate seat; Chris Dixon wondered yesterday if he lived in a "left-wing bubble.") It can be hard to tell, for example, whether an anti-SOPA advocate is a Libertarian or a Democrat. Or whether a disruption-chasing venture capitalist might be a fiscal conservative who votes GOP.

So it was interesting to see names like FirstMark Capital's Lawrence Lenihan (alongside AHAlife's Shauna Mei) on the host list for the dinner. Ryan Williams, a server engineer for Foursquare, checked-in on his company's app to the $1,000-a-ticket show at ABC Carpet, along with Birchbox's Dan Zeehandelaar. Others in attendance included Potential.ly founder Joel Smernoff, along with 212 Media's Jeremy Goldberg, a sizable contingent from LocalResponse, Cava Capital general partner Geoff Schneider, kbs+ Ventures senior associate Taylor Davidson and his fiance Sloane Berrent, Lippe Taylor's VP of digital, who got points for her first check-in with the POTUS. On Ms. Mei's Facebook page last week, Turntable.fm's Billy Chasen and investor Jay Levy also expressed interest in attending.

"[Obama's] personality resonates with all of us," LocalResponse CEO Nihal Mehta told Betabeat by email. "He kicked off last night's 20-minute speech by saying he has more twitter followers than Aziz Ansari."

He really said this in his speech. Unreal. “@questlove: POTUS to @AzizAnsari: I got more twitter followers than you man!”

— Aziz Ansari (@azizansari) March 2, 2012

Part of the techie turnout may have been orchestrated by Mr. Mehta's girlfriend Reshma Saujani, who currently serves as deputy advocate for special initiatives for the New York City Public Advocate's office and helped organize the fundraising event. When Ms. Saujani campaigned for a Congressional seat in 2010, she ran on an innovation/entrepreneurship platform that drew supporters like Jack Dorsey, of Twitter and Square, and Facebook's Chris Hughes. Ms. Saujani, who introduced the president, was able to raise "well over $1 million," said Mr. Mehta.

So does this mean we'll be seeing more political activism from New York's tech crowd as November draws near? Maybe more like political startups. "The threat of SOPA and PIPA activated a lot of political interest in many people involved in technology and entrepreneurship," said Mr. Davidson, from kbs+ ventures (who teaches a mean Skillshare class on financial modeling). "I also believe that it created a lot of ideas for 'political tech' entrepreneurs. Many political campaigns have been very savvy in using web technology and communities to activate voters, but there is still a lot to be done beyond activation, and I think that technology entrepreneurs will build solutions to tackle many of those problems," he said, adding, "Building solutions to help people be involved and engaged in government is more important than a particular entrepreneur's political affiliation."

Mr. Mehta also mentioned SOPA/PIPA, but in the context of listing Obama policies he thought attracted tech types. "New York tech will definitely come out and support the President given his stance against SOPA/PIPA, loan forgiveness programs for entrepreneurs, and constant encouragement of innovations in every speech (e.g. American cars are the leaders globally with 55 MPG saving the average US family $8-10k/year)," said Mr. Mehta. "His numerous references to creating the next steve jobs, and the necessity to innovate, 'What Americans do.'"

Any Romney supporters care to share a differing opinion? You know what to do: tips@betabeat.com.