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Fred Wilson Co-Founder, Union Square Ventures

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Fred Wilson Co-Founder, Union Square Ventures CONVERSATIONS ON URBANIZATION: TRANSCRIPT Richard Florida Global Research Professor, NYU Fred Wilson Co-Founder, Union Square Ventures OCTOBER 9, 2013 ALEJANDRA: Welcome everybody, please take your I just want to say a couple of additional things about Fred. seats. I’m Alejandra Rangel, I work at the Marron Fred is one of the people I most wanted to meet for a long Institute. The Urbanization Project, the Berkley time. We kind of know each other from Twitter, but I´ve Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the followed his work. I did this early research on venture Entrepreneur’s Exchange Club are happy to host this capital back in the ‘80s, which actually got me tenure event. We’re honored to have Fred Wilson here talking when I taught at Ohio State University, and we went back, to our NYU Global Professor, Richard Florida, about how and we coded in Harvard Business School Library from New York became the second leading hub in tech startups. the Venture Capital Journal every deal for like ten years, They need no introductions, but I’ll say a brief thing about hand coded them. And what we found in that research, it each of them. Fred is a venture capitalist in New York City was so boring and awful, you need not read it. But what in the tech scene since the 1980s, which was a time when we found in that research is that New York City generated nobody was talking, let alone working on this subject, and a lot of capital and shipped every single dollar out, and it he just shared with us that he was called a Rocket Scientist shipped it primarily to the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, the within Wall Street at the time. He writes a decade-old blog Route 128 area. called AVC. But urban theory always taught me, because Jane Jacobs Richard’s work on Creative Class and what makes cities was a good friend, a mentor, that innovation happens in successful and exciting is globally known, and he’s a cities. So, I thought it should be happening in cities, and talented professor, best-selling author, and he’s a senior Fred is the person who I think caught my eye as the first editor at The Atlantic as well. So, we’re happy to have him person to actually start to make that happen. As I was at NYU. thinking about it, he was doing it. He’s, in my view, he is the single key person in the New York start up scene, and And I’ll just say a few things about how the conversation the most important person in the Urban Tech Revolution. is going to go. They’re going to talk until about 5:30, and He’s the co-founder of Union Square Ventures. His list you’re all invited to write questions on your index cards, of investments is just mind boggling for Business School which are on your seats. At 5:25 we’ll take them, and students. Holy God! Good going, Fred. Richard will inform the conversation with your questions afterwards. We’ll wrap up at 5:50 so that everybody can get He wrote a foreword to an incredible book, and if you to class and Richard will be available for press afterwards. haven’t read it, it’s called, Tech and the City: The making If you’re on Twitter, our handle is @NYUSternUP, and of New York’s Startup Community. His foreword is the hash tag is #floridawilson. And as you can see, we’re incredible. The book is just unbelievable. I like to think filming, so our video will be up at the urbanizationproject. of you as an urbanist. Am I right in thinking you’re partly org soon. an urbanist? You’ve worked on initiatives, including the redevelopment of Union Square and Madison Square. Our next Conversation on Urbanization is December 9th He’s an engineer by training with an MBA from another at 4:30 here in the Cantor Board Room, and it’ll feature business school that will go without mention, down the Solly Angel, who leads the Urban Expansion Initiative, road, Wharton School, and he lives here in the city. So, I talking to the former Mayor of Barcelona and current have plenty of other stu! I could say, but I won’t. I want executive director of UN Habitat, Joan Clos. So, let’s start. to start by asking Fred just a really simple question. It’s a big question, so you should feel free to take as long as RICHARD: Thank you, Ale. Can I say something really you want. How did this happen? Obviously, there was embarrassing, well, nice, about Alejandra? I met Ale the Silicon Alley thing, but at what point could you gauge about a year ago, and she came to a talk I gave here, which or see, and for what reasons did... you know, my friends was really rambling and probably completely useless, but used to call it high technology nerdistans. The high tech she was very delightful, and she came up and I said I was engineers wanted to be in the suburbs, have a Porsche, going to teach a J-term. Everybody knows what J-term drive real fast, you know, not be bothered with city life. is, right? J-term course in Abu Dhabi. And she took the How did this New York startup ecology begin to emerge, course, and that was mainly, I guess, how old, seems like and what do you see as some key factors, or maybe some 18, 19, first, second, third years? And Ale basically taught key dates, or some key occurrences in that evolution? the course for me. So, she was by far my best student, and we’re just so fortunate to have her. She’s doing a lot of stu! FRED: Well, you know, I think it’s Tim Berners-Lee in Mexico City. We’re just fortunate to have her at NYU. inventing the World Wide Web, and I think that’s CONVERSATIONS ON URBANIZATION: RICHARD FLORIDA AND FRED WILSON 1 really the moment. And my partner, Brad, says that ago I went to visit a guy named Rob Kalin, who actually, he the worldwide web has caused a shift from electrical may be a graduate from NYU. I know he went to NYU. He engineering to social engineering, and that’s really what has founded a website called Etsy. And I went to see him, and driven it. It’s not so much about chips and routers and the he had this really awesome o"ce overlooking the New electrical engineering of computer science. It’s more moved York Harbor. And I walk into his o"ce and he was playing to the social engineering of computer science, what you can his guitar and, you know, he sang me a song, and I said, do when a technology platform has been built that connects “Rob,” I said, “I didn’t know that, you were such a talented everybody around the world to each other in real time. Then musician.” And he said, “Fred,” I mean, this is a little bit all of a sudden it starts to become about the applications and humorous because if you know Rob you’d understand it. that’s more about people and how people react. “Fred, you know, I’m really an artist.” He said, “If I had grown up in the ’60s, I would have been a folk musician, It’s anthropology and sociology instead of, you know, and if I’d grownup in the ‘20s I’d have been a painter. electrical engineering and that kind of stu!. So, I think But I grew up in this generation, and my art is making that’s the primary driver of why it’s happened, and I also websites.” And I think that’s what you have to understand think that there’s something about the engineer... you is that this is more art than it is science. And artists, I think about Wozniak and you think about Zuckerberg. think, for the most part, congregate in cities. It’s a social Wozniak was, he built computers. He built, he was a chip kind of thing, and it requires being able to hang out with guy, right, and Zuckerberg is a coder, and those are two people in co!ee shops and cafes and bars and that is really very di!erent animals. At MIT, that’s 6.1 versus 6.3. For what’s going on in terms of technology today. It’s not this anybody whoever went to MIT, everything’s a number at isolated scientist in a laboratory somewhere. MIT. And I think it’s a very di!erent personality type. So, that’s my answer. RICHARD: Do you play an instrument? RICHARD: You know, when you say that, I think back to FRED: I do not. Tom Friedman, who had a very di!erent take. You know, if you read the world is flat, what Tom Friedman seems RICHARD: I do. to suggest is that the consequence of the Internet and globalization is that it’s going to spread us apart, not bring FRED: What do you play? us together. And you know, I’m enough of a dialectician, anyone who knows where that comes from probably RICHARD: I’m a guitar player, and so my entire life guess didn’t study in the Stern School, another part of campus.
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