'Everyone under 30 in the business now lives in Brooklyn. Manhattan's gotten homogenized and nullified,' he said. 'The light and the air and the view and the waterfront make this a really special place to come to.'
In the tech community, the neighborhood of DUMBO (whose acronym stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is the hot trending 'hood. For instance, drop.io, a private file-sharing service, moved to the area in 2008 to grow its business alongside a rising district of art galleries, performance spaces and a newly expanded Brooklyn Bridge Park. Another perk: an incredible view of the Manhattan skyline.
'If you did it in Manhattan or Midtown or something, you'd basically have to get an office the size of a conference room,' said Steve Greenwood, drop.io's head of applications. Instead, the company got a cheaper, spacious headquarters with exposed brick ceilings and enough space to use for both work and after-hours social and networking events.
'The culture of DUMBO is very complimentary to starting up business,' he said. 'This is a very creative, imaginative place.'
Dig Deeper: How to Pick a Site for Your Business
Opening a Business in Brooklyn: Finding and Understanding Your Customers
If there's one thing people say is almost unanimous across Brooklyn it's that borough residents tend to be fiercely loyal and supportive of their local businesses.
But how can you earn that loyalty?
Business owners said Brooklyn is ripe with ways to discover and cultivate a customer base, even before you decide on a permanent location.
Mork spent months pitching his Crop to Cup coffee all over Manhattan only to be met with blank stares. In 2008, he decided to set up a $100-a-day booth at the first outing of the Brooklyn Flea, now a wildly popular market-style showcase of local artisans and antique dealers held in the Fort Greene neighborhood. There, his company's credo of farmer-centric coffee found an eager audience.
Within a few years, his coffee was on the shelves at several nearby businesses, and he recently opened a Crop To Cup café in Brooklyn Heights to serve customers directly.
'It was really Brooklyn that embraced the brand,' he said.
The abundance of community events – from music festivals to food truck showcases and street fairs — act as a testing ground for new companies trying to break into the borough.
Sixpoint Craft Ales brewery was an unknown new kid in town when its founder Shane Welch arrived in 2004 with a car full of homebrew. He and partner Jeff Gorlechen went from bar to bar across the borough, trying to convince owners to carry the new beer being produced in a discounted warehouse space in Red Hook. The following year, they set up as vendors to sell their beer at the Atlantic Antic, a mile-long street fair held in September that's one of the largest in all of New York. Amid the huge festival crowds, they found their thirsty fan base.
'The fact that we were (based) in Brooklyn, they would at least try it,' Kahn said. 'That October, every single bar on the street was pouring our beer. It was our coming out party. That was like the beginning.'
Dig Deeper: How to Use Your Local Flea Market as a Business Incubator
Opening a Business in Brooklyn: Hiring and Keeping a Great Staff
Is it tough to recruit and keep a talented staff when the borough is full of so many startups and grassroots businesses?
That may be a problem elsewhere in the country where there's a finite talent pool, business owners said, but the glut of people attracted to Brooklyn and New York City for the music, art, and education options is a huge boon to new companies.
'You have to talk to a lot of people and find the team and the work that really resonates with you,' said Saadiq Rodgers-King, co-founder of Hot Potato, a social networking site that connects friends and fans around live events. 'For a really early stage company, you have to fall in love.' Being based in the cultural hub of Williamsburg – just a short subway ride from Manhattan – helps lure staff who share in the energy and passion of a startup, he said.
MakerBot, a Boerum-Hill based firm that makes open-source printers capable of producing three-dimensional objects, has no trouble convincing people to work there. Every job listing it posts on its blog or Craigslist results in hundreds of applicants who are excited by the buzzy energy of the technology company located in a great neighborhood, founder Bre Pettis said. It's located near a major transportation hub, but most of MakerBot's employees walk to work, he said.
Dig Deeper: The New Rules of Hiring
