We Are NY Tech

Imagine if there was a blog that wrote about one person who works in NY Tech every day and over time built the seminal database (like Crunchbase) of everyone working in NY tech. How cool would that be?

Don't imagine it. Just head on over to We Are NY Tech and witness it in action. You can also follow We Are NY Tech on Twitter.

Unlike silly lists like the Business Insider "Coolest 100 People" which is bullshit and I hate it and wish they would stop putting out nonsense like that, We Are NY Tech is democratic, wonderful to look at and read, and is exactly the kind of service we need in NYC to identify who is who and who is doing what and why.

We Are NY Tech was build by the team at Simande, a creative shop that builds great websites. If We Are NY Tech is a anything, its a great example of their work. I suspect this is a labor of love by the Simande team, but if I were Silicon Valley Bank, Gunderson, Cooley, Ambrose, and a host of other service providers to NYC's startup community, I'd be trying to buy sponsorships of We Are NY Tech. No better way to show the support of the community than to support a living breathing database of the community.

Well done We Are NY Tech. I'm following you and I hope the rest of the NY Tech Community is too.



#VC & Technology#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. bijan

    love it.

  2. RichardF

    ….and Tereza is on the front page today, nice.

    1. fredwilson

      for the next 2 1/2 hoursi love the one a day thingbuilds suspense

      1. Dave Pinsen

        The Gilt Groupe M.O.

      2. Christina Cacioppo

        it’s really made 9am a time to which i look forward.

  3. Alex

    Great project. Business Insider could use some competition.

    1. fredwilson

      Business Insider could use some class and taste

      1. Kelley Boyd @msksboyd

        dude…harsh. Made me laugh.

        1. fredwilson

          making people laugh is a good thing

      2. William Mougayar

        Ouch..Those same people that sometimes your blog?

      3. 2010 SAI 100

        Do I sense some animosity for not making their list Fred?

        1. fredwilson

          you sense animosity for them continuing to put me on the list after i asked to never be on it years agoi am embarrassed to be on such a piece of shit

  4. awaldstein

    I really like this idea.Nudge nudge…would be a great way to back in a local resource guide with search. I have some developer needs now that would be great to source locally.

    1. fredwilson

      they don’t have enough people in here to be that kind of resource, yet

      1. awaldstein

        Agree…but I bet it will come so maybe wise to start collecting the data if that is where they are going with it.

    2. Mark Essel

      They’ll need structured data so that you can find an IOS developer, or a Rails + Mongo backend expert. Linkedin meets local.Update: After a cursory review they have structured data and an interface to browse by tags/entities (ruby/java etc). What would be incredible is a reputation system for votes of confidence by customers/business partners (like LinkedIn).

      1. awaldstein

        Yup…just a matter of whether that is where they want to go with it.

        1. Matthew Shampine

          let’s talk! email me at m at simande dot com.

      2. Dave Pinsen

        No surprise that they’ve got structured data, etc. Simande doesn’t just do front-end design; they build apps that process a lot of data. Short Screen, for example, scrapes several variables and runs calcs on thousands of stocks every day. Here’s an app they built for someone else that handles even more data: Check FHA Approval. That site scans every condo in the country for FHA status.

        1. awaldstein

          Hmmm….i’ll take an intro Dave/

          1. Dave Pinsen

            No problem, Arnold. I’ll set it up.

        2. Mark Essel

          Man with a plan, and an unstoppable app building machine.Will catch up more with what he’s up to.

  5. Dave W Baldwin

    Good plug. There will always be the flash in the pan media vehicles like Business Insider…but as the community matures, joined by the tsunami of collaboration, media sources like BI will fade away as ad execs eventually realize whom they can reach in real time.

  6. William Mougayar

    Great looking site that puts people in the center of it all.If they are interested, I could pipe in a news widget from this NYC Tech news aggregator site http://portal.eqentia.com/n…. I’ll be at the Donors Choose event this evening, in case anyone from Simande is.

    1. Matthew Shampine

      thanks for the offer! i unfortunately won’t be at the Donor Choose event (going to private going viral meetup tonight), but i’d love to meet you another night.

      1. William Mougayar

        I’ll email you separately.

  7. Guest

    Nice site, but it must not be working properly. You can search by developers, designers, founders, and females. The search by “males” option isn’t appearing on my screen. 🙂

    1. RichardF

      lol v funny…I’d love this comment if there was a luv button

    2. fredwilson

      That’s a feature not a bug!

    3. Tereza

      Yeah nuttin’ wrong about looking for males!

