Tech Brew Ride Home - (BNS) Tech:NYC CEO Julie Samuels

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

Julie Samuels shares her journey from a journalism major to a prominent figure in the tech advocacy space, detailing her experiences at NCSA, her work with EFF, and her role in founding Tech NYC. She discusses the evolution of the internet, the cultural differences between Silicon Valley and New York City, and the importance of community engagement in shaping the future of technology. Julie emphasizes the need for tech companies to be involved in civic issues and how Tech NYC aims to support and represent the tech industry in New York. 00:00 Introduction and Early Internet Experiences 02:11 Career Beginnings at NCSA 05:08 Transitioning to Journalism and Early Online News 08:00 The Shift in Journalism and the Dot Com Bubble 10:53 The Evolving New York Tech Scene 13:54 Joining EFF and First Amendment Advocacy 16:55 Mainstreaming of Internet Issues 19:53 Reflections on the Impact of Technology 21:05 The Optimism of the Tech Boom 24:19 Contrasting Silicon Valley and New York Tech 32:25 The Birth of Tech NYC 42:34 Tech NYC's Role in Today's Landscape Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. It is inevitable that tech will be, if it isn't already the biggest industry in the city. Listen, I run an organization called TechNYC. I have no idea how you define that. Every company is a tech company, like, say however you want to say it, right? As the city makes that transition, we spend our time at Tech, NYC, thinking about what that means for New York politically, what that means culturally, what does that mean civically, what does it mean philanthropically? as technology, both the people and companies building it and the technology itself changes our city. We want to make sure that that transition lifts as many boats as possible.

Julie Samuels, thanks for talking to us today. Thanks for having me. We're going to use this in a lot of different places, but one of the places we're going to use this is the Internet History podcast. And for those purposes, anybody that's listened to that podcast, you went to the University of Illinois. I did. I have some internet history. That, okay. So Champaign Urbana. Urbana. Champaign Urbana. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know where my accent's coming from.

Mosaic and CSA. Okay, when were you there? Yeah. Did you overlap with all that? I did. I was there postmark Andreessen. So I graduated college in 2000. I was in Champaign. I was a journalism major, actually. Like many people's tech in internet history. Mine was somewhat accidental if you were growing up in the 80s and 90s. And mine was accident. I mean, I was always very interested. You know, I was like an early AOL user, but I'm not, I wasn't and still am not technical. But I went to the University of Illinois because I'm from Chicago, did, had never heard of NCSA. And I went to college in 1996.

This is so bad. Can I interrupt? listeners and context. NCSA, when the internet is born, there's like, it's a government sort of thing. It's the national supercomputer. Center for a computing application. Okay. So it was a government-run thing. It was a known of the internet.

Mark Andreessen, Mosaic, which became Netscape. Listen, look at the internet history podcast. All this history has been told. But that's crucial to know that that's where you were. Yes. That's why I was. But I didn't even know. So I was a journalism major.

I was a journalism major. And I thought I wanted to be an economics reporter, which is actually kind of crazy. If you know me now, that really doesn't make much sense. And I had this professor who I still keep in touch with and he knew I want to be an economics reporter. And I was looking for a job on campus and he said to me, you know, there is this center, I guess, this NCSA, National Center for Supercomputing applications. and they're looking for a communications intern and explaining technology to regular people's hard and explaining economics to regular people's hard. So maybe you should try and get this internship. And, you know, you can, whatever, you can learn a little bit about journalism that way

about explaining complicated concepts to everyday people. So I got an internship at NCSA. That was probably, let's say, 1997, 1998, probably 1997. I think I worked there for three years, the last three years of college. Was Larry Smar still? Yeah. Yep. Okay. Sorry.

Yeah. God, I've read my name a long time. And I was the comms intern. So it was like, it was super geeky. You know, it was like the geeky geeks. No one really knew what they were up to. Obviously, it had had a huge moment, which was that Mark Andreessen, while he was an undergrad, had invented Mosaic there, the team there had invented Mosaic.

He dropped out. he left. Mosaic, obviously, became Netscape, graphical web browser. You know, here we are. And there were a lot of people, there were a ton of people were still at NCSA from when Mark had been there. A lot of them actually were a little bit bitter.

I think that he had left and he made a ton of money. Because, and I'm going to interject again, if you haven't listened to these things, to form Netscape, Jim Clark and Mark Andreessen go back to, what is it, Champaign or how am I saying it? Urbana. You're from the Midwest, Brian.

Oh, right. My wife is from Michigan. So, okay, say it like my wife would. Yeah. They went and recruited a lot of the engineering team who, the first episodes of the Internet History Podcasts are talking to a lot of them. But so your point is that the folks that didn't get recruited are a little. But there was spyglass.

