Anthony Coombs is CEO of Interact and a passionate Philly tech booster who helped us gather a great group of people last week to our Mini Meet Up. I took him into a dark quiet corner to talk about his startup, the tech scene in Philly, and the burgeoning NJ/PA tech corridor.
People asked us why we visited Philadelphia and the short answer is Anthony asked us to come. Once we got there, however, we found the best of multiple worlds – a large university community, cheap rents, and an group of people hungering for a turnaround. As the economy speeds up over the next few years it will be interesting to see just how the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC parallelogram begins to come into its own.
When I started these mini meet-ups my state goal was to show that there was an entire country full of cool stuff east of San Francisco. I think these events are proving that thesis quite handily.