New
York City’s Silicon Alley has claimed a place among the ranks of top
tech-hubs across the country such as Boston, Dallas, Seattle, and of
course, its namesake and the “mothership”, Silicon Valley. While each of
these start-up communities boasts its own set of advantages, Silicon
Alley benefits from New York’s buzz and density people, which, in the
past few years, has played into the hands of the social media
phenomenon. Yet in many ways, the most important feature of any tech
boom-town is the availability of funds. Enter: the venture capital firm.
Steve Schlafman is a principal investor at one of these firms, Lerer Ventures, which focuses on funding companies in the “seed-stage”. That
is, Lerer trudges through the weeds of all start-up hopefuls to find
entrepreneurs with “product vision, consumer insight, focused execution,
and unwavering ambition.” Although he is now in the position of the
lender, Steve is no stranger to the experience on the other side of the
table. His work experience spans from startups such as Stickybits and Turntable.fm, to more traditional environments such as The Kraft Group and Microsoft.
And
what’s in Lerer’s portfolio these days? Just so happens they were one
of the VC’s that took a stake in GroupMe (prior
Q-naire feature, recently aquired by Skype), as well as other awesome
hits like: Dispatch, Hipster,
Yoke, and Venmo. Previous investments that have already
made it big include: the Huffington Post, Paperless Post, Thrillist, and
Business Insider.