Didn't that come out of there too? Yeah, yeah. By the way, people, I'd really quickly to give you, just a little bit of color. There were a bunch of people who they all called Netscape, Nutscrape. That was what it was called out there internally. Because there were rumors that maybe they took the code base. Yeah, there was a lot. Yeah, it seemed a little dramatic.

But that was not, you know, I was not, like I said, I wasn't even technical. I was literally writing like these little press releases for the website. And it was very wonky stuff because it was, it was academic, it was research driven. It wasn't consumer facing at all. But that was really fun. And, you know, like I said, just in the, I guess my career really was such that, like most people's, a lot of coincidence and a lot of haphistance. And I had a really big office there. So I spent a lot of time there.

Even like if I was just studying or doing something unrelated to my job, I would hang out there sometimes. Oh, and there was really fast internet there. And I was still on dial up. Right. We were still on dial-up in the university was like transitioning over. Until late into the 90s, again, kids, real heads know that you kind of, there was a time period where you couldn't get an email address or an internet connection unless you were at a university or your employer paid for it.

Even at a university, I think that my senior year in college was the first time that I had fiber to my apartment. So that means for my first three years of college, I was still on dial-up. Oh, I was still on dial-up senior year, too, which is actually why I never really used Napster. Right, right. If I was at work, if I was at NCSA, I had a very, very fast connection. So, you know, I hung out there a lot. And I had a great boss.

And she was a communications person, too, not a really technical person. And she was also a deadhead. And she was really into John Perry Barlow. and she was really into this organization, San Francisco, called EFF. So this was, again, all the late 90s. And it always held a lot of lore for me because I was really introduced. That was my introduction to tech culture, I would say. And then I had a couple summer jobs that were relevant.

One, I guess, would be particularly funny. The summer between my junior ins. Also, I was learning, as part of my coursework, my journalism degree, I was learning a lot about, again, like I said, it was a journalism major. And I took this course, journalism law for Amendment law. It was just after the Supreme Court had decided some pretty big cases around CDA 230, around, you know, the ACLU litigation. There was a lot happening in the legal field then, thinking about it. Is this the stuff around the Napster time? No, this is before that.

Yeah, it's still trying to figure out, okay, what is this new technology? What are the parameters around this new technology? You know, things that we're still the, what's the, I'm forgetting right now, you know, the 1996 law that allows users, you can't be sued if you're a platform. All of all those laws. They're brand new. 1998 litigation, exactly. So that was all happening while I was an undergrad. I was learning about it in school while I was working at NCSA. And, you know, it was all really, really interesting to me. And then my, the summer between my sophomore or junior and senior year, I got this internship at Scripps Howard, you know, a company that owns a bunch of newspapers to help. It was just an internship to work in the office where they were putting the news online. And so I went and this is also, this is also, this, was pretty crazy. I took, same thing, like some of my professors helped me find this job. I took the job. This is embarrassing. I thought it was in Nashville, and I, like, sent my dad the information on

the job, and he said, Julie, this job is in a town called Knoxville, not Nashville. Oh, my God, where is that? He said, I don't know. Well, it's still in Tennessee, but. I knew this. I got the state right. So anyway, I went down there for the, it was just so funny. So it was, it was, in the Knoxville News Sentinel, which is just one of the newspapers owned by this newspaper chain. And there was this like office. I can't. It was like out of a movie, this space. We were in the newspaper's office.

But there was this space. It was like almost up in this attic area. We were like the bastard stepchildren of the newspaper. And it was this like dark little room. And we essentially would take the news that was being produced for the newspapers in print. And we would make it very, you know, very basic HTML coding. which is pretty much the extent to my technical skills. They're rusty.

And we would take these packages. I remember I did a lot of work taking like the real estate packages, the kind of like lifestyle stuff for the newspapers that was being written and would then then push it out to all the papers owned by Scripps Hauer. So it was really early days of putting the news online. You're not the first person. I've talked to people at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, other places. the degree to which this is the skunk works up in the up in the attic over here.

Yeah. Like I know you didn't stay there super long, but like there was this. How long do you think that that was always the sense before maybe newspapers or media? Well, yeah, I think a lot about this actually. When did that shift? It definitely was starting to shift 2000, 2001, but it's still, and I can actually really quickly tell you about my first job because my first full-time job out of office, also relevant to this. Maybe let me do that and come back to your question.

My next job, I think, showed a little bit more of the shift. I finished college in 2000. I went to work for a political magazine called the National Journal in D.C., but I went to go work for the National Journal.com, which was, to your point, different than the National Bureau. When I got there, it was in a totally different building. It was in the Virginia suburbs in this kind of funky townhouse. Totally different people.

