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- [00:00]
TJ Watt
I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in store, online and in the app. Because your personal best is greater than.
- [00:23]
Julie Samuels
Any, it is inevitable that tech will be, if it isn't already, the biggest industry in the city. Listen, I run an organization called Tech nyc. I have no idea how you define that. Every company is a tech company. Like say what, Say however you want to say it. Right? As the city makes that transition, we spend our time at Tech NYC thinking about what that means for New York politically, what that means culturally, what does that mean civically, what does it mean philanthropically? As technology, both the people and companies building it, and the technology itself changes our city, we want to make sure that that transition lifts as many boats as possible.
- [01:13]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Julie Samuels, thanks for talking to us today.
- [01:17]
Julie Samuels
Thanks for having me.
- [01:18]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
We're going to use this in a lot of different places, but one of the places we're going to use this is the Internet history podcast. And for those purposes, anybody that's listened to that podc. You went to the University of Illinois?
- [01:31]
Julie Samuels
I did. I have some Internet history that.
- [01:34]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Okay, so Champagne. Urbana.
- [01:37]
Julie Samuels
Urbana Champaign. Urbana.
- [01:38]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know where my accent's coming from. Mosaic. Ncsa. Okay. When were you there?
- [01:45]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [01:46]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Did you overlap with all that?
- [01:47]
Julie Samuels
I did. I was there at Postmark Andreessen. So I graduated college in 2000. I was in Champaign. I was. I was a journalism major. Actually, like many people's tech and Internet history, mine was somewhat accidental if you were growing up in the 80s and 90s. And mine was accident. I mean, I was always very interested. You know, I was like an early AOL user, but I'm not. I wasn't and still not technical. But I went to University of Illinois because I'm from Chicago. Did. Had never heard of NCSA. And I went to college in 1996.
- [02:29]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
This is so bad. Can I interrupt just for listeners and context? Ncsa, when the Internet is born, there's like, it's a government sort of thing. It's the national supercomputer computing application. Okay, so it was a government run thing. It was government run supercomputer of the Internet. Marc Andreessen Mosaic, which became Netscape. Listen, look at the Internet history Podcast all this history has been told, but that's crucial to know that that's where you were.
- [02:58]
Julie Samuels
Yes, that's where I was, but I didn't even know. So I was a journalism major. I was a journalism major. And I thought I wanted to be an economics reporter, which is actually kind of crazy. If you know me now, that really doesn't make much sense. And I had this professor who I still keep in touch with, and he knew I wanted to be an economics reporter. And I was looking for a job on campus, and he said to me, you know, there is this. There's this center, I guess this NCSA national center for Supercomputing Applications, and they're looking for a communications intern. And explaining technology to regular people is hard, and explaining economics to regular people is hard. So maybe you should try and get this internship and you can. Whatever. You can learn a little bit about journalism that way, about explaining complicated concepts to everyday people. So I got an internship at NCSA that was probably, let's say, 1997, 1998, probably 1997. I think I worked there for three years, the last three years of college.
- [04:01]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Was Larry Smarr still.
- [04:03]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [04:03]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yep. Okay. Sorry.
- [04:05]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. God. I mean, a long time. And I was the comms intern. So it was like. It was super geeky. You know, it was like the geeky geeks, no one really knew what they were up to. Obviously, it had had a huge moment, which was that Mark Andreessen, while he was an undergrad, had invented Mosaic there. The team there had invention Mosaic. He dropped out. He left. Mosaic obviously became Netscape graphical web browser. You know, here we are. And there were a lot of people. There were. A lot of. A ton of people were still at NCSA from when Mark had been there. A lot of them actually were a little bit bitter, I think, that he left and he made a turn.
- [04:48]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Because I'm going to interject again, if you haven't listened to these things to form Netscape, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, go back to. What is it, Champagne or. How am I saying it?
- [05:00]
Julie Samuels
Urbana.
- [05:00]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Urbana.
- [05:01]
Julie Samuels
You're from the Midwest, Brian.
- [05:02]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Oh, right. My wife is from Michigan, so. Okay, say it like my wife would. Yeah. They went and recruited a lot of the engineering team who. The first episodes of the Internet History podcast are talking to a lot of them. But. So your. Is that the folks that didn't get recruited are a little. But there was also. There was Spyglass. Didn't that come out of there, too?
- [05:22]
Julie Samuels
Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, the people I'D really quickly to give you just, just a little bit of color. There were a bunch of people who they all called Netscape. Netscape. That was what it was all there.
- [05:32]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Internally because there were rumors that maybe they took the code base a lot.
- [05:39]
Julie Samuels
Yeah, it seemed a little dramatic, but that was not, you know, I was not, like I said, I wasn't even technical. I was literally writing like these little press releases for the website and it was, it was very wonky stuff because it was, it was academic, it was research driven, it wasn't consumer facing at all. But that was really fun. And you know, like I said, just in the, I guess my career really was such that like most people's a lot of coincidence and a lot of happenstance and I had a really big office there. So I spent a lot of time there. Even, like if I was just studying or doing something unrelated to my job, I would hang out there sometimes. I'd. Oh, and, oh, and there was really fast Internet there and my, I was still on dial up.
