‘Being a CEO is the loneliest job in the world’: Techstars NYC founder

David Tisch, managing partner of NYC-based investment fund BoxGroup and cofounder of ecommerce company Spring, sat down with Monetate CEO Lucinda Duncalfe for a chat during Philly Startup Leaders’ flagship conference Founder Factory.
“Ecosystems are overrated,” he said before some 450 attendees at the conference, held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Center City. For Tisch, the whole “community” spiel contrasts with how isolated CEOs can feel. “Being a CEO is the loneliest job in the world,” he said.

"[Tech] ecosystems are overrated," says @techstars cofounder David Tisch #FounderFactory16 pic.twitter.com/zjmguNJJ0q

— Technical.ly Philly (@TechnicallyPHL) December 8, 2016

Tisch, however, immediately introduced a disclaimer:
“But the great thing about being in a tech ecosystem is that it creates a safety net for talent to fall back on,” Tisch said. He drew from his experience in New York, where luring talent from the West Coast has the upside that, if things don’t work out, engineers rely on New York’s tech scene to come up with more opportunities.
The entrepreneur, who cofounded Techstars’ New York accelerator, also had a word of warning regarding accelerators:
“Accelerators are weapons that companies can use to go faster, but they come at a cost,” he said. “If I was a founder, I’d be super cautious to just let anybody in the company.”