You're getting the scraps from the big kids table. Yeah. We were got on. And everyone else was in, I think at that time, was in the Watergate building, which is a very fancy building in D.C. This was in 2000, like I said. But I will also, I had that job for one year. Okay. And over the course of that one year, we moved.

into a new fancier office in the district. And they were at that time, so in 2001, they were consolidating all that, everyone, at least geographically. So I think that kind of answers your question a little bit. And it was becoming clear that the staffs were. Let me put a spin on that. So, okay, folks are like, I keep asking people this.

Folks are like, okay, this internet is a thing. and then the dot-com bubble bursts and my memory of it being here in New York after the bubble bursting is people are cheering because, oh my God, the fat is over, we can go back to the way it was. What are your memories of that? Especially vis-a-vis journalism and stuff like that.

Let me tell you a little bit about what I did my day-to-day was when I was at the National Journal.com. One of my main tasks was we had a morning newsletter and this was a very, very early morning newsletter. I don't mean early in the day. I mean early in the evolution of morning newsletters. And a group of us, there were three or four of us maybe who had to get there at like 6 a.m., six something, which is very early when you're 22. And we would split up the country by north and south.

And each of us would have a list of city newspapers we were supposed to check every morning. And we would start on the East Coast. and we would refresh the newspapers from the east to the west, you know, because by the time, you know, we had to get, when we got there, it was 3 a.m. in California, there was no news. The point I'm trying to make, actually, the long wind up here is that in those days, newspapers were still publishing how they always published, and they were posting their news once a day in the morning. Some of them were refreshing once midday. but generally they were just writing a story a day and posting it in the morning and we would get to work and we would you know crawl across the country find the headlines and as soon as the California papers tend to post a little earlier than some of the sleepier Pacific Northwest towns obviously but once we got like

the Washington state Oregon once we got the news from those papers we would hit publish on our morning newsletter which is called morning edition and that would you know go out we were trying to do it just before 9 a.m. So that was that wasn't my entire job, but that was a big part of my job in 2000, 2001. So when, I think it showed the tension you're asking about, which is

did people, people were resisting the change. Or not only were they resisting the change. They felt like, okay, we had to give a lip service to this fad for a few years. But now it's over.

And then there were certain people that were like, well, it's not over. In fact, this is like inning two or three or something like that. You know, first of all, I was, I was young. And the people who worked in the little, in the offices with the internet people, in the attics and the townhouses where I worked. Yeah. See, this was, this is our age bias where no one, no one. We were all true believers.

We, you know, we were all like. I remember where I was standing when I first learned, I remember when I first learned about Google. Like, I remember when I ordered my first book on Amazon, it was all, it was in those offices with those people who were all really, frankly, we were really early to think about a lot of those things. And so I don't remember there being much glee because I think a lot of us, we also, because we were young, we didn't feel, I think a lot of the glee that you're talking about, a lot of the ha-ha we told you so came from people who felt like they missed the boat. But we were, we hadn't missed anything.

We were on the boat. You know, we were the first people on the boat. You know what? Put a pin in that, because maybe we'll come back to that in terms of like, like, things like AI and like cultural or tech trends and things like that. forgive me. I'm going to, I'm going to jump a little bit. Yeah. Because I want to get to the, to the EFF, because I want to leave a lot of time for contemporary. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, you know what? You're right. New York. So tell me your sense of the New York City tech scene when you're joining it, when it, how it evolves. And look, I'm going to tee you up in ways that are probably not

good journalistic practices, but like, you know, why is the New York City tech scene different? And give me anything you want. Okay. I will have a lot, but I have to say that I wasn't really back here. I lived here after D.C. And it was doing some First Amendment work and then I kind of became a lawyer. And then I went to EFF and then I came back here. Right.

So legal stuff. You know, and again, we're alighting over issues of determining this new technology. and maybe we'll come back to this in a second of like what are the parameters and how can we or we depending on who you're working for and what your positions are how can we um guide how these sorts of regulatory and legal things happen this is literally what I spend all my time thinking about okay so so take me there to the like the 2000s and and uh all that stuff yeah okay so I mean I guess I would say so like fast forward I spend some time in New York um I I was in New York on September 11th.

I had rid of a crazy September 11th story, not tragic. And I mean, you know, but it really, from that moment, I was like, oh, well, it stamped me as a New Yorker for life, I would say. And I would all say I always knew I'd come back eventually. But life has a weird way of, you know, conspiring. And I ended up, I went to law school. And then I was an IP lawyer for a while. And then I went to EFF, which was like the dream job.

It was like the why I went to law school. job. It was like thinking about... Why was it a dream job for you? Why was that what you wanted to do? Well, I was always, um, I was always like a First Amendment geek, you know, super, super just interested in the First Amendment, always found it fascinating as long as I can remember. And I was ever since undergrad, fascinated by, um, what the First Amendment looked like as we transitioned to the internet. Um, and still am. I mean, we still, we're living in that moment right now. Like, I think about it all the time, how we haven't really, you know, gotten that far.

