How To Make It as a
First-Time Entrepreneur

The new organizer of the New York Tech Meetup, Nate Westheimer, had the idea of launching a “Community Committee” which will be “dedicated to connecting information and resources within the NY tech community”.  Immediately, I thought of a niche community that I am personally very involved with, New York’s small and medium-sized businesses.  The SMB community is in dire need for technology help as it struggles to compete with sophisticated nationwide businesses and online-only retailers.  At the same time, the SMB community is in a position to help the New York community as potential clients and providers of meeting spaces.   The SMB community should definitely be represented in the “Community Committee” and I would like to volunteer my time to make that happen.

The following is a vision of how the New York tech and small business communities could be working together.  The relationship, as laid out below, allows for both communities to efficiently benefit from a stronger relationship.

How do we reach out to the SMB community?

The New York small business community is large (over 50K in New York) and hard to reach.  I have setup a new meetup called the New York Small Business Tech Meetup.  The meetup will bring together members of the New York tech community to demonstrate popular and emerging technologies to small businesses.  In order to populate the meetup with small businesses, we can

• Contact chambers of commerce, business improvement districts and trade organizations in New York

• Encourage NY Tech Meetup members to mention this new meetup to their favorite small businesses

• Through Yipit, I am in constant contact with thousands of small businesses in New York, and will encourage them to join

I am excited to see what a united New York tech and small business community could accomplish together.  Please let me know if you any additional thoughts as a comment below or email me at vin at yipit dot com.

Step-up On Behalf of Your Niche Community

If you think you are in a position to represent a “niche” New York community, I would urge you to volunteer.  You can do so on by leaving a message on the NY Tech Meetup message board.  Nate is looking for volunteers to step up on behalf of all communities that interact with technology including politics, design, video, university, women, VC, government and all other niche communities.