- [06:25]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Right?
- [06:25]
Julie Samuels
We were still on dial up in the university was like transitioning over.
- [06:29]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
So until, until late into the 90s again, kids, real heads know that you kind of, there was a time period where you couldn't get an email address or an Internet connection unless you were at a university or your employer paid.
- [06:42]
Julie Samuels
For it, even at a university. I think that my senior year in college was the first time that I had fiber to my apartment. So that means for my first three years of college I was still on dial up. Oh, I was still on dial up senior year too, which is actually why I never really used Napster.
- [07:03]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Right, right.
- [07:04]
Julie Samuels
I was at, if I was at, at work, but I was at ncsa. I had, I had a very, very fast connection. So you know, I hung out there a lot and I had a great boss. And she was a communications person too, not a really technical person. And she was also a deadhead. And she was really into John Perry Barlow and she was really into this organization in San Francisco called eff. So I, I, this was again all in the late 90s. And it always held a lot of lore for me because I was really introduced, that was my introduction to tech culture, I would say. And then I had a couple summer jobs that were relevant. One I guess would be particularly funny the summer between my junior. And so also I was learning as part of my coursework, my journalism degree I was learning a lot about again, like I said, as a journalism major. And I took this course, journalism, law, First Amendment law. It was just after the Supreme Court had decided some pretty big cases around CDA 230, around, you know, the ACLU litigation, there was a lot happening in the legal field then, thinking, is this.
- [08:21]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
The, the stuff around the Napster? No, this is before. Yeah, but it's still, it's still trying to figure out, okay, what is new technology? What are the parameters around this new technology. You know, things that we're still. The. What's the. What I'm forgetting right now, you know, the 1996 law that allows users, you can't be sued if you're a platform. All those laws, they're brand new.
- [08:49]
Julie Samuels
1998 litigation. Exactly. So it was all happening while I was an undergrad. I was learning about it in school while I was working at ncsa. And, you know, it was all really, really interesting to. And then my. The summer between my sophomore, junior and senior year, I got this internship at Scripps Howard, you know, company that owns a bunch of newspapers to help. It was just an internship to work in the office where they were putting the news online. And so I went and this is also. This was pretty crazy. I took same thing. Like, some of my professors helped me find this job. I took the job. This is almost embarrassing. I thought it was in Nashville. And I like sent my dad the information on the job and he said, julie, this job is in a town called Knoxville, not Nashville. Oh my God, where is that? He said, I don't know.
- [09:42]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Well, it's still in Tennessee.
- [09:44]
Julie Samuels
But I knew this. I got the state right. So anyway, I went down there for the. It was just so funny. So it was in the Knoxville News Sentinel, which is just one of the newspapers owned by this newspaper chain. And there was this like, office. I can't. It was like out of a movie. This, this space. We were in the newspaper's office, but there was this space. It was like almost up in this attic area. We were like the bastard step children of the newspaper. And it was this like, dark little room. And we essentially would take the news that was being produced for the newspapers in print. And we would make it very, you know, very basic HTML coding, which is pretty much the extent of my technical skills. They're rusty. And we would take these packages. I remember I did a lot of work taking like the real estate packages, the kind of like lifestyle stuff for the newspapers that was being written, and would then push it out to all the papers owned by Scripps Hours. So it was really early days of putting the news online.
- [10:43]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
You're not the first person I'VE talked to people at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, other places. The degree to this is the skunk works up in the, up in the attic over here. Yeah, like, I know you, you didn't stay there super long, but like there was this. How long do you think that that was always the sense before maybe newspapers or media.
- [11:10]
Julie Samuels
Well, yeah, I think a lot about this, actually. When did that shift? It definitely was starting to shift. 2000, 2001, but it's still. And I can actually really quickly tell you about my first job because my first full time job.
- [11:26]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [11:27]
Julie Samuels
Also relevant to this. Maybe let me do that and come back to your.
- [11:30]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah, yeah, sure.
- [11:31]
Julie Samuels
My next job, I think showed a little bit more of this shift. I finished college in 2000. I went to work for a political magazine called the National Journal in D.C. but I went to go work for NationalJournal.com, which was, to your point, different than the National. When I got there, it was in a totally different building. It was in the Virginia suburbs in this like kind of funky townhouse.
- [11:52]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Totally different people. You're. You're getting the scraps from the, the big kids table. Yeah.
- [11:59]
Julie Samuels
And everyone else was in, I think at that time was in the Watergate building, which is a very Fancy Building in DC. This was in 2000, like I said. But I will also. I had that job for one year. Okay. And over the course of that one year, we moved into a new, fancier office in, in the District. And they were cons at that time. So in 2001, they were consolidating all the. Everyone, at least geographically. So I think that kind of answers your question a little bit. And it was becoming clear that the staffs were.
