I went to New York TECH WEEK by a16z, and it was amazing to experience the city’s vibrant tech culture firsthand.
Over the week, I had the chance to meet founders, builders, investors, and operators, and see so many ambitious startups being built across the city.
A few highlights:
I visited the Default office, where they were giving away a robot dog and letting people control it.
I stopped by the ElevenLabs pop-up cafe, where I ordered through an ElevenLabs agent and a robot made me a coffee that was actually not bad.
I attended the SimpleClosure cocktail event, which had a really interesting setup featuring artifacts from failed companies like FTX, Theranos, Napster, and more. Also, open cocktail bar which was a huge plus.
I went to the Haven event, where the Knicks game was on and just hung out with everyone there. I really enjoyed the people I met and the energy of the event.
Another highlight was seeing Bryan Kim formerly at Andreessen Horowitz speak. I really enjoyed his talk, especially his point that many early-stage companies do not actually have moats yet. In a lot of cases, the moat comes later. Early on, what matters is momentum.
However, the biggest thing that stood out to me was the scale of the New York City tech scene.
Compared to Toronto, New York has roughly 4x more startups, 7x more startup funding, and during Tech Week it felt like there were 10x more events, conversations, investors, customers, and opportunities everywhere you turned.
But honestly, that makes sense. It’s New York City after all.
Overall, I really enjoyed meeting people, getting to know the startup ecosystem there, and seeing the pace at which people are building.
Looking forward to coming back soon.