The New York Entrepreneur

As most of you know I spent last week in New York City creating the first U.S. Digital Entrepreneur Dinner.  Something that takes times and lots of effort but nevertheless something that is critical to the success of Digital Entrepreneur as a global dinner network.

I spent a week in the city meeting entrepreneurs, visiting venues and getting to know how the city operates as a base for entrepreneurs - New York city is a city planners dream - it is based on a grid system with streets left to right and avenues going up and down (apart from Broadway).

The underground or Metro was great with a MetroCard costing $10 for a few journeys and cabs are everywhere.  I noticed whilst using Uber that they actually offer much more than what is on offer in London including hand delivering stuff which makes sense.

The venue we finally used was called MIST in Harlem on 116th Street - this venue was also being used for the Periscope Summit so it was full of the crowd - the food was great (South African) and the staff were awesome.  The venue for next month move to the Upper West Side - The Ribbon, 20 W. 72nd St.

Something I really liked about the city was that because of the buildings, everything is pretty near however the entrepreneur scene is still broken up with specific industries focusing on specific zones.

A great report by Endeavor Insight tells us that New York has become the secound largest tech hub in the world with entrepreneurs employing over 53,000 New Yorkers and between 2003 and 2013 the city tech sector grew twice as fast as Silicon Valleys with its companies raising more than $3.1B in 2013.  That is a huge amount of money for a city that is so accessible.

The average tech founder in New York is 31 years old when she founds her company - in London we have only ever had a few ladies attend, amongst them are Penny Power OBE and Claire Jarrett - both are extraordinary entrepreneurs but that is not enough for the four years we have been running.

In the build up to the New York dinner I found that the balance was much better with plenty more female entrepreneurs available.  Laura Mignott attended our first dinner which was great.

Take a look at the report, it makes a lot of sense and I think the findings match in general what I found when visiting.

When compared to London, tech seems to be a little more advanced than in London - I guess this might be because of how much tech comes out of San Francisco and New York then scales in the US first before jumping across to London.

Where scale is critical, London is important as it seems to be considered the launch pad for the rest of Europe - scale in the US, then build up a base in London and manage a European team from London - London liaises with the US team in English but employs foreign speakers - seems to make sense.

The route seems to run from London to New York then perhaps on to San Francisco or vice versa - but where in Europe does it then go next?  Is it Berlin, perhaps Madrid?

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