- [12:33]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Let me, let me, let me put a spin on that. So, okay, folks are like, I keep asking people this. Folks are like, okay, this Internet is a thing. And then the dot com bubble bursts. And my memory of it being here in New York after the bubble bursting is people are cheering because, oh my God, the fad is over. We can go back to the way it was. What are your memories of that, especially vis a vis journalism and stuff?
- [12:59]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. Well, let me tell you a little bit about what I did. My day to day was when I was@the nationaljournal.com one of my main tasks was we had a, we had a morning newsletter. And this was a very, very early morning newsletter. I don't mean early in the day, I mean early in the evolution of morning newsletters. And a group of us there were three or four of us maybe, who had to get there at like 6am Six something, which is very early when you're 22. And we would split up the country by north and south and each of us would have a list of city newspapers we were supposed to check every morning. And we would start on the east coast and we would refresh the newspapers from the east to the west, you know, because by the time, you know, we had, we had to get. When we got there, it was 3am in California. There was no news. The point I'm trying to make, actually, the long wind up here is that in those days newspapers were still publishing how they always published. And they were posting their news once a day in the morning. Yeah, some of them were refreshing once midday. But generally they were just writing a story a day and posting it in the morning. And we would get to work and we would, you know, crawl across the country, find the headlines. And as soon as the California papers tended to post a little earlier than some of the sleepier Pacific Northwest towns, obviously. But once we got like the Washington state, Oregon, once we got the news from those papers, we would hit publish on our morning newsletter, which is called Morning Edition. And that would, you know, go out. We try and do it just before 9:00am so that was, that, that was, that wasn't my entire job, but that was a big part of my job in 2000, 2001. So when I think it showed that the tension you're asking about, which is did people, people were resisting the change.
- [14:56]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Or not only were they resisting the change, they were, they felt like, okay, we had to give lip service to this fad for a few years, but now it's over. And then there were certain people that were like, well, it's not over. In fact, this is like inning two or three or something like that.
- [15:13]
Julie Samuels
You know, first of all, I was young and the people who worked in the little, in the offices with the Internet people in the attics and the townhouses where I work.
- [15:26]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah, See, this was, this is our, our age bias where no one, no.
- [15:30]
Julie Samuels
One, all true believers. We, you know, we were all like, I remember where I was standing when I first learned. I remember when I first learned about Google. Like, I remember when I first ordered my first book on Amazon. It was all. It was in those offices with those people who were all really, frankly, we were really early to think about a lot of those things. And so I don't remember there being much glee because I think a lot of us, we also, because we were young we didn't feel, I think a lot of the glee that you're talking about, a lot of the ha, ha, we told you so came from people who felt like they missed the boat. But we were. We hadn't missed anything. We were on the boat. You know, we were the first people on the boat.
- [16:19]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
You know what? Put it. Put a pin in that, because maybe we'll come back to that in terms of like. Like, things like AI and like, cultural or tech trends and things like that. Forgive me. I'm going to. I'm going to jump a little bit.
- [16:33]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [16:33]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Because I want to get to the. To the eff Because I want to leave a lot of time for New York.
- [16:38]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [16:39]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Okay. Okay. So you know what? You're right. New York. So tell me your sense of the New York City tech scene when you're joining it, when it. How it evolves. And look, I'm going to tee you up in ways that are probably not good journalistic practices, but, like, you know, why is the New York City tech scene different? And give me anything you want.
- [17:01]
Julie Samuels
Okay. I have a lot. But I have to say that I wasn't really back here. I lived here after D.C. and it was doing some First Amendment work. And then I kind of became a lawyer, and then I went to eff, and then I came back here.
- [17:14]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Right. So legal stuff, you know, and again, we're alighting over issues of determining this new technology, and maybe we'll come back to this in a second of, like, what are the parameters and how can we. Or we. Depending on who you're working for and what your positions are, how can we guide how these sorts of regulatory and legal things happen?
- [17:38]
Julie Samuels
This is literally what I spend all my time thinking about.
- [17:41]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Okay, so take me there to the, like, the 2000s and all that stuff.
- [17:47]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I guess I would say. So, like, fast forward. I spent some time in New York. I was in New York on September 11th. I had a bit of a crazy September 11th story. Not tragic, and I mean, you know, but it really, from that moment, I was like, oh, it stamped me as a New Yorker for life, I would say. And I would also say I always knew I'd come back eventually, but life has a weird way of, you know, conspiring. And I ended up. I went to law school, and then I was an IP lawyer for a while, and then I. Then I went to eff, which was like the dream job. It was like the why I went to law school job. It was like thinking about why was.
- [18:24]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
It a dream job for you. Why was that what you wanted to do?
- [18:27]
Julie Samuels
Well, I was always. I was always like a First Amendment geek, you know, super, super just interested in the First Amendment. Always found it fascinating as long as I can remember, and I was ever since undergrad, fascinated by what the First Amendment looked like as we transitioned to the Internet and still am. I mean, that we still, like, we're living in that moment right now. Like, I think about it all the time. How. How we haven't really, you know, gotten that far. I remember really quickly not to go back. I'm going to do this forever. You're never going to get rid of me. But I had this moment where I remember I was sitting in undergrad and it was like the light bulb went on. And I understood that. That we would get news in real time. And what I envisioned it would look like, though I didn't. It was so early. I thought, do you remember those high school yearbooks and the page stock is, like, kind of thick.
