Forget Soho! Steven Brill Thinks Inside The Box at Internet Week Panel on Startups

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Steven Brill.

Steven Brill, creator of Court TV, law periodicals and airport security fast passes alike, was talking about the difference between Silicon Valley and New York City at the Time Warner Center this morning, June 2nd.

“People here are much more focused on the ideas and the technology that is the plumbing for those ideas,” he told the crowd. “You have a city with a mentality that’s receptive to completely new ideas and that has lots of people who want to try those ideas. I’ve been able to find people who are willing to take a chance, usually on a new form of journalism, and this is the best place in the world to do that.”

Dressed in a neat gray suit, Mr. Brill, who had a wine-glass filled with Diet Coke placed on the coffee table in front of him, was the star participant of a panel called Start Me Up: Investing in New York's Digital Industry, as part of Internet Week New York. The panel, which also included Marc Cenedella of TheLadders.com, NYC Investment Fund Senior Vice President Jalak K. Jobanputra and Andrew Cleland of Time Warner Investments, was discussing how the city’s Web industry is poised to help revitalize the economy. Internet Week Chair David-Michel Davies was the moderator, and the conversation had shifted to opportunities for startups in New York despite the downturn.

Take real estate bargains, for instance.

Apparently Mr. Brill’s latest startup, a company called Journalism Online—which he claims will help newspaper, magazine and Web publishers develop revenue models for their digital content—got a great deal on its new digs.

“We started by thinking like a startup and going to the startup-y kind of neighborhoods like Soho and all that crap, and the rents there are still very high because they still think they’re cool and they’re doing startups and people walk around in jeans,” said Mr. Brill, whose dry wit and sarcasm appeared to delight the audience. “We have space in a building in the Rockefeller Center neighborhood that is costing us a third of the best deal we looked at in the grungiest building in Tribeca!”

Then there’s New York’s talent pool.

“The talent is out there and people are willing to think about opportunities in a different way,” Mr. Brill continued. “The resumes are just coming in and coming in. It’s not something anyone wants to delight in, but the fact is, there’s real talent out there.”

But what about all the challenges startups face? One that resonated for the panel was the role of the engineer.

“It’s always been difficult [for Web startups] to find engineers in New York because Wall Street takes them away with higher salaries,” said Ms. Jobanputra. “But I’ve seen a recognition that that is going to change. Not everyone can translate from the Wall Street world to the startup world, and the city has started a number of initiatives to help start retraining some of these folks who are interested in going into the startup world. We need to start developing engineers for a digital age.”

Towards the end of the question and answer session that followed, one audience member asked the panelists which of New York’s non-Web industries had the greatest potential for digital growth.

Ms. Jobanputra’s answer was healthcare, given the amount of federal stimulus money that has been set aside for digitizing hospitals, she said. Mr. Cenedella and Mr. Cleland agreed on fashion, pointing to online ventures like Gilt Groupe, which, Mr. Cenedella said, has developed a massive customer base for designers despite being a young startup.

Mr. Brill’s answer was, perhaps, the most interesting: Shipping and cargo, which he called a larger industry in New York than anywhere else in the United States except for maybe Long Beach, California.

“Here’s an industry most people would never think of,” he said. “There’s a lot of money to be made for somebody who solves the tech problem of tracking cargo containers, seeing if they’re opened or tampered with as they go around the world. There are probably a dozen other examples."