Rye Tech Meeting Supports Westchester Ventures

A panel of venture experts shared insights at the inaugural Westfair Tech Venture Meetup in Rye held at Serendipity Labs.  Known as home to banking and corporate leaders, Rye may seem an unlikely place for a meetup of technology venture leaders.   Not so says Danny Schultz, Partner at Gotham Ventures.  “It’s a great time to start a company in the New York Metro Area.  Next to Silicon Valley, and excluding Boston’s Bio-Tech deals, New York is the next largest venture investment community. There have been some billion dollar exits.”

Aspiring and early stage CEOs were cautioned to cross their T’s and dot their I’s by Bear-Crossey Law firm partner Michael Crossey. “Businesses that fail to incorporate early enough in the start-up process may be taking on risk that an early employee or contractor may show up later claiming they own part of the company.  Facebook had this problem with the Winklevoss twins.”

While much of the discussion centered on fund raising, Davis Rosborough of Progress Partners counseled that good investor relationships take time. “You have to instill confidence in prospective investors that you are fully committed. When recruiting a key investor, it’s like bringing somebody into your family, so plan on it taking a lot longer than you think to raise money.” 

“We had a good cross section of technologists with businesses in various stages of growth who offer solutions to industries from consumer health care to enterprise software to hardware,” says John Arenas, organizer of the event and CEO of Serendipity Labs in Rye.  Arenas added, “Our mission is to support technology professionals and early-stage entrepreneurs who are seeking resources, guidance, talent and capital to advance their ventures.  I think we had a great start.”