I remember really quickly, not to go back, I'm going to do this forever. You're never going to get rid of me. But I had this moment where I remember where I was sitting in undergrad, and it was like the light bulb went on. And I understood that we would get news in real time and what I envisioned it would look like, though. I didn't, it was so early. I thought, do you remember those high school yearbooks in the page stock is like kind of, of thick. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had this, like, what I thought we would get is you'd get like a New York Times book and the pages would like update. Well, and I've interviewed people and you know what the

news event was that trained at least certain media folks that you have to be 24-7 was the Princess Diana. Oh, yeah. Death. What year was that? 97, I think. And not everyone got on board at the same time. But yeah, anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, so, so EFF was the dream job because I was really interested in the First Amendment. I was really interested in what, you know, what, what, what freedom of speech and the

free flow of information looked like on the internet. And there's literally no organization. So that was late 2000s. I ended up moving there in 2010. There's no organization in the world in, you know, 2009, 2010 that's thinking about that more than EFF. And so I picked up and moved across the country. I also just spent a ton of time on software patent work.

So I did like half my time was spent on copyright and trademark in First Amendment and half is on software patents. Including patent trolls, which we can go into. Yes, continue. Sorry. I was the Mark Cuban chair to eliminate stupid patents, which the Wall Street Journal called possibly the best new job title in 2012, which I thought really was probably a career piece. And also podcasters owe you for that. crazy podcasting

troll. Oh yeah. Yes. We got rid of the podcasting troll. I'm sorry. We're going everywhere. Okay. So. Study. And play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal. Everything you need to study and play with

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Tickets on sale now at Yamava, Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N. must be 21 to enter. EFF, First Amendment, all that good stuff. Yeah, and which was, I mean, it was great. And we were there, you know, I was there during the Arab Spring. I was there during Sopa Pippa. There's, I could, like, all of these things, all of these moments.

The podcasting trolls were unbelievable. I had so many, I went on Adam Carolla's podcast. He said some crazy shit. Can I swear on this? It was a lot of the years. It was great. Yeah. And it was a really interesting time.

I'd say a lot of the issues we were working on at EFF were really, the time I was there, they were really becoming mainstream. They were going from this kind of like more niche internet telecom, like bubble. Or like we're in industry specific like lobbying or legal group or something versus, no, this is everything. This is pervading society. That's right. And it was post the dot com bubble.

You know, it was just post the dot com. It was just post, 2008, the recession. Things were just starting to kind of pick up again. And,

um, and everyone's paying attention. And everyone's parents were asking, what is this Facebook thing? You know, things were just becoming really, really mainstream. Um,

they were becoming mainstream in D.C. they were becoming mainstream. you know, in, you know, I always say, I always say 2009 is the iPhone and it's also Facebook opening up to non-colob opening up to everybody. So your mother gets an iPhone and a Facebook account. Yeah. And, you know, I had been living in Chicago and in 2010, I moved to San Francisco for this job. And it was so fun and it was so interesting. And I also remember I'd just be out about in San Francisco. And I meet people all the time who are like, I'm building an app that's going to do this. I'm building a thing that's going to do why. And, you know, I'm like I said,

I grew up in Chicago too. I got some pretty Midwestern tendencies at times. And I'd always be like, that is crazy. But it also felt really, really refreshing because people, you know, it was so optimistic. It was just so like the sky is the limit. It was, it felt like, and again, then the Arab Spring happened and it was like we are, this is it. You know, this is what we came here to do. Like, it's all happening right now. And God, it was an amazing time. And I-

And so Papippa, which has a huge New York angle too, but that too. You know what? I want to poke at this. Because I remember that too. And we're in a different era now. But the feeling of that, well, this is why we all fell in love with technology that you give, you level a playing field, you give potentially every human being on the planet access to all of the same knowledge, all of the same technology.

Man, that 2010s era, even into the 20 teens, didn't we feel like we were killing it? We did it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know where to go with that. I think about it all the time. I think about it a lot. I think about it a lot now because obviously.

we also created, I mean, clearly, we created a lot of vacuums and a lot of bad people and bad things filled some of those vacuums. I think, I sometimes, I fear sometimes that I was naive. Me too. Yeah. And that's something I actually love about New York. New York feels much more grounded and realistic about some of the risks associated with this. Like, I thought the Arab Spring happened and I thought it was done. You know, I thought like democracy just won forever.

You know, like it was it. And clearly, you know, clearly history tells a different story. And we're still living in the middle of that. So I'm not quite sure where it ends. I mean, hopefully it never ends. It keeps marching forward. But so many of us, it was a self-selecting group of people, of really optimistic people, really idealistic people.

