“New York is tech + [ ]” : Andre Plaut, General Assembly

New York’s technology community distinguishes itself by being “Tech + [ ].” That is, t’s tech + fashion or tech + media or tech + manufacturing. In that way, it distinguishes itself from Silicon Valley, which tends to be more technology for its own sake. That’s according to Andre Plaut, General Assembly‘s Education Product Manager.

Plaut made this point at his “Introduction to the New York Startup Community,” a one-session class he presented at the IFP Made In NY Media Center this past Friday night, to a crowded room of probably two dozen interested technologists. General Assembly is the media center’s education partner.

Some takeaways:

• New York has a startup ecosystem made up of all the actors you might normally expect (VCs, engineers, founders, etc), but one group he wanted this group of people looking to break into the startup community to know about was mentors. He assured the room that most successful tech entrepreneurs want to share their advice, experience and perspective with new entrepreneurs.
• He listed a lot of misconceptions about getting into startup life: that you risk a good idea getting stolen, that it’s too hard to get in, that all it takes to launch a company is a developer and that entrepreneurship is too risky.
• He suggested that people in the room with an idea for a startup should look for a way to start putting its most basic version out there, saying that Groupon started as a WordPress blog where staff posted scans of coupons.
• On the prevalence of job adds for developers: “Developers are non-negotiable, what everyone needs in a company, but, because New York does tech with something else, people without developer backgrounds are welcome here.”
• In terms of breaking in, he said a good place to start is just showing up at events. He also recommended scanning social media and look for people in the startup world asking questions and needing help. Help them find the answers, he said. Be generous.

In the end, he said, potential startup staffers should be advised to get into it for the right reasons. He asked the class to ask themselves why they wanted to get involved in startups. “The wrong reason is because it seems cool or it seems profitable,” Plaut said, “A lot of times it’s not very cool and it’s not very profitable.”