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New Year, New Startup, New York?

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With the New Year upon us, many entrepreneurs thoughts turn to starting a new company. As a New Yorker, I'll admit a small bias towards creating a company in the city that never sleeps. It wasn't a coincidence that Sinatra sang "If I can make it there I'll make it anywhere." NYCSeed is looking for start up types to come to New York this summer for their SeedStart 2010 program.

NYCSeed was formed "to provide deserving New York City seed stage entrepreneurs with the capital and support they need to move from idea to product launch." The fund has partnerships with New York City and State agencies as well as an investment committee that includes several venture and investment funds. Managing Director Owen Davis* is a veteran of the New York startup scene, working on early AOL and MSN projects and creating startups in 1995 and '99.

"Part of the impetus for this SeedStart program is to provide support for the ecosystem of startups in NYC, but it is also a forward looking way to create jobs for the city," said Davis. "We're thinking about how can we keep building the ecosystem around startups in the city. They don't just need money - there is always need for early stage funding, the very high risk capital. But VC firms enter when there's a level of adoption. We're thinking about what makes a 'fundable company.' There needs to be feedback from investors and business leaders who know this. We want to help scale the process of introducing founders with people who want to work in startups, like engineers. And we want New York's Colleges and Universities involved to tap the talent of bright students that are here."

The SeedStart program is similar to programs at DreamIt in Phildelphia (covered last September in this column), TechStars in Boston, Boulder, and Seattle, and Silicon Valley's YCombinator. (All of these sites have places for aspiring companies to apply, and TechStars' Boston group application closes next week.) Entrepreneurs get $20,000 for up to 4 people to defray living expenses and cover hardware, server or cloud computing rental, and the like. It's not huge money, its only intended to make it easy for the folks in the company to work without worrying about office space, rent or macaroni and cheese money. For that, founders give up 5% equity in the company they're creating. At the end of the summer, they present to other investors, who may choose to help the company move further along the track.

What's different is the City. NYCSeed and its joint venture partners in SeedStart, Venture firm advisors from RRE, Contour Ventures, Polaris Ventures, and IA Venture Strategies, as well as its mentors and advisory board represent a path to New York's top industries including executives from the Advertising, Media, Fashion and Financial Services worlds. "For seed-stage start-ups, where you start out should be about far more than just investment dollars. Strategic direction and industry insight are key and SS is adding that layer here in NYC - access to talent and guidance from professionals who are executives at the business partners and customers the start-ups need to penetrate," according to Danny Schultz, MD and co-founder of DFJ Gotham Ventures, an early-stage tech focused VC firm here in NY.

If you're not interested in starting a tech company, New York's Fashion Incubator and Kitchen Incubator are other ways the city is trying to attract talent and create new jobs.

Coming to the Big Apple to start a company is a major decision, and as the song says, "Its up to you..."

What are your Startup plans in 2010? Let me know in the comments.

(*Disclosure: I served on the board of the World Wide Web Artists Consortium with Owen Davis from 1996-98, but have had no business dealings with him.)

Howard Greenstein

Howard Greenstein is a social media strategist and evangelist, and president of the Harbrooke Group, which specializes in helping companies communicate with their customers using the latest Web technologies.