And very young people, frankly, very young people. It was totally, I mean, there was, I knew no one over 40. Who I knew no one. Think about who we knew working on these projects and who. Yeah, but that's always true. Again, self-selecting for your cohort and, you know. It was uniquely self-selecting because the technology and the ability to understand the technology was. If you knew, you knew, and that sort of aged you out if you didn't know.

That's right. If you didn't feel comfortable on the tools. And so I just, I think about that a lot. And I think I don't want to lose the optimism. and the idealism, but you also don't want to be naive. And I don't know where the right balance is for that. But I think about it all the time. Okay, I got to do this.

We've danced around this a little bit, but explain to me. So you do come to New York. Yeah. And you can tell me how you do that and why in greater depth. But what I want to know, you've been in Silicon Valley. You come back to Silicon Alley. I want you when you come here to explain to me the difference between the two. Yeah.

And then on a larger sense, as we'll get into Tech NYC and all this stuff, what the differences are. But when you come here versus Silicon Valley, what's the difference? Okay. I think the primary thing, like the 10,000 foot view, is it felt really good. And I really wanted to be in a place where tech. was just a part and not the whole. And when I was in San Francisco, when I lived only ever in San Francisco,

I never lived down the peninsula. Also, I'm a city person, so New York is just much better for me. But putting that aside for a second, when I lived there, I say this all the time, actually, and it sounds kind of trite, but I totally think this is true.

When I lived in the valley, in the valley, you met people all the time who were tech people who lived in the valley. And in New York, you meet New Yorkers who work in tech. And the fundamental reason for this, and it still holds true, but was even more true then

and even more true before I came back, is that if you work in tech in New York, someone at some point has asked you, why aren't you in the valley? And you have an answer that probably doesn't have to do with work. It's probably like my family's here. My friends are here. I'm really into the theater. I love the music. You know, fill in the blank.

And what that means is you've got a bunch of people who love New York and who are here for other things too. Now, that means that you have a, it's just culturally, the tech sector is really, really different. There is clearly. I'm going to point out there's a little snobbery to it too. Like, I don't know that, do you think that San Francisco folk do that New York City tech folk? Like, I think that there is a different. snobbery. I mean, like, you know, people have their own snobbery about where you're from is a very common common thing. I think the snobbery about SF was when I was there and now is again, but wasn't for

some time in the middle, but now is again, like, this is where you come to build. This is where the hacker houses are. We are serious. We do not, you know, we are working around the clock, building our whatever. You can't go out without, you know, you can't throw a stone without hitting a VC or an engineer. And that is, I think, a lot of the pride of the tech sector in San Francisco is around that zeitgeist. And here it's different. Here it's like, oh, I went to this amazing art opening or I did the queen of York.

The reverse snobbery is, well, there's no culture in San Francisco, but we have it in spades here. Like, actually, I'm going to paraphrase you. Yeah. Um, uh, something that I, New York City's unique advantage as a place where technology is, is that it stacks on top of other world class industries, finance, media, fashion, healthcare, which allows startups to, quote, pivot almost anything and figure out if it's going to work. So that's interesting, the stack, we talk about software stacks, but the stack of industries. Yeah, well, let me also, let me build on that for a second. This is something I think is, well, first of all, I think what you said,

your paraphrasing of me is dead on. I think that is one of the major, major value propositions for New York. If you are building a tech company in the media space, you're building tech company in the fashion space and the real, you know, whatever, why wouldn't you want to be around? You can, technical talent now, you can find technical talent. But what you uniquely have in New York is subject matter expertise, really strategic. capital, mentorship, who knows about the industry in which you are building. Okay. So I think that

that's like a major advantage for New York. But I think a lot about the internet kind of in waves, in stages. I'm going to totally oversimplify. I think also a lot of your listeners call me out for all the things of my oversimplification that I am missing. But just, you know, kind of bear with me. You have obviously a lot of the early infrastructure on the West Coast. Okay. But then just before I lived there and while I was there, the application layer was really built on the West Coast, mostly in the Valley, but also, of course, Amazon and Seattle. And that was because of the introduction of the iPhone, of course. But the application layer that made the Internet accessible to everyday people was built in this moment in time. And the biggest companies, which are still the biggest tech companies, were all from this time. And they were all succeeded for, lot of reasons, but I think one of the major reasons those companies were so successful is because they were built in this vacuum. And government wasn't really paying attention. Competitors weren't really paying attention. These companies had crazy names. No one on the East Coast really took them seriously.

