‘A city where you can pilot almost anything and figure out if it’s going to work’

As founding executive director of Tech:NYC, Julie Samuels is one of the state’s most prominent advocates for the tech sector, both in Albany and at City Hall.

Samuels, a lawyer by training, came to New York after serving as executive director of Engine, a San Francisco organization on which Tech:NYC is modeled. In an interview with TechCrunch, Samuels spoke about several issues, including her rationale for why, despite the controversy over Amazon’s decision not to build its second headquarters in Queens, the area is well-positioned for the next wave of tech innovation.

TechCrunch: What is the need for organizations like Tech:NYC and Engine?

Julie Samuels: As the tech industry matures, it is incredibly important that there are organizations [that] represent these companies politically, civically, making sure they have a seat at the table with so many public policy debates. There is no shortage of public policy debates surrounding technology.

It is also incredibly important that there are organizations who are talking from the viewpoint of smaller companies and startups. There are a lot of organizations that represent the biggest and most well-known companies, including Tech:NYC. But [we] also have hundreds of members who are small and growing startups. We think that diversity of the ecosystem is what really sets the technology sector apart and it is something we want to foster and celebrate.

Who are your members, then?

Tech:NYC has about 800 members. They include Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft — anyone with a presence in New York. It includes some of the largest tech employers here, hundreds of small startups and everything in between: tons of mid-sized, tons of growing companies. As we’ve built up the organization, we really focused on get[ing] an organization that represents what the technology industry actually looks like in New York City. It creates a set of challenges with regard to running the actual organization, but it’s something I am actually really proud of and would make that same decision to have that many members time and time again.

What kind of challenges?

The challenge [is] how do you build a broad-based coalition and bring everyone in that coalition along with you? And it is difficult because companies join an organization like Tech:NYC frankly, for all different reasons. They all have different issues that matter the most to them and getting that right is complicated, but really rewarding.

Tech’s future in New York

What does the New York tech industry look like right now? Any particular focus?

There are some really big software companies in New York right now: MongoDB, Datadog, we have had a couple of big IPOs and that is new for New York and great for New York.

But let me take a step back. I believe the next generation of big tech companies is going to be so-called “tech-enabled” companies in the industries that are, in some ways, hardest to innovate in — things like education, healthcare, insurance, where it is super-complicated. In order to do that well, you need to know how to talk to government, to regulators, to competitors. You really need to know how to work in this interdisciplinary, integrated fashion. And that is a very New York thing. I feel very bullish on the future of tech in New York for that reason.

So the sectors I am the most bullish on are those where tech is colliding with existing industry. Right now, for instance, proptech, real estate tech, is booming here in New York. All kinds of retail, fashion, makeup… those tech-enabled versions of these products are really exploding right now in New York.

So as you have all these companies that were traditionally something else now integrating the tech stack into their company, how does that change the nature of what you’re doing? Are you different from a chamber of commerce?

That is a really good question. What is a tech company? How do you define it anymore? I think [you have to ask] “what do these companies have in common?” And the kind of issue that binds all of our members together is that they need to hire technical talent. And an ecosystem will only thrive when companies can hire.

What are the public policy issues your members care about most?

The question of “what is tech policy anymore?” is not unlike the question of “how do you even define a tech company?” In my career — and I really came up through the tech policy ranks — [it’s been] thinking about technology and how it intersects with issues around internet freedom, intellectual property, telecommunications law.

But increasingly, tech policy means a whole host of issues. We are spending a lot of time on transportation issues: rideshare companies, scooters, e-bikes. We have spent a lot of time here in New York thinking about how to get the subway working better. Is that a tech policy issue? I do not know, [but] it is an issue that matters to our members.

So think of the issues we focus on in two buckets: one are the issues that impact our companies’ bottom lines and how they actually operate. Obviously we are spending a lot of time on privacy, worker classification, things around home-sharing and ridesharing and other delivery platforms.

There is a whole other set of issues that is really fun to work on [like] transit. We have been active on voting reform, on funding computer science education. Our members are really passionate about those things.

Do your members care about different issues than tech companies in other cities?

It is maybe our proximity to Washington, D.C., maybe the nature of living here, but there is a culture of engagement that I appreciate.

I think most of the issues that our community really cares about probably are not that different than in other places, except for, of course, we spend a lot of time thinking about how you get around New York.

[And] I think New York is already doing a better job navigating some of these problems because New York’s been navigating similar problems [to other cities] for decades, for generations.

Here’s the thing about New York: Everyone I know takes the subway. Everyone I know walks between meetings. It doesn’t matter who you are; if you are a New Yorker, you do these things, which means you can’t avoid talking to other people. You can’t avoid dealing with all types of people and all types of jobs, from all walks of life and I think that really changes how you think about a lot of these issues, how you think about building a company. A culture of engaging with government exists in New York that predates the rise of tech. So we have a lot of members who are quite excited to be part of public policy debates here.

And this isn’t me trying to say the Valley is bad. I think that it would’ve been incredibly hard to start some of the biggest, most transformative companies, West Coast-headquartered companies, here. I think that having that physical space allowed companies like the Googles and the Facebooks and the Amazons of the world to really grow into what they are, which is truly amazing and transformative.

