Crain's New York Business.com: NY Tech Meetup’s rising voice

With 800 people in regular attendance, the Meetup is taking on political issue

By Judith Messina

Last week an aspiring entrepreneur sent a humble message to the New York Tech Meetup’s listserv: “It will not be appropriate to launch without your blessing or knowledge.”

The email highlights the way the organization that started in 2004 with 30 people in a conference room has become a sort of unofficial ruling body of the New York tech scene. Its monthly gathering, which has grown to about 800 attendees in NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, is the grandmother of all tech networking events. Lately, the organization has shown signs of becoming a political power, the first real one on the New York tech scene.

“There’s a role for something big, something that represents all of New York tech and that speaks with a loud voice,” said Esther Dyson, an investor, NY Tech board member and a long presence on the New York tech scene.

The goal is to be inclusive—but it’s not easy to get in the door of the monthly event. Hundreds of tickets get scooped up in less than five minutes. Meetup’s message board is filled with posts from people seeking tickets, and scalpers have been known to sell them at three or four times the $10 face value. The attraction: On stage and mic-ed up each month are seven to 10 early-stage companies vying to be “the next really cool tech.”

They demonstrate their products and later schmooze with audience members at the after party. Those demos have helped launch a number of companies, including Tumblr, now a platform for 39 million blogs, and 75 to 100 hopefuls are in the demo pipeline at any one time.

The membership and buzz have been building for years, but a key shift took place in January, when the organization mobilized its membership in a protest that helped shelve SOPA and PIPA, bills that would have strengthened protections against theft of intellectual property, but were opposed by the tech community, which said they would put the kibosh on free expression. The protest got the attention of Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who were co-sponsors of the legislation, and attracted 2,000 new members to the group, according to NY Tech Meetup chairman Andrew Rasiej

The group’s elevated profile means its mission speaks not just to techies, but to Fortune 500 types, lawyers, venture capitalists and academics. It has grown from its early goals of building community and showcasing early-stage companies to being a force on the policy front and a cheerleader for New York. Mr. Rasiej attributes the growth to the fact that technology, once the province of West Coast chipmakers, is now playing to New York’s prodigious strengths in developing and distributing content.

“It’s no longer about techies,” said Mr. Rasiej. “If you look at the thousand people in the room at a NY Tech Meetup, they’re people trying to figure out how to navigate this new world or how to build a startup on weekends.

NY Tech Meetup was started by entrepreneur Scott Heiferman, whose company Meetup is a platform for 200,000 groups worldwide, and meeting organizer Dawn Barber.

Membership began to explode a few years ago as the New York tech scene came back to life following its implosion in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is now the largest meetup group in the world, with nearly 23,000 members. It still uses Meetup’s platform but is far from the volunteer organization it used to be. It is now an independent nonprofit with bylaws, a chairman, a board of directors and a salaried manager. It underwrites its activities with company sponsorships and meeting fees.

Josh Rosenwald, for one, knew nothing of Meetup until a friend suggested he talk about his company at one of the meetings. In February, he demoed Unroll.me, a service he and two partners started last August to help people organize and get rid of email newsletters and junk mail. Afterward, he got his first calls from VCs and now finds that even hiring people, while still tough, is a lot easier.

“People are now interested in us, as opposed to our having to find people,” said Mr. Rosenwald. “It definitely helps smaller companies get on the map.”

NY Tech Meetup now is working with an IPO-minded Nasdaq to produce films about local tech companies and events directed at women entrepreneurs. Last month, it ran a blowout event at tech confab SXSW in Austin, showcasing 30 New York early-stage companies. Mayor Bloomberg has spoken at a Tech Meetup, and some 300 companies put its Made in New York slogan in the footer of their websites and use it to search for talent.

“We’ll be stepping more and more into that role, trying to show people what’s being made in New York,” said Jessica Lawrence, managing director of NY Tech Meetup.

At the same time, the leadership rejects the suggestion that with its growing membership and advocacy interests, the group is starting to look like a trade association. NY Tech Meetup, they say, is an organization not of companies but of individuals, and all 22,000-plus members are entitled to vote to elect the 13-member board of directors.

“The goal is to develop a coordinated voice for the community,” said David Rose, a NY Tech Meetup board member and CEO of Gust, a technology platform for entrepreneurs and angel investors. “It’s the closest thing to a real democracy that we have.”

Complete article: Crain's New York Business.com