      1. atryon

        I had the same thought! I love what We Are NY Tech is building. I hope as the grow that “female” search category will no longer be needed.

  8. Kelley Boyd @msksboyd

    I found this awhile back and drafted up an email to all the cool people I knew saying we should rock this site and have our own cool kids club. For some reason I never sent it…maybe it was the “fear” of being considered egomaniacal to just speak up and draw attention to myself for the shear reason of …drawing attention to myself. Or maybe it was because I had nothing to promote…no alliance or alignment in the tech sector at that time. Not really sure but I am glad to see the few cool people that are there this morning…and will definitely redraft that mail. Over the last few months I have hundreds, no seriously, hundreds of cool smart making it happen people that are too busy making it happen to get on the “list” of cool people. Is maybe not being on the lists the assurance you are cool??? Mindboggling and will require more brain cycles than I have this morning…because I am very busy finishing my business model overview for Women 2.0, prepping my talk to the IBS at Golden Seeds, helping them understand the impact that Steve Blank, Eric Reis and Alexander Osterwald have had on the equation of how to evaluate an internet business, going to look for a desk in a co-working space, meeting with a client to discuss the next step is and then a bit of socializing with you and this list….and then Rachel;s bday. Phew…busy day! Can somebody put me on a list somewhere cause I gotta go! ;>))PS: Women 2.0 launching in NY in January, Founder Labs in Mach/April…stay tuned!

  9. Dave Pinsen

    “We Are NY Tech was build by the team at Simande, a creative shop that builds great websites. If We Are NY Tech is a anything, its a great example of their work.”A well-deserved plug for Simande. Nice to see Tereza featured on We Are NY Tech today too.Incidentally, another example of Simande’s work is Short Screen.

    1. Mark Essel

      Ha, small world Dave. Epic.

      1. Dave Pinsen

        I’m sure this will be the only example of me learning about any sharp NY Tech folks before Fred mentions them on this blog, but I had the advantage of finding Simande when they were still based in New Jersey. It’s great to see them get this recognition.BTW, Portfolio Armor is another example of Simande’s work.

        1. Tereza

          So I just got back from dropping the kids off at school and just getting my thoughts organized and I was about to DM you thanking you for prompting me to get in touch with We are NY Tech.The truth is folks, it was all because of Dave.My next question is — Dave, let’s get you on there, shall we?

          1. Matthew Shampine

            we can certainly arrange that 🙂

          2. Dave Pinsen

            Totally forgot mentioning We Are NY Tech to you. Glad it worked out though.

          3. Donna Brewington White

            Dave rocks!

          4. falicon

            +1 on Dave being featured sooner rather than later…though I don’t think I get an official vote 😉

  10. Dinesh Vadhia

    Verticalization of flavor.me and about.me which are totally brilliant ideas. A cross between multi-media business card and self-expression. It also gives people who don’t want to be socialized by LinkedIn and FB a single page to say who they are.

  11. Mark Essel

    Awesome big pic of Tereza and coverage of Honestly Now. We are NY Tech has snared my attention. I think we’ll see many startups that leverage tech but are not necessarily purely technical. Its the application design and end user that matters, not the sophistication of the hard wiring.As a long time algorithm geek in engineering that’s discovered my design anima, I’m awestruck when creative folks combine the best of art and science to deliver something more beautiful than either is apart.

    1. Donna Brewington White

      I’m thinkin’ that someday there won’t be “tech” because everything will be tech…or rather it will be more intrinsic.

  12. Matthew Shampine

    thanks, dave! we love working with you too and look forward to seeing you on monday.

    1. Dave Pinsen

      Looking forward to seeing you guys then. Congrats again on the big Fred Wilson endorsement.

  13. Matt Moog

    Fred – We launched something similar in Chicago called http://www.builtinchicago.org. We are working to connect, educate and promote the digital community here in Chicago. With Groupon, Orbitz, CareerBuilder, 37Signals and many many others we are building on some great momentum.

    1. fredwilson

      fantasticchicago has got it going these days too

      1. Judi Huck

        Also: Chicago-based http://www.beyondthepedway.com has similar, scalable element with videos of yourself (the entrepreneur)allowing for contributors really raises the bar

  14. reece

    very cool. nice seeing some familiar faces as well as lots of new ones.

  15. Sara Chipps

    One thing I love about this project us the attention to detail and not wanting to just throw shit together just to be there. Anyone can throw up a database of people’s pictures and a bio. If they wanted to let people write their own bios they would have 150 people who work for companies that have websites doing something non-tech related. The act of curating this information is tedious and I appreciate the effort.