- [19:23]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [19:23]
Julie Samuels
I had this, like. What I thought we would get is you'd get like, a New York Times book and the pages would, like, update.
- [19:32]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Well, I've interviewed people and you know what the news event was that trained at least certain media folks that you have to be 247 was the princess Diana.
- [19:43]
Julie Samuels
Oh, yeah, Death. What year was that?
- [19:45]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
97, I think. I mean, and not everyone got on board at the same time, but yeah. Anyway, go on.
- [19:50]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. So eff was the dream job because I was really interested in the First Amendment. I was really interested in what freedom of speech and the free flow of information looked like on the Internet. And there's literally no organization. So that was late 2000s. I ended up moving there 2010. There's no organization in the world in 2009. 2010, that's thinking about that. More than efficient. And so I picked up and moved across the country. I also spent a ton of time on software patent work. So I did, like, half my time was spent on copyright and trademark and First Amendment, and half is on software.
- [20:27]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Patents, including patent trolls, which we can go into. Yes, continue.
- [20:33]
Julie Samuels
Sorry. Mark Cuban. I was the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, which the Wall Street Journal called possibly the best new job title in 2012, which I thought really was probably a career piece.
- [20:42]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
And also, podcasters owe you for that crazy podcasting.
- [20:50]
Julie Samuels
We got rid of the podcasting troll.
- [20:51]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yes, I'm sorry. We're going everywhere. Okay, so.
- [20:56]
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- [21:25]
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- [21:56]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
All that good stuff.
- [21:56]
Julie Samuels
Yeah, I mean, it was great. And we were there, you know, I was there during the Arab Spring. I was there during SOPA pipa. I could like all of these things, all of these moments. The podcasting trolls were unbelievable. I had so many. I went on Adam Carolla's podcast. He said some crazy shit. Can I swear on this podcast?
- [22:16]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [22:20]
Julie Samuels
I. It was great. Yeah. And it was a really interesting time. It's a lot of the. I'd say a lot of the issues we were working on at EFF were really. The time I was there, they were really becoming mainstream. They were going from this kind of like more niche Internet telecom, like bubble.
- [22:40]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Or like we're in industry specific. Like yes. Lobbying or legal group or something. Versus. No. This is everything. This is pervading society.
- [22:48]
Julie Samuels
That's right. And it was post the dot com bubble. You know, it was just post the dot com. It was just post 2008. The recession. Things were just starting to kind of pick up again and. And everyone was paying attention and everyone's parents were asking, what is this Facebook thing? You know, things were just becoming really, really mainstream. They were becoming mainstream in D.C. they were becoming mainstream, you know, in.
- [23:19]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
You know, I always say, I always say 2009 is the iPhone and it's also Facebook opening up to non. Opening up to everybody. So your mother gets an iPhone and a Facebook account.
- [23:31]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. And you know, I had been living in Chicago and in 2010 I moved to San Francisco for this job. And it was so fun and it was so interesting. And I also remember I'd just be out and about in San Francisco. And I'd meet people all the time who were like, I'm building an app that's going to do this or I'm building a thing that's going to do. Why? And you know, I'm like I said, I grew up in Chicago too. I've got some pretty Midwestern tendencies at times. And I'd always be like, that is crazy. But it also felt really, really refreshing because people, you know, it was so optimistic. It was just so like, the sky is the limit. It was, it felt like. And again then the Arab Spring happened and it was like, we are. This is it. You know, this is what we came here to do. Like, it's all happening right now. And God, it was an amazing time. And then SOPA Pipa, which has a huge New York angle too, but that.
- [24:24]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Too, you know what, I want to poke at this because I remember that too. And we're in a different era now, but the feeling of that, well, this is why we all fell in love with technology. That you give you level a playing field, you give potentially every human being on the planet access to all of the same knowledge, all of the same technology, man, that I know. Two thousand and tens era, even into the two thousand and tens, didn't we feel like it was amazing. We were killing it.
- [24:59]
Julie Samuels
We did it.
- [25:00]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah.
- [25:01]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [25:02]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
I don't know where to go with that because the question.
- [25:04]
Julie Samuels
Think about it all the time. I think about it a lot. I think about it a lot now because obviously we also create. I mean, clearly we created a lot of vacuums and a lot of bad people and bad things filled some of those vacuums. I think I sometimes, I fear sometimes that I was naive.
- [25:24]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Me too.
- [25:25]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. And that's something I actually love about New York. New York feels much more grounded and realistic about some of the risks associated with this. Like, I thought the Arab Spring happened and I thought it was done. You know, I thought like democracy just won forever. You know, like it was it like every. And clearly, you know, clearly history tells a different story and we're still living in the middle of that. So I'm not quite sure where it, where it ends. I mean, hopefully never ends. It keeps marching forward. But. But so many of us. It was a self selecting group of people, of really optimistic people, really idealistic people and very young people, frankly, very young people. It was totally. I mean, there was. I knew no 1 over 40 who. I knew no one think about who we knew working on these projects and who.
