So tonight I went to the NY Tech Meetup with Brad. I have to say, its really cool to be around so many people really into what they're doing--and somewhat tangentially thinking about the money aspect. From what I've experienced so far, this scene, at least the people that strike me and leave an impression, are so much more focused on building on great ideas. Its a few derivatives later that the idea of cashing in comes in. The people I relate to want to build on great ideas, and from what will come great companies, and great companies will bring great returns, which is what the investment side of VC is conceptually supposed to result in anyway. The focus in our office has definately been about the ideas... that's hugely evident even in the first three weeks of me being here. We sat down with an entrepreneur that we really like tonight who started talking about possible revenue streams and partnership deals and Brad and Fred definately pushed him back to just working on the idea... get working on the idea and building up a great product and the rest will come in time. It really made me feel like I'm in the right place with the right people.
The funniest moment had to be when these two guys from a startup were presenting, and it was so obvious that they were in Beta... like... not even in Beta... more like, "We built this for ourselves and it came out pretty cool so here it is." Anyway, someone asked how you make money from the deal... Its just too hard to explain not only if you weren't there, but you aren't in this world... this little NY tech circle of lots of exciting things going on. Who knew that in a city of 8 million people you had a few passionate people with great ideas that were not too worried about VC fundable business plans? Their answer to his suggestion of what they might do? "Um, yeah.. sure." Love it.
PS... I had somebody use the "chips and routers" term to me. For a second, I was like, "Hey, that's what I call it."
Duh.
He reads my blog.
I know how many hits I get and how many Feedburner subscribers I have, but when you meet an actual human being who reads and actually remembers... well, that's faaaantastic.
Jeez... now that I think of it... that's a lot of pressure. If I have actual human beings reading, and not just numbers on a Feedburner stat page, I better go work on trying to be interesting.