Web 2.0 Expo NY keynotes are happening today. Technology in use included CrowdVine which I’d not heard of, and plenty of Twitter feeds such as w2e_NY08 .
The opening keynote was Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures with his presentation New York’s Web Industry From 1995 to 2008: From Nascent to Ascendent .
Some stats, Seed and early stage deals.
- 1995 230 SF Bay area, 30 in NY
- 2008 360 SF Bay area, 116 in NY
Fred first asked “New York is not an alley. Call it Broadway, or just New York.”
Here is a summary of his history of New York Web Industry.
- 1991 – ZDNet
- 1993 – New York Online Dialup services
- 1993 – Jupiter Communications online conference
- 1993 – Prodigy
- 1994 – Startups such as Pseudo, Total New york, Razorfish.
- 1994 – Time Warner Pathfinder
- 1995 -NYIC 55 Broad St. – Technology oriented building
- 1995 – Seth Godin – Yoyodyne – Permission Marketing
- 1995 – itraffic, agency.com, NY Times online
- 1995 – Softbank, Double Click, 24×7, Real Media
- 1996 – Silicon Alley Reporter
- 1996 – ivillage, the knot
- 1996 – Flatiron Partners – good sued for that
- 1997 – The Silicon Alley Report Radio Show
- 1997 – mining co.
- 1997 – Total NY sold to AOL
- 1997 – Agency rollups razorfish buying 4 companies
- 1997 – DoubleClick IPO
- 1998 – Seth Godin moves to Yahoo
- 1998 – Burn Rate
- 1998 – Kozmo – We’ll be right over
- 1998 – was the last year of sanity in the Internet wave
- 1999 – The start of the boom
- 1999 the big players came online , all hell breaks loose. 200 startups were funded in 1999, 300 in 2000.
- 2000 – The Crash & Burn
- 2000 – f**kedcompany
- 2000 – Google came to New York. – 86th St Starbucks
- 2001 – Layoffs, Landlords and bankruptcies
- 2002 – Rock bottom
- 2003 – Renewal
- 2003 – Blogging started gizmodo
- 2003 – Web 2.0 coined
- 2003 – del.icio.us was launched from a computer in an apartment
- 2004 – NY Tech Meetup
- 2004 – Union Square Ventures $120million raised
- 2005 – about.com acquired by NY Times
- 2005 – Etsy
- 2006 – Google took over port authority building, now with 750 engineers in NY
- 2008 – Web 2.0 comes to New York City
New York is now 1/3 of Silicon valley, compared to 1/8 of funded Internet companies.
One thing mentioned is a documentary called “We live in Public”. Some of the footage from 1999, is so early Big Brother.
