NYC from Space. Thanks, Nasa!

So that was a wild ride.

I spent the last 1.5 years on a business trip, of sorts, in San Francisco.

I moved from New York to SF in early 2015 to build my marketing skill set at Mattermark, and to immerse myself in San Francisco’s startup ecosystem. I was fortunate enough to meet lifelong friends in the process, and now I’m back in New York.

The past 30 days since touching down at EWR have been a whirlwind of coffee meetings, poorly-assembled furniture, Google Hangouts with the Mattermark team in SF, and the joyous (painful) process of self-discovery.

I had a bit of trouble tapping back into the local tech scene at first, but I took a moment to organize some of the city’s resources for you to use and share with your NYC network.

Below, you’ll find a comprehensive guide on New York’s:

Best co-working spaces

Hottest startups

Most visible investors

Best events & meetups

And a few other secrets…

If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments — I’m sure I’ve missed a few things. I’ll edit the post periodically, and we can create a living document for our community.

The Current State of NYC’s Tech Ecosystem

A few weeks ago a piece on the NYC tech ecosystem, by Matt Turck of FirstMark, came across my Twitter feed. Before we talk about how to navigate the ecosystem, you want to understand it holistically. The piece is definitely worth a read in it’s entirety, and here’s the Tl;dr:

“New York is in the process of catching up to the hype. That doesn’t make for splashy headlines, and takes a long time, but the reality of the NYC tech ecosystem coming of age is actually happening right now.”

Best Co-Working Spaces in New York

In the past month I’ve worked out of 8 different co-working spaces. For me, a good place to work includes: a lot of natural light, friendly people, a neighborhood with a personality, and a scarcity of nasty looks from office neighbors when I’m on the phone.

I use this awesome service called Croissant to reserve desks — think ClassPass for co-working spaces.

Here’s the list of co-working spaces, in order from fantastic to “will not go back.” Refer to the list the next time you’re in a coffee shop and can’t hear yourself think: