When Kevin Ryan went out to raise money for DoubleClick in 1996, every California venture capital firm he spoke with told him they would love to invest—if he moved to San Francisco. He couldn’t bring himself to leave New York, especially because his burgeoning startup benefited from being close to its clients of advertising agencies. “It was the right place to be,” he tells me.
The bet paid off, and DoubleClick grew from 10 employees to 2,000 in four years. Ryan went on to found a string of New York companies—MongoDB, Zola, Gilt, and Business Insider—along with his own venture firm, AlleyCorp. He’s rightfully earned the title of the “Godfather” of the New York tech, which most would argue he shares with Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson. And what about the VCs who turned Ryan down for DoubleClick? “Every one of those firms has opened a VC office in New York now,” he says.
