Jordan Cooper's Blog: startups, venture capital, etc…

Palo Alto to NYC…No Pit Stops

Posted on February 5, 2011. Filed under: Uncategorized |

So it’s 70 degrees and sunny in Palo Alto right now.  I am sitting in a cavernous and empty loft in new york city, listening to a rainy sleet drip against the air conditioner outside my window.  You are riding your bike down University Avenue right now, waving to all your friends who work at Facebook and in 2 weeks your life is going to change forever.  In 2 weeks you are going to quit your job at Google or Quora, throw all your shit in a suitcase, throw that suitcase in the back of your Prius, and you’re going to drive that little Prius 3000 miles from Palo Alto to the NYC.  You’re going to crash on your awesome friend’s couch for a few weeks while you take in NYC and learn what makes each neighborhood so fucking awesome and different and unique and stimulating and your going to taste the energy here.  You’re going to discover all of the amazing things in this city, you’re going to snap photos of the places you discover and want to remember, and you’re going to use Hyperpublic to capture and organize this experience of discovery.  You’re going to leave the sun and the valley, and the echo chamber and the quiet and your going to venture out on this Odyssey because your are the next person we are going to hire at Hyperpublic.  You are going to propel yourself into the depths of a New York winter because you have the opportunity to not only join but define what is going to become the first multi-billion dollar public true technology company to be built in New York City.  You are going to introduce a piece of the valley’s DNA into a market that desperately needs it.

As a city, we are long on design/UX innovation and weak on deeper technical DNA.  New York has always had a creative class, but only recently have they been empowered to productize that creativity on the web.  Always lacking deeper technical DNA, in a world where building robust applications was actually difficult, this creative class was not capable of harnessing it’s vision and talent into products.  As the cost and difficulty of building an application has reduced, talented but not deeply technical New Yorkers have become capable of supporting and productizing the vision locked within our creative class.  This change, in conjunction with an influx of capital from Boston/Sillicon Valley, and the mass dissemination of tactical startup advice through social media channels, has set the stage for an explosion of activity and innovation that our city has not seen…ever.

Hyperpublic has begun to build the infrastructure that will support the swelling tidal wave of lightweight social and mobile applications that leverage the location datapoint and that interact with the physical/local environment.  These are applications only conceivable within the parameters of an urban landscape, and there are going to be tens of thousands of them…

When you move here, you will be in the top 2% of engineers in New York City.  We welcome you with open arms.

The details:

This is our app: http://hyperpublic.com/

This is what’s underneath the hood: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/hyperpublic/

This is how you make it happen: Jordan@hyperpublic.com

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