It’s the last full day in New York and it has been a really good day with breakfast over on the Upper West side at my friend’s flat followed by a visit to General Assembly and lunch with Rob from Twilio.
Before we left for SXSW I had planned to contact General Assembly (GA), a campus and community for high-potential entrepreneurs which started here in New York and are properly coming to London later this year. I meant to do it during the first few days in Austin to see if we could go and pay them a visit, but then on our first night out in Austin, that was the Thursday, we were introduced to Rob and Stevie from Twilio. We got talking and it turns out that Rob is based over at the GA office whilst the rest (or most) of the Twilio team are based in San Francisco. Being a very lovely guy I asked if we could come and pay him a visit over at GA’s office in New York and that’s what we did today before Rob took us for lunch over at Cafeteria (extra bonus point for being a Sex & the City spot).
Situated right in the middle of Manhattan on 20th and Broadway, GA has a lovely space full of buzz and people. We got introduced to Matt and to Roxy who is the education program producer over at GA in New York and who gave us a tour around the office. The day before we had paid Ryan and Trevor from Lean Startup Machine, who we’d spent quite a lot of time with over in Austin, a visit and after having seen two collaborative spaces filled with creative people, I’m certainly itching for being in a similar environment over in London. It’s been so inspirational being around people who have already done and are doing the startup thing and I can see a number of benefits early on to be located in one of these co-working places, being that an incubator or not and it was great seeing how GA over here in New York was set up.
Tonight is also my last night away, if you don’t count the night flight on Saturday, and though my body will appreciate a break from alcohol, it’s with sadness that I’ll be leaving New York and this trip which has been so brilliant and inspiring in so many ways.
Tomorrow – Day 077 | Home time
Image taken outside of the Standard Grill during my last visit to New York in October 2011