- [26:14]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah, but that's always true. Again, self selecting for your cohort.
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Julie Samuels
And you know, it was uniquely self selecting because the technology and the ability to understand the technology was if you knew, you knew.
- [26:25]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
And that sort of aged you out. If you didn't know. Yeah, that's right.
- [26:29]
Julie Samuels
If you didn't feel comfortable on the tools. And so I, I don't, I just, I think about that a lot and I think, I don't want to lose the optimism and the idealism. But you also don't want to be naive. And I don't know where the right balance is for that, but I think about it all the time.
- [26:46]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Okay, I got to do this. We've danced around this a little bit. But explain to me so you do come to New York and you can tell me how you do that and why in greater depth. But what I want to know, you've been in Silicon Valley. You come back to Silicon Alley. I want you, when you come here to explain to me the difference between the two.
- [27:12]
Julie Samuels
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:13]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
And then on a larger sense, as we'll get into tech, NYC and all this stuff, what the differences are. But when you come here versus Silicon Valley, what's the difference?
- [27:24]
Julie Samuels
Okay, I think the primary thing, like the 10,000 foot view is it felt really good and I really wanted to be in a place where tech was just a part and not the whole. And when I was in San Francisco and I lived only ever in San Francisco, I never lived down the peninsula, also my city person. So New York is just much better for me. But putting that aside for a second, when I lived there, this is, I say this all the time, actually, and it sounds kind of trite, but I totally think this is true. When I lived in the Valley. In the Valley, you met people all the time who were tech people who lived in the Valley. And in New York you meet New Yorkers who work in tech. And the, the fundamental reason for this, and this still holds true, but was even more true then and even more true before I came back, is that if you work in tech in New York, someone at some point has asked you, why aren't you in the Valley? And you have an answer that probably doesn't have to do with work. It's probably like, my family's here, my friends are here. I'm really into theater, I love music. What. You know, fill in the blank. And what that means is you've got a bunch of people who love New York and who are here for other things too. Now that means that you have a. It's a. Just culturally, the tech sector is really really different. There is clearly, I'm going to point.
- [28:52]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Out there's a little snobbery to it too. Like I don't know that. Do you think that San Francisco folk do that to New York City tech folk? Like.
- [29:03]
Julie Samuels
I think that there is different snobbery. I mean, like, you know, people have their own snobbery about where you're from is a very common, common thing. I think the snobbery about SF was when I was there and now is again, but wasn't for some time in the middle but now is again like this is where you come to build. This is where the hacker houses are. We are serious. We do not, you know, we are working around the clock building our whatever. You can't go out without, you know, you can't throw a stone without hitting a VC or an engineer. And that is, I think a lot of the pride of the tech sector in San Francisco is around that zeitgeist. And here it's different. Here it's like, oh, I went to this amazing art opening or I did the reverse.
- [29:55]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
The reverse snobbery is, well, there's no culture in San Francisco, but we have it in spades here. Like actually, I'm going to paraphrase you.
- [30:04]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [30:08]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Something that I. New York City's unique advantage as a place where technology is, is that it stacks on top of other world class industries, finance, media, fashion, health care, which allows startups to quote, pivot almost anything and figure out if it's going to work. So that's interesting, the stack we talk about software stacks, but the stack of industries.
- [30:31]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. Well, let me also, let me, let me build on that first. Okay, this is something I think is. Well, first of all, I think what you said, you're paraphrasing of me is dead on. I think that is one of the major, major value propositions for New York. If you are building a tech company in the media space, you're building a tech community in the fashion space and the real, you know, whatever. Why wouldn't you want to be around. You can technical talent now you can find technical talent, but what you uniquely have in New York is subject matter expertise, really. Strategic capital mentorship who knows about the industry in which you're building. Okay. So I think that that's like a major advantage for New York. But I think, I think a lot about the Internet, kind of in waves, in stages. I'm going to totally oversimplify. I think also a lot of your listeners will like call me out for all the things my oversimplification that I am missing, but just kind of bear with me. You have obviously a lot of the early infrastructure on the west coast, but then just before I lived there and while I was there, the application layer was really built on the west coast, mostly in the Valley, but also of course Amazon and Seattle. And that was because of the introduction of the iPhone, of course. But application layer that made the Internet accessible to everyday people was built in this moment in time. And the biggest companies, which are still the biggest tech companies, were all from this time and they were all succeeded for a lot of reasons. But I think one of the major reasons those companies were so successful is because they were built in this vacuum and government wasn't really paying attention. Competitors weren't really paying attention. They had these companies that crazy names. No one on the east coast really took them seriously.
- [32:14]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
That's a point I've made a million times.
- [32:15]
Julie Samuels
Yes, speaking of generalities, of course. But it's like, oh, crazy company called Google in like an office park, you.