    1. Matthew Shampine

      thanks! and we appreciate everything that you do for the tech community. love http://girldevelopit.com

      1. Tereza

        ooooooh!I am *so* going to re-blog that!

      2. Christina Cacioppo

        yes – and the questions that matt asks are thoughtful across the board. i think that effort really shows through in the responses.

  16. zackmansfield

    very cool – love the look and design – definitely “NYC” in feel as compared to the valley, etc.will reach out to the team re: sponsorship/ads as we at Square 1 Bank would be interested in supporting this

  17. Senith @ finance tutor

    Is this a service project? Or do they plan to make money sometime? Paid ads or fees from both sides or some sort of recruiting service? Whats the intention?

    1. Matthew Shampine

      to answer your question directly… we make money doing what we love doing – custom web design and development.wearenytech.com is just something we wanted to do to showcase the awesome people in our community. plus i really enjoy getting to meet everyone in the community and learning about them in-depth as we work to come up with unique interview questions.

      1. fredwilson

        matt, i’m getting emails from local service providers who want to sponsor ityou interested?

        1. Matthew Shampine

          we’re not really interested in putting ads on the site. but we have some other ideas for sponsorship though. could you possibly have them email me at [email protected]? thanks, fred! we really, really appreciate it.

      2. falicon

        This is the same reason that I run the ‘Cheeseburger Club’ (which is basically a small, in-person version of wearenytech.com where I get a group of ‘tech’ people together for lunch about once a month…always a different group of people, and ALWAYS interesting).Anyway – love the idea…keep up the great work!

        1. Matthew Shampine

          keep me in the loop with the cheeseburger club. i have a food blog, so i’m obviously down for putting food + tech together 🙂

          1. falicon

            Cool – I’ll make sure to shoot you an invite for the next one as soon as I get it planned!

        2. Tereza

          Please put me on your list. I love cheeseburgers.

          1. falicon

            Yeah – you are on the list for sure…been meaning to catch up with you anyway. Thanks for reminding me! 😉

  18. jutan

    Sick. exactly what i’ve been looking for. woot woot! about.me/jutan

  19. J. Brent Large

    Obviously within the past year quite a bit of positive talk concerning the NY tech scene has been circulating, and I got excited. Maybe we’d move there?! But I have to say, Foursquare opening an office in SF put a big damper on that, leading me to believe that tech companies can’t scale in NYC. I’m sure there is a middle ground…what is it?

    1. falicon

      Don’t take someone opening an office on both coasts as a failure to scale…it’s actually the opposite…they are growing so much that I think they felt they needed a presence in both locations (as you do business in lots more places, you tend to open offices in lots more places)…but trust me, Foursquare is still VERY much an NY company…

      1. fredwilson

        word

        1. J. Brent Large

          I wasn’t trying to start an us vs. them debate. I want the tech scene in NYC to flourish. Maybe a better way to think about this topic is to look at current realities; a growing tech company may find it necessary to have a presence in SV just as a company that deals in advertising/finance would follow the same route by opening an office in NYC. That does not mean a company in the above mentioned sectors couldn’t thrive outside these ecosystems…instead they choose to be more connected to their respective industries. And I don’t see the office opening as a failure. The reason I made the analysis was because FS is still small….smaller than Esty, but yet they felt the need, at an early stage, to open a West Coast office. But FS could see it as an inevitable step that is best taken early. It could be just darn good strategy.

    2. fredwilson

      when facebook and twitter open offices in NYC, you don’t assume tech companies in SF can’t scalewhy would you make the same assumption when NYC companies open offices in NYC?sheese!Etsy has something like 70 engineers in NYCthere is absolutely no issue with scaling a tech company in NYC

  20. MartinEdic

    Us po folks who work upstate, in our case Rochester, still think of ourselves as NY start-ups but we can’t play here…boo-hoo.Seriously, I have an issue with this geocentric approach to community-building. Just as it makes little sense in the investing world to limit geographically (anymore), why are we encouraging geocentric divisions? I can be in NY in a few hours but that doesn’t matter- I can be in a meeting in seconds.BTW, anyone in the eBook publishing space in Manhattan who has time for coffee or a drink on Monday the 13th? Love to talk. We’re in and out same day but have an open afternoon/early evening. martin at 24pagebooks dot etc.

    1. Matthew Shampine

      hey martin – Tereza is from Westchester and Matt Kim is from Hoboken, so we’d definitely love hearing from those in Rochester.

      1. MartinEdic

        Matt, The site said NYC so I was feeling left out! 😉 Ironically, on some days it might be easier to get to Manhattan from Rochester than Long Island…I’ll join in.