The pendulum has if anything swung the other way now and companies are going to need to know how to deal with regulators, with competitors, earlier on and by the very nature of operating in New York you have to have those skills.

You were talking about this culture of engagement. New York has been in the forefront in a lot of these areas of regulation, whether it is on gig workers or ridesharing. So can you talk a little bit about what that looks like on the ground?

First of all, New York has been handling these issues outside of the context of tech companies for generations. For instance, New York has something called Black Car Fund, which was in place well before anyone had ever heard of Uber or Lyft. Black Car Fund creates a pool of benefits for black car livery drivers, and it’s the kind of portable benefits that we are now talking about in the context of all other kinds of gig economy companies.

Have we seen any outcomes in that space, in some of these laws or policies? Or is this still in development?

The truth is, on some of the issues that are front and center in the world of tech policy right now, like privacy and gig economy workers, California has passed really high-profile laws and New York has not, but is actively debating laws in those areas. I think this is actually a really interesting dynamic. I think New York is really well-positioned to see what California does because these are difficult areas to regulate. If they were not so complicated, we would have easier answers. So in some ways, we are lucky that we can see how some of this plays out in California in an effort to get it right here.

Between [former New York City] Mayor Michael Bloomberg and [New York] Governor [Andrew] Cuomo and now [New York City] Mayor [Bill] De Blasio, there has been a lot of institutional support for the tech sector in a way that you may not have seen in Silicon Valley. Has that created a different dynamic?

I think the engagement of civic leaders in attracting tech companies here has been really powerful, especially in a place like New York, which has a fairly high barrier to entry. New York is not cheap; no one pretends that you’re going to get a great bargain by coming here. But what you are going to get is access to an amazing pool of talent, access to so much expertise in so many different sectors, access to an incredibly diverse population. A city where you can pilot almost anything and figure out if it’s going to work.

We’ve been lucky that our government have really sent a message that technology companies are welcome here. And part of that too is they’ve all done a lot in supporting workforce development and computer science education.

Amazon HQ2 controversy

Of course, I have to ask you about Amazon.

Of course.

Why do you think the Amazon deal fell through?

What happened with Amazon was a real travesty. You’re talking about 25,000 good-paying jobs to be in a part of the city that could really use those jobs. It would’ve been great for Long Island City. [But] by all reports, Amazon is going to have 10,000 people here soon anyway. And the important lesson there is that Amazon chose to come to New York to place part of its HQ2 here because of certain fundamentals — access to talent, access to higher education, public transit — and those fundamentals remain strong.

Facebook is continuing to grow here. Google is doubling in size to be 20,000 employees in New York soon. When you take these numbers in aggregate, you’re talking about a real commitment to job growth here in New York City. Does that make up for what happened with HQ2? No, that was not a good outcome. It was political and it was a debate that failed to really deal with the facts. We talked a lot about this $3 billion number with regard to incentives and subsidies without ever really talking about what that means, which is to say the vast majority of that money was preconditioned on actually bringing jobs here.

It was unfortunate, but we haven’t seen any knock-on effects. I haven’t heard of companies who decided not to come here or not to expand here because of that.

Do you think lessons have been learned?

New York City has a ton of local elections happening in 2021, and by all reports, Amazon will play an issue in those local elections, and it should. The politicians who stood in the way of that deal are going to have to answer for that, particularly if the economy is not as strong come November 2021 as it is now.

Speaking of real estate, we’re literally sitting in a WeWork, which is the biggest commercial leaseholder in a city where their model has become especially important for startups. Are your members worried about what’s happening?

Obviously, we were incredibly interested to see how WeWork would play out, [but] so far it doesn’t seem to have any kind of implication beyond what it means for the actual company itself. And obviously, WeWork had its set of challenges, but it’s still a big company and there are still people working in WeWorks all over the city. There are still an incredibly robust marketplace of other co-working companies here, companies like Knotel, Industrious and Convene and they’re all doing very well as far as I can tell.

In fact I should say I’ve got tons of companies in my network who are reaching out and asking how they can hire people who are leaving WeWork. I think people are curious about that and in a way that feels positive to me.

Future trends

What steps should tech companies, startups and the sector take to be more inclusive?

That’s a really good question. I wish I had some easy answers. I think that this sector has done some of the easier work, which is incredibly important, [like] how you have certain policies in place that make it easier, things around paid parental leave. The industry is doing a lot of great work around building a pipeline and supporting a lot of organizations that are helping train the next generation of tech. The really hard work is figuring out culturally what it is that is pushing [women] and other underrepresented minorities out of these jobs.

Finally, what does the future look like as the tech sector and other sectors increasingly overlap with one another?

As the the tech industry matures, it is interesting to me to think about what that means for our civic institutions, what it means for government, what it means for how the way the world works, not just with regard to what the technology does, but to what the culture of these companies brings to bear, how this changes our society.

The tech industry is far from perfect, but there’s a lot that’s great about it. There’s a real spirit of entrepreneurialism and problem solving and optimism that I think is really important and I hope that our industry can bring that to the table in conversations with government and with other stakeholders.