- [32:21]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Know, weren't taken seriously in the sense that like not, not even in the innovators dilemma sort of way. Oh, they're coming up from behind. It's like, well, that's a joke. It's the Chris Dixon thing. The next big thing is always thought of as a joke. Yes.
- [32:34]
Julie Samuels
Right. Until all of a sudden, especially because of network effects. But until all of a sudden they were so big. They were so big that you couldn't not take them ser. I mean, obviously you couldn't not take them seriously. Okay, so we are past that. Like there is there now the pendulum has swung just completely in the other direction. If anything, the competition, the, the regulators, everyone comes after these companies really, really early. I think that actually bodes well for New York. Well, I don't. I mean, I just think I shouldn't say that bodes well for New York. I should say New York has the competitive advantage in that landscape because the days of just like heads down build in a vacuum, like that's just not happening again. We see it now with AI we're much earlier in the cycle. We're talking about regulation everywhere. We're talking about competition everywhere. There's.
- [33:25]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Well, when you say, when you say heads down building in a vacuum, you're almost saying that no one's paying attention to you. So you're not getting the spotlight shown on you.
- [33:34]
Julie Samuels
Right. So you can just.
- [33:35]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
There's no pressure.
- [33:36]
Julie Samuels
That's right, right. That doesn't happen anymore. Obvious. Obviously. We're just in a different time. So I think that that cities like New York where people have built relationships across sectors, where people, you know, just kind of are better integrated into these systems. I think tech will really thrive because of that. You know, they know in New York you cannot only know people in your industry.
- [34:04]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah.
- [34:04]
Julie Samuels
Like I don't care who you are, I don't care how rich you are. Like you are on the subway, you are walking around, you are bumping into other people. There are parents in your kids, schools who, you know, it's just a total melting pot of like all different kinds of people working. And, and tech will never be the biggest. I mean I actually tech will be the biggest industry in New York. Let me, let me paraphrase that. Tech will never be the only biggest injury. It will never be a single industry town.
- [34:29]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
It won't be a one, one industry town.
- [34:32]
Julie Samuels
Right, right. That will never happen here. So that just, I just think we then have the better skill set to handle some of these challenges because we have cross sector relationships. You know, oh, I know someone from, I know someone from like this club I'm in or I know someone they met at the theater or like another parent at school or whatever. I'll call them and just ask what to do. That. There's just so much more of that here.
- [34:57]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Can I jump to the founding of Tech nyc? Tell me the background of it. Fred Wilson, Tim Armstrong. Actually, no. Tell me as far as, you know, where the impetus for this came from and then how did you get involved?
- [35:16]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. Okay. So I moved back here in 2014. Yeah, I moved back here in 2014. And when I was moving back, I'd had a couple conversations there had been before I moved back, a couple efforts to set up some kind of industry organization. They never really got off the ground. I knew a little bit about them.
- [35:38]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
And an industry organization specifically for tech as, as, as an industry in New York City.
- [35:45]
Julie Samuels
Yes, New York City focused. Okay. Then I really got off the ground. That was before my time. And then I got back here, like I said, the end of 2014. I had a baby in March of 2015. So I was heads down for a little bit. And then in about, let's say October, September, October of 2015. 2015, I started having a series of meetings. Fred and Tim, like you said, Kevin Ryan, Desiree Gruber, Kevin Sheikhy. I'd say those were the kind of the first, the first five.
- [36:23]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
And, and what is, what is the agenda of those meetings? Like what.
- [36:27]
Julie Samuels
First of all, they weren't all with, it wasn't all with all of those people.
- [36:30]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
But what's, what's the energy? Like, what is trying to be? Yeah, I.
- [36:34]
Julie Samuels
Well, I think, you know, there was energy to create an organization to represent the tech industry in New York City. I think that Bloomberg had just finished his mayorality. He was back at his company. And so a lot of people who had worked for Mike were thinking a lot about how to ensure tech continued to thrive in the city. So I knew some of them and they kind of reached out like, have you thought about this? And then that was kind of how I got hooked up with Tim and Desiree, who worked with Tim. We had all talked about it and I said to them at that point, well, you know, I know Fred and Kevin have explored this before. I'm not doing this without Fred and Kevin. And so we talked to Fred and Kevin and like, we all just were having these conversations and it was one of those things where we just kind of kept having meetings and conversations. And then the next thing I knew, I was like, oh my God, this is real.
- [37:36]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Well, and they want you because you have the experience of the policy and EFF and all that.
- [37:42]
Julie Samuels
Yeah, yeah, I knew. And I think with, you know, with, with the benefit of hindsight, I think in many ways one of the reasons I was a good candidate for this is I knew a lot of these people from my work in dc, from the federal work I had done. But in New York, I was still pretty new, right? I had just moved back and like I said, I just had a baby. And so when I moved back, I was, I was kind of like no one's force, if that makes sense. And so much of what we do@Tech NYC is political, small, interesting and big people. And I don't think anyone felt, I don't know if it's just my perception. Of course I don't think anyone felt like I was their person.
