SAN FRANCISCO -- East Coast talent courted West Coast money Monday at the second annual Alley to the Valley conference.
For two days, 30 New York-based Internet startups will try to convince Bay Area investors they are just as worthy of cash as their local counterparts.
"The distance between New York and California is not so far," Charles Millard, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, told a tittering audience of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs at the conference, which was co-hosted by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Alley Cat News. "Last year, people thought this was a competition. That's not true at all. It's about partnering."
"We've had the New York market all to ourselves," said John Barry, managing partner at Prospect Street Ventures. But that is changing. "I believe that the IPO market in New York has finally come of age."
The San Francisco conference is no philanthropic lovefest. The presenting companies -- including Bikini.com, AdOne Classifieds, Dig Video, and Absolute Reality -- want cash, the cold hard kind.
"I'm dialing for dollars," said Don Tydeman from eCall. "I just met Tim Draper [managing director at Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson], who I've been trying to meet for six months."
Draper gets more than 10,000 business plans thrown at him each year. He said New York is his next destination.
"Entrepreneurial success is not Silicon Valley-centric," he said. "We are making a very concerted effort to branch out all over the country. No New York VCs are going after raw start-ups. That's the kind of thing we want to bring to New York. You want to find partners, you want to build partners. But after this, I'll probably end up with a lot of business plans."
Draper was part of an investor's panel that included VC heavyweights like Mark Gorenberg, partner at Hummer Winblad; Robert Lessin, CEO of Wit Capital; and Charles Lax, general partner at Softbank Technology Ventures.