That's a point I've made a million times. Yeah. I'm speaking in generalities, of course, but it's like, oh, crazy company called Google in like an office park. We're taken seriously in the sense that like, not even in the innovators dilemma sort of way, oh, they're coming up. from behind. It's like, well, that's a joke. It's the Chris Dixon thing. The next big thing is always thought of as a joke. Correct. Yes. Right. Until all of a sudden, especially because of network effects, but until all of a sudden, they were so big, they were so big that you couldn't not take them seriously. I mean, obviously, you couldn't not take them seriously. Okay. So we are past that. Like there is, now the pendulum has swung just completely in the other direction. If anything,

the competition, the regulators, um, everyone comes after. are these companies really, really early. I think that actually bodes well for New York. Well, I don't, I mean, I just think I shouldn't say that bodes well for New York. I should say New York has the competitive advantage in that landscape. Because the days of just like heads down, build in a vacuum, like that's just not happening again. We see it now with AI. We're much earlier in the cycle.

We're talking about regulation everywhere. We're talking about competition everywhere. There's so much. When you say heads down building in a vacuum, you, You're almost saying that no one's paying attention to you, so you're not getting the spotlight shown on you. Right. So you can just. There's no pressure. That's right.

Right. That doesn't happen anymore, obviously. Obviously, we're just in a different time. So I think that cities like New York, where people have built relationships across sectors, where people, you know, just kind of are better integrated into these systems. I think tech will really thrive because of that. you know, they know. In New York, you cannot only know people in your industry. Yeah. Like, I don't care who you are.

I don't care how rich you are. Like, you are on the subway. You are walking around. You are bumping into other people. There are parents in your kids' schools who, you know, it's just a total melting pot of like all different kinds of people working. And tech will never be the biggest in. I mean, I actually, tech will be the biggest industry in New York.

Let me, let me paraphrase that. Tech will never be the only biggest in it. It will never be a single industry town. It won't be a one, one industry town, right. Right. That will never happen here. So I just think we then have the better skill set to handle some of these challenges because we have cross-sector relationships. You know, oh, I know someone from, I know someone from like this club I'm in, or I know someone they met at the theater or like another parent at school or whatever. I'll call them and just ask what to do.

There's just so much more of that here. Can I jump to the founding of Tech, NYC? Tell me the background of it, Fred Wilson, Tim Armstrong. Actually, no. Tell me as far as you know, where the impetus for this came from, and then how did you get involved? Yeah. Okay. So I moved back here in 2014.

Yeah, I moved back here in 2014. And when I was moving back, I'd had a couple conversations. There had been, before I moved back, a couple efforts to set up some kind of industry organization. They never really got off the ground. I knew a little bit about them. And an industry organization specifically for tech as an industry in New York City. Yes.

New York City focused. Okay. Then I really got off the ground. That was before my time. And then I got back here, like I said, at the end of 2014. I had a baby in March of 2015. So I was heads down for a little bit. And then in about, let's say, October, September, October of 2015, 2015, I started having a series of meetings.

Fred and Tim, like you said, Kevin Ryan, Desiree Gruber, Kevin Sheeke. I'd say those were kind of the first five. And what is what is the agenda of those meetings? Like what? First of all, it wasn't all with all of those people. But what's the energy? Like what is trying to be? Yeah.

I, well, I think, you know, there was energy to create an organization to represent the tech industry in New York City. I think that Bloomberg had just finished his mayorality. He was back at his company. And so a lot of people who had worked for Mike were thinking a lot about how to ensure tech continued to thrive in the city. So I knew some of them and they kind of reached out like, have you thought about this? And then that was kind of how I got hooked up with Tim and Desiree, who worked with Tim. We had all talked about it. And I said to them at that point, well, you know, I know Fred and Kevin have explored this before.

I'm not doing this without Fred and Kevin. And so we talked to Fred and Kevin. And like we all just were having these conversations. And it was one of those things where we just kind of kept having meetings and conversations. And then the next thing I know, I was like, oh, my God, this is real. Well, and they want you because you have the experience of the policy and the EFF and all that. Yeah. Yeah, I knew.

And I think with, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, I think in many ways one of the reasons I was a good candidate, for this is I knew a lot of these people from my work in D.C., from the federal work I had done. But in New York, I was still pretty new, right? I had just moved back. And like I said, I just had a baby. And so when I moved back, I was kind of like no one's force, if that makes sense. And so much of what we do at Tech and YC is political, small people to political. And I don't think anyone felt, I don't know this is my perception, of course. I don't think I don't feel like I was their person. Ready to soundtrack your summer?

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Or you're a threat to their agenda. Yeah, like I kind of knew them all. I was kind of like a little bit like Switzerland in that I was very pro tech. I knew my tech. Everyone thinks you're on their team. Yeah. And so we just kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other. Like sometimes I think of myself like an accidental founder.

I was like, oh my God, I think I'm starting this organization. like what what just happened here um and so that was the end of 2015 and then um early 2016 i started working on it in earnest um i hired a woman named sarah brown um who is still here she's chief strategy officer she was the original chief of staff her first day was march first that's when we got health insurance um you know that was and and like there are a bunch of like little things the reason we're called tech nyc is because um my husband found the domain name It was available. NYC.

