Charlie O’Donnell has a post today about the need for more early stage VCs in NYC. He believes there is a significant impact a firm can make if they are local and part of the community.
He also points out that we have been active in NYC and perhaps we should have an office in NYC.
Here are some thoughts that come to mind after reading his post.
0. On a personal note, I love NYC. I grew up in Long Island all the way through high school. My first girl friend was from queens. I went to a zillion shows at CBGBs. I’m also a yankees fan :) My parents still live there.
1. My partner Santo lived in NYC before moving to Boston. He has an apartment there. My other partner Dennis lived in NYC before moving to boston to join Spark. At any given week one of us are in NYC. I’m in nyc today too. (hey charlie: wanna meet at the ShakeShack for lunch :)
2. We are proud of our 10 investments & entrepreneurs in NYC and will no doubt make more investments there. I’m very excited about all of the innovation and creativity in NYC.
3. One thing to clarify from Charlie’s post is that we have made more than 21 investments. Several of our companies are in stealth mode or haven’t been announced yet. So the percentage of our investments in nyc isn’t quite that high.
4. We are about to announce a new addition to the Spark team. He’s another new yorker. He will be based in boston but still keeping his place in nyc and will spend a lot of time there as you can imagine.
5. I’ve been thinking a lot about location and proximity to our investments. Our NYC entrepreneurs tell me that they interact with me and my partners as much as if we were actually living in nyc. That’s good. It’s just not that far between boston & NYC. At the same time consider the opposite where two east coast firms invested in SF-based Twitter. But I am paying attention to this.
6. And while we are active in NYC we invest everywhere and simply look for the best teams on the planet with the best ideas (e.g. we have made 7 investments on the west coast, 2 in CO and even 1 in Ireland).
I think traveling is just part of the job. For all of us in this business. Startups and investors alike.