- [38:20]
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- [39:17]
Scott Hanson
Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Race the sails.
- [39:20]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.
- [39:22]
Julie Samuels
Over.
- [39:23]
Scott Hanson
Roger.
- [39:23]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Wait.
- [39:24]
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- [39:45]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Apply or you're a threat to their agenda.
- [39:49]
Julie Samuels
Yeah, like, I kind of knew them all. I was kind of like a little bit like Switzerland in that. I was very pro tech. I knew my tech.
- [39:54]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Everyone thinks you're on their team.
- [39:57]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. And so we just kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other. Like sometimes I think of myself like an accidental founder. Also one day I was like, oh, my God, I think I'm starting this organization. Like, what? What just happened here? And so that was the end of 2015. And then early 2016, I started working on it in earnest. I hired a woman named Sarah Brown, who is still here. She's chief strategy officer. She was the original chief of staff. Her first day was March 1st. That's when we got health insurance. You know, that was. And like, there are a bunch of, like, little things. The reason we're called Tech NYC is because my husband found the domain name, it was available nyc, a lot of stuff like that. He still finds all my domain names for me. He loves to find a good domain name. And then we launched in May of that year of 2016. And the reason we picked our launch date when we did. God, I'll never forget this. We had. There's a great article in the New York Times. It must have been, I think, May 4, May 6. That May, maybe it was like May 1 because it was that week. The. The reporter was Steve Lore. And it was a pretty long story. There's actually. There's a picture of me in it with my dog, came to the office with me in New York City, which is kind of rare. And it was a story about the growth of the startup sector in New York. And it announced in it that Tech NYC was launching. The whole story was not about Tech.
- [41:27]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
NYC, but this was 2016. It's the growth of the startup sector. Startup sector, yes.
- [41:32]
Julie Samuels
Still felt really nascent. And then. And I just remember where I was sitting when it came out. And we were freaking out because we had a party scheduled for like Wednesday night. I think it was a Wednesday night party. And we just needed the story to publish before. And then we had this party and, you know, Fred and Kevin and Tim, they were all there, and Bill de Blasio, who was mayor, was there, and Senator Schumer was there, and we had a bunch of real estate people there. And it was a huge party. It was packed. You, like, couldn't move. And I think that a lot of people in New York politics, not tech now, but New York politics, really took us seriously after that night because realize.
- [42:13]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
You were a constituency that mattered.
- [42:14]
Julie Samuels
That was. Yeah, that was right. And we had 40 members when we launched. Oh, and one other quick thing I'd say that I think is really relevant. And I still. I don't want to use the word struggle, because I think that's too strong of a word. But. But one unique challenge of tech in New York that was really true in 2015, 2016, and remains true, but different in. In 2025, 2026, is that the. Still, some of the largest tech companies are not headquartered here now. They're huge employers, you know, 10,000 employees here, but they're not headquartered here. And people in New York are used to having the CEOs sit here in other industries. So there's a little. You know, one of the things we like, listen, we could have launched an organization in 2015, 2016, that had four or five members, and they weren't New York companies. And we could have kind of been just representing the biggest tech companies. And I really like that. I had no desire.
- [43:12]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
So what you're saying is it's like Facebook has headquarters here, Amazon, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's versus no Etsy there. Yeah. Or a data dog or whatever. Yeah.
- [43:23]
Julie Samuels
They all had to be involved. Right. And it was Etsy and it was. In those days, you know, it was Foursquare and Kickstarter and. And Warby Parker, and they were all involved from the beginning, and it was really, really important, was that they were at the table right next to Google, who already had a huge presence on the west side at that, and Amazon and Facebook, and they were all. And Bloom. And companies like Bloomberg LP too, which is a huge tech company here, of course, and that we had small startups and the biggest employers and that it really was a big tent.
- [43:57]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
I, again, for the interest of time, have to. Elise.
- [44:00]
Julie Samuels
Yeah? I feel like I'm talking way too much.
- [44:01]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
No, no, no. Believe me. This is. It's called oral history for a reason.
- [44:05]
Julie Samuels
Does everyone do this?
- [44:07]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
No, the people that I like are the people that talk a lot. So you're in my Good book right now. So just for people that are listening again, founders, tech folks or whatever, give me tech NYC's pitch as opposed to your history over the last decade or so. Tell me what it means right now, today.
- [44:32]
Julie Samuels
Can I just. There's just one moment. I have.
- [44:34]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Oh yeah, please, please.
- [44:36]
Julie Samuels
From when SOPA and PIPA these big.
- [44:38]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Oh, I'm sorry, you keep bringing that up.
- [44:39]
Julie Samuels
I just want to talk about that for a second. I was still living in San Francisco then. The Congress was trying to pass these bills that we all were calling the Internet killers. It would have basically broken the open Internet.
- [44:51]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yeah.
- [44:51]
Julie Samuels
And, and a lot of people worked really hard. I worked really hard from San Francisco at eff. But the New York tech community really stepped up and Senator Schumer really stepped up and there were protests here and Senator Schumer showed up and bills killed. And that there was that moment. And then also there was net neutrality, which was another really big policy fight we worked on with the New York tech companies after that. And those moments really in the political sphere really solidified the New York tech sector.