You have a lot of stuff like that. He still finds all my domain names for me. He loves to find a good domain name. And then we launched in May of that year of 2016. And the reason we picked our launch date when we did, got on the River Forget this, we had, there's a great article in the New York Times. It must have been, I think, May 4th, May 6th,

that May, maybe it was like May 1st because it was that week. the reporter was Steve Moore and it was a pretty long story. There's actually, there's a picture of me in it with my dog, who came to the office with me in New York City, which is kind of rare. And it was a story about the growth of the startup sector in New York. And it announced in it that Tech, NYC was launching. The whole story was not about Tech NYC, but it was-

This was 2016. It's the growth of the tech. Start-up sector. Yes. It still felt really nascent. And then, and I just remember where I was sitting. when it came out and we were freaking out because we had a party scheduled for like Wednesday night. I think it was a Wednesday night party and we just needed the story to publish

before. And then we had this party and, you know, Fred and Kevin and Tim, they were all there. And Bill de Blasio, who was mayor, was there. And Senator Schumer was there. And we had a bunch of real estate people there. And it was a huge party. It was packed. You like couldn't move. And I think that a lot of people in New York politics, not tech now, but New York. York politics really took us seriously after that night. Realize you were a constituency that mattered. That was, yeah, that was right. And we had 40 members when we launched.

Oh, and then one other quick thing I'd say that I think is really relevant. And I still, I don't want to use the word struggle because I think that's too strong of a word. But one unique challenge of tech in New York that was really true in 2015, 2016, and remains true, but different in 2025, 2026, is that still some of the largest tech companies are not headquartered here. Now, they're huge employees, you know, 10,000 employees here, but they're not headquartered here. And people in New York are used to having the CEOs sit here in other industries. So there's a little, you know, one of the things we, like, listen, we could have launched an organization in 2015, 2016, that had four or five members and they weren't New York companies.

and we could have kind of been just representing the biggest tech companies. And I really, like that, I had no desire. So what you're saying is it's like Facebook has headquarters here, Amazon, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's versus, no, Etsy. They're, yeah, or a data dog or whatever, yeah. We all had to be involved, right? And it was Etsy. And it was in those days, you know, it was forceware and Kickstarter and Warby Parker.

And they were all involved from the beginning. And it was really, really important, was it they were at the table right next to Google, who already had a huge presence on the west side at that. Right. And Amazon and Facebook. And they were all, and companies like Bloomberg LP too, which is a huge tech company here, of course. And that we had small startups and the biggest employers and that it really was a big tent. I, again, for the interest of time, I have to all right some things.

Yeah, I feel like I'm talking way too much. No, no, no. believe me. This is, it's called oral history for a reason. Does everyone do this? No. The people that I like are the people that talk a lot. So you're in my good book right now. So just for people that are listening, again, founders, tech folks or whatever, give me tech NYC's pitch, as opposed to your history over the last decade or so. Tell me what it means right now. today. Can I just, there's just one moment. I have to talk. Oh, yeah, please, please. From Ensopa and Pippa, these big, oh, I'm sorry, you keep bringing that up. Yeah, I just want to talk about that for second. I was still living in San Francisco then. The Congress was trying to pass these bills that we all were calling the internet killers. It would have basically broken, broken the open internet. Yeah. And a lot of people worked really hard. I worked really hard from San Francisco at EFF, but the New York tech community really stepped up. And Senator Schumer really stepped up. And there were protests here. and Senator Schumer showed up and Bill's killed. And there was that moment.

And then also there was net neutrality, which is another really big policy fight we worked on with the New York tech companies after that. And those moments really, in the political sphere, really solidified the New York tech scene. I was going to say, has New York been, I don't want to say it's stronger because the FF, again, was born out on the left coast. But like, has, is it has has, has the New York? tech scene been a little stronger in terms of defending policy and things like that around tech? That's a I don't know. That's a good question.

I'm not sure. Better. Okay. Better was probably the wrong way to put it. It has been active. And it has changed a lot over the years. But there was a time in the 20 teens where the New York tech sector was really close-knit. And there were a number of essentially like network companies, most of them.

were USB portfolio companies, but not all. And they were incredibly active in policy work. And there was this group of us. And there were some CEOs, but a lot of was the policy people, the companies. And we were on the Amtrak. We were going to D.C. You know, we were doing the thing. And it was a really, it was a great moment in time.

