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Silicon Alley

By Kelly Faircloth 10/24/12 8:53am

Silicon Alley

Glamorous Houston. (Photo: flickr.com/mrbill)

Houston Not Threatened By New York’s Tech Growth, Nuh-Uh, No Way

Apparently Boston wasn’t the only town a little put off by the AP’s flattering article about New York’s burgeoning tech scene. Take this response, which appeared earlier this week in the Houston Business Journal. Upon hearing about our fair city’s recent investments, the reporter couldn’t help wonder: “Does this mean Houston has more competition in terms of trying to be the next Silicon Valley?”

The Journal spoke to Brad Burke, the managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, who promptly attempted to set the minds of Houston’s techie citizens at rest: Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 7/24/12 2:45pm

Silicon Alley

At the Meetup. (flickr.com/alextorrenegra)

New York Tech Meetup Debuts Paid Memberships for High Rollers

Sick of the last New York Tech Meetup ticket selling out just before you have a chance to get your hands on it? Well, good news if you absolutely must attend every demo: The organization has just announced the launch of a beta-stage annual membership.

In an email sent to members earlier this afternoon (available here in blog form), the NYTM team points out that, while tickets have been $10 since 2008, those big demo nights aren’t exactly getting any cheaper to host: Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 6/21/11 2:28pm

Silicon Alley

kirby ferguson

‘Everything Is a Remix’: This Explains Everything Happening In New York’s Start-Up Scene Right Now

The ideas episode, the third installment of New York-based filmmaker Kirby Ferguson’s “Everything Is a Remix” project is out (via Jason Kottke) and everyone in and around the New York tech scene should watch. Using the development of the personal computer as an example, Mr. Ferguson talks about how innovations in technology come about after years of slow building, followed by imitation and heavy “borrowing” from other inventors–maybe mixed with new ideas, maybe not.

This explains why New York tech companies are emerging–all the hardcore engineering technology of smart phones, APIs and cheap cloud hosting now exists, so the designers and businessmen who have traditionally thrived in New York are perfectly positioned to remix and combine these technologies into Foursquares and Tumblrs, Touts and Speakergrams, GroupMes and Joinables, and so on. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries and Ben Popper 6:43pm

Silicon Alley

shake shack burger

Here’s a Visitor’s Guide to Silicon Alley


You scraped and saved to get that plane ticket to the Big Apple so you could compete with the best for a chance at start-up stardom. But why wait to battle with hundreds of other hopefuls at a massive conference in order to pitch some of the nation’s top venture capitalists when you could find them checking in at their favorite coffee shops or sitting in on a class at a coworking space with pizza and beer?

Below are some notable landmarks in Silicon Alley. Here’s a Google Map to  guide your way. By the end of it, you should get all the inside jokes on Pivotrly.com. Remember not to stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Good luck! Read More

By Ben Popper 4/29/11 7:53am

Silicon Alley

111eighthave

Accel Parties in NYC, Teases New Office Atop Google

The sale of Diapers.com to Amazon for $540 million was a grand slam in the venture capital world. So it was fitting that Accel’s Sameer Ghandi presented founders Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara with autographed Yankees jerseys.

“These guys started their first online business in 1999, not exactly the best timing,” Ghandi said last night at Read More

By Ben Popper 3/22/11 6:33am

Silicon Alley

simon assaad

A Few Rounds With Dot-Com Survivor Heavy.com

At a VIP party deep in the bowels of Newark’s Prudential Center, Simon Assaad navigated carefully to the bar, slipping past two hulking veterans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He ordered a red wine and moved carefully through the crowd, settling behind a table where rapper Ice T was holding court.  ”These are not guys you want to bump the wrong way,” said Assaad. Read More

By Ben Popper 3/18/11 5:15am

Silicon Alley

100 Photos

1. Steve Case and Gerald Levin - AOL

The Silicon Alley Reporter 100: 10 Years Later, Where Are They Now?

For the launch of a site about the New York tech scene, we thought it would be fun to turn back the clock and look at who ruled the roost at the turn of the century. We took as our subjects the Silicon Alley Reporter 100 list from the year 2000, a bumpy patch for the dot-com kids. Hundreds of young public and private companies collapsed after the NASDAQ famously peaked at 5,048 on March 10 and then dove to 3,649 the next month, including the proto-social network theglobe.com, long-loading high fashion site Boo.com and abruptly-bankrupt webcaster Psuedo.com, whose founder Josh Harris is now an advice columnist for Betabeat. “What a difference a year makes,” editor Jason Calacanis’s letter opens. Some of these 100 Silicon Alley entrepreneurs were still flying high at the time of the list, some were hanging on and would rebound later, and others were still helming doomed companies. They were all here during the peak of the city’s tech scene, but where are they now? Read More