Breaking into the city’s startup scene can take budding entrepreneurs to some unusual places.
Instead of the traditional power breakfast, the next generation of movers and shakers is heading to the Startup Hockey meetup to make deals, talk shop and play vintage video games — in particular NHL ’94 ice hockey for the now-defunct Sega console.
Similar niche gatherings for like-minded investors and entrepreneurs are springing up all over the city. There are meetups for tech-loving dog lovers, women who code and video game enthusiasts — practically anything innovative geeks can imagine.
Such gatherings are also a sign that the city’s Silicon Alley startup community is maturing. Indeed, there’s the website Meetup.com — itself a New York City startup — that facilitates such events across the country.
In Manhattan, the monthly Startup Hockey meetup has built a loyal following of investors, entrepreneurs, gamers and assorted tech enthusiasts who meet for a night of vintage video games on a hacked-together console built for obsolete titles from Sega and Nintendo.
The meetup is the brainchild of Tom Loverro, a principal at RRE Ventures who came up with the idea in November 2011.
At the January gathering at an office in the West Village, Loverro talked to two young financial workers seeking advice on making the transition from Wall Street to Silicon Alley.
Loverro counseled the twentysomethings — who didn’t want their names used because they’re looking for new gigs while working for big banks — on the ideal size of startup to join.
“You don’t want one too small that you don’t know if it is going to make it or one too big that you get lost in the crowd,” he told them. “A mid-size startup allows you to still be impactful and still comes with upside.”
While the setting was unconventional, Loverro is practicing the tech tradition of mentoring young people looking to make a name. He envisioned Startup Hockey as one way to get the community together.
Of the 20 people who came to the recent meetup, a handful were there for the actual gaming — and they were serious.
“I played this game all growing up,” said Nik Bonaddio, founder of numberFire. “I have an intense old-school passion for this game.”
While there are a growing number of meetups, this particular one is known to some of the biggest tech players in town, including Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, which focuses solely on that borough’s burgeoning tech scene.
Benjamin Wagar, who was there to check out the meetup, declared it one of the best in the city.
“Now that I’m in the space here in the city and I’ve immersed myself in startup land, I’m going to a lot more of these,” Wagar explained. “You build these relationships and nothing might happen right away, but you keep connecting and you might have a cofounder in a few years.”