Some unfiltered thoughts that bubbled up at the gym this morning:

• Anyone who has any interest in the future of NYC as an innovation center recognizes the importance of education--not just at the University level, but in high schools and elementary schools as well.  We can't just be a town that attracts smart people from elsewhere to educate them in technology... we need to foster the seeds of technology innovation from a very young age. 
• Couple that with the idea that internet, mobile,  and digital media related companies want better inroads into younger generations, for not just marketing, but for feedback and ideas.
• High school kids need jobs... and ideally more interesting jobs than working at McDonald's.

So, what about some kind of a program whereby startups and large companies alike targeting the high school/college audience engages the schools in an educational manner, in terms of talking about the technology, the business, product management, etc. of their products, and then "hires" these students for both feedback and marketing purposes during the summers.  So, maybe during the year, they do a six week program about all the aspects of their service, and then the students spend the summer providing feedback, helping to market, etc.

Is there anything out there like this?

So here are some meandering thoughts about the current state of the NY Angel market that I don't have the time or the intellectual capacity to synthesize into a coherent thesis/essay:

• People, including myself, say that there is an angel funding gap in NYC.  The reason why is that they cannot readily identify very many firms or individuals who are known to do angel investing.
• At the same time, I don't know of any really fantastic startup companies in NYC who are struggling to get angel money raised.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I know of several companies who are raising or have raised significant angel capital just through their own network or introductions.  Many of the investors have been people who do not usually do angel investing or at least don't have a shingle out to do so.   So, angel gap or no?
• If there was an angel gap, how best to fill it?  Early stage firms could go earlier.  A USV incubator perhaps, a la what Charles River is doing? 
• How about banding groups of angels together in a fund or group?
• What about other types of incubators?  Corporate?  CBS Interactive incubator? 
• Well, we know from the last go around that anyone who doesn't have a larger fund who isn't 100% in the main business of venture investing over the long term are the first ones to get wiped off the face of the earth in a bubble...  does that make them inherently bad structures or just more risky?
• There's a lot of money in NYC that isn't connected to the entrepreneur community...  hedge fund and banking money.  Would it be wise for someone to package up $5-10 million of that to do seed stage financing at 50-250k a pop?  Who should do such a thing?  Isn't a small investor like this going to get crushed in latter rounds because they don't have the money to maintain ownership positions?  That brings us back to the USV incubator idea... and also brings us back to the "Why would USV be interested in entrepreneurs who aren't savvy enough to raise 100k on their own?"
• Is "professional" angel investing, i.e. someone setting up a smaller fund to invest in people not necessarily known beforehand, adverse selection?  If an entrepreneur has never been successful before and isn't connected to enough powerful industry people with a compelling enough product to get backing from community insiders, what are the chances they'll be able to build a successful company?  Same thing with incubators.  If you can't find a space to build your business, how are you ever going to actually build a business?

If you're a young entrepreneur tempted to get bought by a big company because you think it will be a safe, supporting place to help nuture your idea, talk to Dennis Crowley:

"It's no real secret  that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected.  The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us..."

Dennis had hinted about his departure back at SXSW and I'm sure the growth of Twitter didn't help make him feel any better about being stuck in a place that wasn't helping Dodgeball innovate. 

I think it's fair to say that if you get your startup bought by someone, you should pretty much consider it to be the end of innovation and, if nothing else, the beginning of monetization.  That's why  I hope Ev and Biz  take an investment from a VC for Twitter (I hear there's a great VC firm in NYC, btw...)  and get enough resources to help it really grow.  Let it ride boys... because no one likes wondering what coulda been from inside a big corporate cube.

I don't even think I could draw a line straighter than this...   Here's the growth of nextNY over the last year+.  We started out with 79 interested members, and we're at about 780 at the moment.

Reprise Media just got bought by Interpublic.  That's really fantastic and I can't say enough about Pete and Josh and the rest of the Reprise folks.   They really know their market and obviously Interpublic recognized this.  There are a lot of players in the SEO space, but few as sophisticated and thoughtful about their business as Reprise. 

Good luck with Phase 2 and congrats!