        1. Matthew Shampine

          sounds good! in our About page we listed it as the NYC metro area, so we tried to be flexible as possible 🙂

  21. leilaboujnane

    Fred: thanks for the link. Awesome project. So excited that I am going to start one in Toronto! Beautiful work Simande team! Way to go.

  22. Donna Brewington White

    Beautiful site — love this!Not a member of the NY Tech scene, but a HUGE fan of some who are and just the scene in general because of what it represents and the coolness factor!Guess there won’t be a “We Are LA Tech” anytime soon…but, hey, you never know…

    1. RichardF

      Get the Suster on the case.

      1. Donna Brewington White

        You’re right — he’s the man. He gives me great hope for the LA scene. I need to meet him.Although, actually, I am always meeting tech people here now that my antennae are up. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, I think.

        1. Dave Pinsen

          There was also that Los Angeles-based design agency that commented here earlier this week.

          1. Donna Brewington White

            Thanks, D. Must have missed that day — will look it up.Think I need to start making a list.

          2. Dave Pinsen

            It was on the 4th, actually: Josh Strike of the Strike Agency, who wrote this well-liked comment.

          3. Donna Brewington White

            Ahhh, now I remember — was impressed by his cogency of thought (and way with words) — and just now taking a look at his site, he’s got a way with design as well! Impressive work. Definitely-one-to-watch. Thanks for the point-out, Mr. Information.

          4. Dave Pinsen

            Definitely a crackerjack writer, and one with something to say. Would be good to hear more from him.

  23. Prokofy

    The web site design was very fresh and cool, it kind of reminded me of a Paper.liAnd it was more fun to read than anything I’ve seen in a long time. It was a nice change from TechCrunch.I liked reading about things in *my* city!I did get a good chuckle from the fellow who was already mourning that the “scene” was filling up with wannabees nowhttp://wearenytech.com/18-s…”Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”.

  24. Casey Reichel

    Very cool site!

  25. aanwar

    It’s awesome. Love the idea. Way more personal.

  26. Graham Siener

    It’d be interesting to see how many Hashable follows the featured bio gets

    1. Matthew Shampine

      love hashable! i’d really like to do something with them.

  27. paramendra

    Following now.

  28. sujaym

    Some one in Boston should start something similar. This is a great idea to know people who are doing the coolest stuff in the city. Waiting for the next updates.

  29. Mike Geer (MG)

    Nice one, Fred. Will definitely be following from now on.MG

  30. robotchampion

    This site is causing quite the rage down here in the Mid-Atlantic. The Baltimore tech community wants their own. DC has created a Start-Up Wiki…let the battles begin!Steve Mandzik – 1×57

  31. Mark Essel

    Ah, but are you a betting man? Now’s the time before the price get’s too high 😉

  32. Tereza

    awwwwwwwi love you guysAVC GROUP HUG!!!!!!!

  33. Mark Essel

    I haven’t come across an irresistible offer yet, but I’m amenable to the idea of “try before you buy” even when I’m the product.I’m also extremely interested in picking startup winners. But to angel invest I need to have a healthier bankroll, and not many VCs are looking for a guy with my background as a partner. I keep meeting people that I’m confident will do amazing things with a little bit of capital, if not on this swing then the next. Investing is a long term relationship and backing winners means having their backs when they don’t win.

  34. Tereza

    Here is my pitch, in Haiku:Man in a dark barWon’t you invest in my dream?Convertible note.

  35. Mark Essel

    Finding investors in Honestly Now is like selling Apple’s next igadget on release day. The problem is there’s not enough to go around 😉

  36. Tereza

    Truth is things are good, we’re close, and we have great people.It’s really important to me to have people who are total integrity and add value.

  37. Mark Essel

    If I look at Honestly Now’s marketing challenges by initiating relationships with existing style communities (one example -> design and style centric universities), and drawing in separate groups of friends to focus discussions on personal presentation it’s fascinating. As a product it’s completely alien to me though. I dress like a hobo and am wearing shorts at work now. Fun contrast. I’m far more concerned with how people judge my thought process than my visual appearance. Admittedly the two are related.

  38. Donna Brewington White

    “…we’re close…”Great to hear, T!

  39. Tereza

    How did you decide what ring to buy for Michelle? How were you confident it was the one she’d love?

  40. Mark Essel

    I brought her with me, then bought a much larger stone last minute.I believe direct source information trumps social custom every time. Call me a heretic.

  41. Donna Brewington White

    Tereza — you really shine in that write-up. Heck, you just really shine period.I’ll quote you any day.