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In the running for 2011 best new start-up, Codecademy is a brilliant online FREE service that takes the headache out of learning how to code.
Created by Ryan Bubinski and Zach Sims, the duo saw a niche that needed to be filled—people dying to get a piece of Silicon Valley but not having the background to create the next million dollar app. Continue reading
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As technology seems to be the sector to focus on, a number of places are looking to take the crown away from Silicon Valley and become the next start-up mecca.
Mayor Bloomberg is hoping to surpass Silicon Valley with the development of the NYC engineering campus. Bloomberg devised a competition among schools to come up with the best plan for this campus. Currently, the bids from various colleges have been submitted to Bloomberg for review and an announcement will be made early next year. It is speculated the forerunner is the Stanford/CUNY proposal, which would house a 10-acre campus on Roosevelt Island with approximately 100 faculty and 2,200 students. Bloomberg is hoping in the first 30 years, 22,000 jobs would be created. The estimated cost is $100 million.
Russia is also looking to develop their own Silicon Valley with the creation of Skolkovo Innovation Center Project, which is estimated to employ 25,000 to 30,000. Presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich believes Russia will grow to directly compete with Silicon Valley in the tech industry and he claims Eric Schmidt of Google backs his claims. Microsoft and GE have already invested and IBM may have also landed a deal.
The New York Times reported the progress of Guatamela’s Campus Technológico, which is looking to bring start-ups to the country for an inexpensive alternative. Currently, the campus only has one building with 375 inhabitants but is looking to expand to a five or six block entrepreneurial haven. The campus tech founder, Juan Mini, does realize the country’s drug problem, unstable economy, and huge division gaps in income create a challenging situation for growth but he believes the low cost of starting a business, about $7569 according to The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, will sway entrepreneurs to take the risk.
Business Insider just released their list of the top 100 people in Silicon Alley. As I reviewed the list, I was a bit surprised to see the amount of talent coming out of Silicon Alley in comparison to Silicon Valley. A number of companies, over 25%, were valued at over $100 million dollars and many people were from huge online sensations: Facebook and Twitter to name a few. Continue reading
After writing my blog yesterday regarding the high turnout of applicants for the Y Combinator start-up batch session, I stumbled across article in The Atlantic Wire about the founder of Y Combinator, Paul Graham, visit to New York City last month.
I may be a little late in the game with my critique of Grahams’s speech during the first ever Y Combinator New York event, YC NYC, but I thought it was relevant in terms of my last blog post.
YC NYC was a conference/reception event where people had the opportunity to not only mingle with the Y Combinator founders but also start-ups that came through Y Combinator (think Airbnb, Dropbox). During the event attended by many with hundreds waiting outside with hopes of access to the sold-out event, Graham did something odd. He preached to the audience about how Silicon Valley will always be better than New York’s Silicon Alley. Really? Was this the best platform to start the “we’re number one cheer?” Continue reading
Outside the Box 