Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1218

Venture capitalist Matt Turck has a post up on his blog that is packed full of information about the New York City tech ecosystem. (He has also written similar posts about Berlin and Paris .)

His overall thesis is that New York – as a startup/tech hub – is only now starting to catch up to the hype of 4 or 5 years ago. He now refers to NYC as the de facto Number 2 after the Bay Area.

If you’re interested in all of this, you can go read his full post . But I would like to pull out 2 points. The first is about the “rinse and repeat” cycle that happens over time that allows cities to become substantive startup hubs:

As any student of emerging tech ecosystems knows, the key dynamic to success is the “rinse and repeat” cycle. You need several waves of successful tech companies to go through the whole cycle of founding, financing, scaling and significant exit.   Post-exit, the hope is that successful founders, employees and investors then contribute back both money and expertise to the next generation of tech startups, a few of which eventually become highly successful themselves and then provide money and expertise to the following generation.

The trouble is, each successive cycle takes years, because the average successful startup takes 5 to 10 years to get to a large exit.

One key reason the Silicon Valley has become such a powerful network is that this “rinse and repeat” cycle has been happening there for decades, at least since the 1940s and 1950s (Hewlett Packard), with a real acceleration in the 1970s and 1980s (Apple IPO, founding of Kleiner Perkins, etc).

I’ve written about this idea before, but didn’t refer to it as “rinse and repeat.” I’m thinking about adopting that terminology going forward.

The second is a list of New York-based startups. Matt uses it as an example of how entrepreneurial activity in New York is operating across a broad cross-section of different industries. That’s an important characteristic to identify.

However, I also thought you might find it valuable to see what startups are out there, particularly if you happen to work in one of the below verticals/horizontals. I certainly went right to the real estate line.

Fintech: Betterment, IEX, Fundera, Bond, Orchard, Bread
Health: Oscar, Flatiron Health, ZocDoc, Hometeam, Recombine, Celmatix, BioDigital, ZipDrug
Education: General Assembly, Schoology, Knewton, Skillshare, Flatiron School, Codecademy
Real estate: WeWork, HighTower, VTS, Compass, Common, Reonomy
Enterprise SaaS: InVision, NewsCred, Sprinklr, Namely, JustWorks, Greenhouse, Percolate, Mark43, Movable Ink
Commerce infrastructure: Bluecore, Custora, Welcome Commerce
Marketplaces: Kickstarter, Vroom, 1stdibs
On Demand: Handy, Via, Managed by Q, Hello Alfred
Food: Blue Apron, Plated, Maple
IoT/Hardware: littleBits, Canary, Peloton, Shapeways, SOLS, Estimote, Dash, GoTenna, Raden, Ringly, Augury, Drone Racing League
AR/VR/3D: Sketchfab, Floored

I was happy to see my friends at Floored in the above list. They are under AR/VR/3D, but they service the real estate industry.

I recently alluded to some life changes on this blog. Well, I am now ready to share: I am leaving my development position at CAPREIT .

I wasn’t intending to leave. I wasn’t looking to leave. And frankly, I felt conflicted. But sometimes life has a funny way of presenting opportunities that you just have to say yes to. As my mother likes to tell me: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” More on this in a later post. Stay tuned.

What I would like to talk about today are the opportunities that this may create for some of you. There are now two open development positions at CAPREIT. Both positions would be based in downtown Toronto (St. Lawrence Market).

The first opportunity is essentially a Director level role where you would be responsible for growing the development team at CAPREIT. You should be able to lead a team, identify new development opportunities, create pro formas, assemble/manage consultant teams, secure development approvals for complex urban infill sites, and generally lead projects and people through the entire development lifecycle. For more information and to apply, click here .

The second opportunity is at the Coordinator level. You would be reporting day-to-day to the above person and you should have working knowledge of the development process. For more information and to apply, click here .

I would just like to add that in both cases you would be working on some very exciting urban infill projects and you would be joining an organization with great people and a great corporate culture. I mean this sincerely. If you have any questions about the two roles, feel free to reach out to me directly. And if you’re in the market, consider applying.

I don’t surf. I would like to learn, but I haven’t yet done that. I snowboard. That’s my thing. It’s what I look forward to doing every single winter. 

But even as a non-surfer, I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed the movie View From A Blue Moon . A friend told me about it last weekend and I immediately rented it on my Apple TV. (That’s the only thing I have to watch things.)

It’s a movie about John Florence , who is arguably the world’s best surfer right now. He’s from Hawaii. But in addition to John’s incredible surfing abilities, it’s the cinematography and soundtrack that make this movie so special. 

As soon as the movie ended, I immediately went on Soundcloud to find all of the songs. Quentin Tarantino once said that when you pick the right song for a particular scene/movie, you can then never listen to that song ever again without thinking of the movie. That’s how I now feel about this song .

Here’s the trailer (apparently it’s the first surf movie filmed entirely in 4K):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTqVqk7FSmY?rel=0]

If you’re at all interested, I highly recommend you give it a watch. There are also some great urban shots for all of the city geeks who read this blog. Let me know what you think if you end up watching it or if you’ve already seen it.

Image: View From A Blue Moon