A SF VC in NYC
Reflecting on 15 years of experiencing NYC tech.
Welcome to issue #60 of next big thing.
I’m currently on a Friday evening flight back to San Francisco after spending 4 days in NYC. The WiFi barely works, I’m exhausted, but I’m in a reflective mood, and thus using this opportunity to write.
It’s been a year of many new investment announcement posts on this newsletter, but few of my thoughts beyond them. The investments are, of course, expressions of what I and Footwork have been excited about. But the story behind the story is that I’ve been extraordinarily busy — we’ve made more investments in 2025 than in any other year. I haven’t had enough time for deep work beyond these investing sprints, or for proper catch-ups with many founders outside of the regular check-ins and board meetings with those we currently work with.
This week in NYC brought me back to my roots and reminded me why I love this job so much. And the words are flowing off the keyboard as a result.
NYC has been good to me
While moving to Silicon Valley from the UK as a teenager is what changed my life, NYC is where I got my start. From 2007 to 2011, I went to college an hour south, and gradually became more familiar with the NYC tech scene, as it really started to emerge in that era.
We started working on Artsy on Princeton’s campus in Fall 2008, won the rookie disruptor award at the very first TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, and our first office ended up being at General Assembly in Flatiron.
While founder Carter Cleveland took Artsy forward, I decided to try my hand at investing, with my first real job beyond working on startups: joining Insight Partners in Summer 2010. I loved the job and life in the city, and knew I wanted to come back to Insight after graduation. During my senior year, I worked to expand the surface area of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, leading our first NYC TigerTrek, where a group of students met the Etsy and ZocDoc founders, as well as Fred Wilson (photo below!).
As a side note, I was so inspired by Fred - both from meeting him that day at the USV office and from reading AVC - that I almost started my first blog in 2011, once I was back at Insight full-time. I thought it could be titled A JVC in NYC. I wish I’d had the confidence to do it, or perhaps that the concept of anon accounts existed back then.
When I moved back west to join Shasta Ventures in 2012, I was excited to steep myself in classic early-stage Silicon Valley investing. The first few new investments I worked on, such as ClassDojo, were based in San Francisco, which increasingly felt like the center of the tech universe back then (vs. Palo Alto and other places in the SF Bay Area). But I shadowed existing portfolio company board meetings in NYC from the get-go, and then, in 2014, I found myself getting excited about more and more companies outside of the Bay Area — Canva in Sydney, and Hinge in NYC were two such investments that year.
My former partner Tod Francis called me by the nickname “New York” in this phase — I was constantly out there meeting founders, making more than 10 trips per year. And I ended up finding and leading our investments in Frame.io in 2016, The Farmer’s Dog in 2017, and Brigit in 2019.
These 5 companies — Artsy, Brigit, Frame.io, Hinge and The Farmer’s Dog — all have become category-definers, 3 of them awesome acquisitions, and collectively represent $2.5B+ of annual revenue and $10B+ of enterprise value today. And I got to be on their journeys, at inception in one case, and at Series A in the rest.
This week in NYC, 2 of those 5 founders and their spouses invited me over to their beautiful homes for dinner, and we got to reflect on our years of partnership, plus what has unfolded since. It was very special. I also had several unplanned run-ins and catch-ups (a uniquely NYC experience!) with founder and investor friends, and college classmates (two of whom, Oguzhan Atay and David Tsao, took their company BillionToOne public on NASDAQ yesterday - simply incredible!).
Now, in the Footwork era, 7 out of 23 of our portfolio companies’ CEOs are based in NYC, including Confido, GPTZero, Honeydew, ReflexAI, Protege, and 2 that we have yet to announce. I think that, when all is said and done, the NYC companies I’ve been fortunate to work with will represent a very compelling body of work, and high hit rate, in terms of both returns and impact.
Empire State of Company-Building
Why is NYC a great place to invest in and build companies? As I reflect on my own experiences with NYC companies, the through-line is their focus on the fundamentals. These companies aren’t (or weren’t, in the case of the ones that have exited) exciting because of hype driven by media or by massive fundraising rounds. They worked, or are working, because they look like great businesses. The teams are executing such that the P&L tells the story. Take the Footwork companies — 3 of the 7 are growing at incredible rates while also being free cash flow positive. They have more cash on their balance sheets than they’ve ever raised in equity capital. The rest are growing quickly, and all are already millions or tens of millions in revenue.
I do believe that San Francisco and Silicon Valley continue to have the highest concentration of the most ambitious founders, and likely always will. But NYC has plenty of founders with world class ambition, and most let their businesses speak for themselves, which feels different from a lot of what we see in SF.
Perhaps one of the keys is that NYC has many people, not just startup founders with world class ambition — arguably the highest concentration of any city anywhere. You may be a great founder, but you’re around great artists, bankers, chefs, lawyers, and more. When everyone around you is reaching for the top, it can’t help but raise the collective ceiling. Everyone honing their craft, finding their footwork in every field, in the city that never sleeps. Just as in San Francisco, I don’t believe elections affect this spirit; there’ll be ups and downs but NYC will always attract many of the best.
Take the ingredients of talented humans, a focus on the fundamentals, ambition in every domain, a 24/7 energy unlike any other city, and great things happen. Perhaps I have also personally benefitted from the lack of as much intense competition for venture investments in NYC as in Silicon Valley. And from being an outsider in NYC, just as certain NYCers have benefitted from being outsiders in Silicon Valley.
So here I am, raising a glass to New York City from 36,000 feet. Thank you for the memories this week, and for the past 15 years. Here’s to building more companies that become the next big thing in this great city. I hope I get to be part of a handful of them.
Thank you to Damir Becirovic — our walk on the High Line this morning crystallized much of my thinking to be able to write this in one (airplane) sitting — and to everyone else I saw this week, especially J and Z for the lovely dinners.
I started next big thing to share unfiltered thoughts. I’d love your feedback, questions, and comments!
👇🏽 please hit the ♥️ button below if you enjoyed this post.
When you moved to NYC in 2012, I moved to Silicon Allee (Berlin) andd that’s where my path as a founder really began. Reading your piece reminded me of what that kind of creative energy feels like. Dallas has been productive, but it’s not where the next chapter happens. I’m building a consumer product, and for that, proximity to energy, ambition, and collision matter. NYC is calling my name and this time, I’m answering. Appreciate the spark your post gave me.
Love the idea that when you are surrounded by the best in any profession you are pushed to be the best in your area of expertise.