It was also a very optimistic moment in time. Anyway, I just, I felt like I really wanted to call it out. But let me go. in the interest of time, let me fast forward to the tech NYC, please. For today, for someone listening today, why you should get involved, what you're doing and what the purpose is. So let me say tech NYC is an organization that has members. Most tech companies in New York, I shouldn't say most tech companies in New York, many, many tech companies, all different sizes, many investors, they're all members. And we do a bunch of work to ensure that New York City is the best place to build and grow a tech company.

That means, of course, that's very abstract. That means a number of things. But what it, I guess, means in practice is we spend a lot of time. We focus on city and state policy and politics. We work in Albany on a lot of tech-related bills. There's a lot moving right now there that would impact how technology works here. But over the years, on the policy side, one of the big shifts is we're working more on more on issues that impact all New Yorkers because people who work in tech are just

New Yorkers. And as the industry has grown, as the workforce has gotten a little older, they care more and more we find about things like, you know, public safety and good schools and functioning subway systems and making sure it's a place people want to live because the companies we fundamentally believe, the bargain is the companies will want to be here if the people they want to hire are here. So we do a lot of work, I would say, to make sure this is a place where people in tech want to live. That also means we partner a lot with the city and other organizations to do work around education, workforce development, you know, not just attracting technical people, but also training New Yorkers. I mean, I could go on forever, but let me take

a step back and try and frame for you how I think about our work, especially kind of the second half of the last decade. It's about to be Tech NYC's 10-year anniversary in 2016. It is inevitable that tech will be, if it isn't already the biggest industry in the city. Listen, I run an organization called TechNYC, I have no idea how you define that. Every company is a tech company, like, say however you want to say it, right? As the city makes that transition, we spend our time at Tech NYC thinking about what that means for New York politically, what that means culturally, what does that mean civically, what does it mean philanthropically? As technology, both the people and companies building it and the technology itself changes our city, we want to

make sure that that transition lifts as many boats as possible. And the way to get that right, we think, is involving the companies, but more importantly, of course, involving the people who work at the companies in the city and state. The workers, the stakeholders, the communities where those workers and stakeholders live, etc. Exactly. This is, I never know how to frame these sorts of questions, but like, so. If you're looking to the end of the decade for the New York City tech ecosystem.

Yeah. What would you like to see, you know, see again, in the AI era through the AI lens or whatever? Let me give you a slightly more political spin on. Okay, do it. If you will. Because I'm bad at asking questions. Yeah, well, let me tell you. Okay, I'm going to great at asking questions, obviously, because I've been talking like a nonstop for a while.

But I think that when I think about, you know, 2030, 2035, like I hope that New York City and New York State government are using technology well for New Yorkers, that city and that local government is working. And we all know that like working means that there's some level of tech involved. I hope that there are people who are working for the city and the state, maybe as mayor or governor or in other. other important roles, running large New York institutions that aren't just tech companies who come from the tech industry, who've thought about how to solve problems with the tech mindset, and that the tech employers and the companies across the city are really good partners to the city and the state. And that the city and state is a good place for those companies and people who work, work at them to be.

All right. Very last one. Anyone listening that is an early stage founder, what's the smartest way to get involved with either TechNYC or with the New York City government when you're starting out right now? Okay. So I've got a couple quick answers. One, we have a daily digest email. We've got a daily email that you can sign up for TechNYC.org that has a ton of information

on this very topic, how to get involved, how to be around. And the email is? Well, you can just go to tech nyc.org. You'll find it, yes. And I think there's a lot of information in there. It's just, it's a quick hit. And I think you could get it. I just have to say it's a great daily newsletter because it talks about tech,

but it also talks about what's going on in the city that maybe doesn't have anything to do at tech. And so you get like the cross. It's about joining the actual tech ecosystem, the culture and the, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think one of the challenges, obviously, with building a startup is like, how do you balance the networking and the need to go to events with like the actual building? But you have to do some of both. If you are someone who either is building a company in the government space, you want to sell your product to government one day, maybe, or maybe you just want, maybe you just want to get involved in the city or the state somehow. You live here.

You're building a company, but you also really care about safe streets or you care about, you know, you should literally. literally just reach out to TechNYC. We're a pretty small team. We're about 14 people, and this is what we live to do. We live to plug tech people in to the civic infrastructure of the city. That might mean working with a local nonprofit. That might mean volunteering for the city. There's a bunch of fellowships. Like, that is my world. That is my team's world. We know those people. And you can literally send an email to info at TechNYC.org. There are humans who read that. I am one of them. And someone will answer. That is the best way for you. you really want to get involved. And you should join TechNYC, which you can, you know, go to TechNYC.

That thing about that as a resource, you, you know, that old sort of hoary cliche of like you show up in New York City and you've just got the clothes on your back or whatever and you don't know anybody. No, you do. That's right. You know us. Tech NYC can help you get your feet and build something great. Julie, thank you so much. This has been amazing. Science is really fun. Some follow the noise. the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's

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