- [45:19]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
I was going to say, has New York been, I don't want to say it's stronger because the FF again was born out on the left coast. But like, has, is, has, has the New York City tech scene been a little stronger in terms of defending policy and things like that around tech?
- [45:41]
Julie Samuels
That's a. I don't know. That's a good question. I'm not sure.
- [45:46]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Better. Okay, better was probably the wrong way to put it.
- [45:48]
Julie Samuels
It has been and it has changed a lot over the years. But there was a time in the early in the 2000 teens where the new York tech sector was really close knit and there were a number of essentially like network companies. Most of them were USV portfolio companies, but not, not all. And they were incredibly active in policy work. And there was this group of us. It was a lot. There were some CEOs, but a lot of it was the policy people at the companies. And we were on the Amtrak, we were going to dc. You know, we were doing, we were doing the thing and it was a really, it was a great moment in time. It was also a very optimistic moment in time. Anyway, I just, I felt like I really wanted to call that out. But let me go in the interest of time, let me fast forward to.
- [46:33]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Yes, Tech NYC please, for today. For someone listening today, why you should get involved, what you're doing and what the purpose is.
- [46:41]
Julie Samuels
Okay, so let me, let me say Tech NYC is an organization that has members Most tech companies in New York, I shouldn't say most tech companies in Europe, many, many tech companies, all different sizes, many investors, they're all members. And we do a bunch of work to ensure that New York City is the best based, best place to build and grow a tech company. That means, of course, that's very abstract, that means a number of things. But, but what it, I guess means in practice is we spend a lot of time, we focus on city and state policy and politics. We work in Albany on a lot of tech related bills. There's a lot moving right now there that would impact how technology works here. But over the years, on the policy side, one of the big shifts is we're working more and more on issues that impact all New Yorkers because people who work in tech are just New Yorkers. And as the industry has grown, as the workforce has gotten a little older, they care more and more. We find about things like public safety and good schools and functioning subway systems and making sure it's a place people want to live. Because the companies, we fundamentally believe the bargain is the companies will want to be here if the people they want to hire are here. So we do a lot of work, I would say, to make sure this is a place where people in tech want to live. That also means we partner a lot with the city and other organizations to do work around education, workforce development, not just attracting technical people, but also training New Yorkers. I mean, I could go on forever, but let me take a step back and try and frame for you how I think about our work, especially kind of the second half of the last decade. It's about to be Tech NYC's 10 year anniversary in 2016. It is inevitable that tech will be, if it isn't already, the biggest industry in the city. Listen, I run an organization called Tech nyc. I have no idea how you define that. Every company is a tech company. Like say what? Say however you want to say it. Right. As the city makes that transition, we spend our time at Tech NYC thinking about what that means for New York politically, what that means culturally, what does that mean civically, what does it mean philanthropically as technology, both the people and companies building it and the technology itself changes our city. We want to make sure that that transition lifts as many boats as possible. And the way to get that right, we think is involving the companies, but more importantly, of course, involving the people who work at the companies in the.
- [49:08]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
City and state, the workers, the stakeholders, the communities where those workers and stakeholders live, et cetera.
- [49:17]
Julie Samuels
Exactly.
- [49:20]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
I never know how to frame these sorts of questions. But if you're looking to the end of the decade for the New York City tech ecosystem.
- [49:33]
Julie Samuels
Yeah.
- [49:36]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
What would you like to see, you know, see again in the AI era through the AI lens or whatever?
- [49:42]
Julie Samuels
Let me give you a slightly more political spin on.
- [49:44]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Okay, do it, if you will, because I'm bad at asking questions.
- [49:48]
Julie Samuels
Yeah. Well, let me tell you. Okay. I think you're great at asking questions, obviously, because I've been talking like at least nonstop for a while. But I think that when I think about, you know, 2030, 2035, like, I hope that New York City and New York State government are using technology. Well for New Yorkers, that cities, that local government is working and we all know that like working means that there's some level of tech involved. I hope that there are people who are working for the city and the state, maybe as mayor or governor or in other high, you know, other important roles, running large New York institutions that aren't just tech companies who come from the tech industry, who've thought about how to solve problems with the tech mindset and that the tech employers and the companies across the city are really good partners to the city and the state and that the city and state is a good place for those companies and people who work at them to be.
- [50:56]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
All right, very, very last one. Anyone listening? That is an early stage founder. What's the smartest way to get involved with either tech NYC or with the New York City government? Yeah, when you're starting out right now.
- [51:13]
Julie Samuels
Okay, so I've got a couple quick answers. One, we have a, a daily digest email. We've got a daily email that you can sign up for tech nyc.org that has a ton of information on this very topic. How to get involved, how to be around.
- [51:27]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
And the email is.
- [51:28]
Julie Samuels
Well, you can just go to tech nyc.org you'll find it. Yes, and I think there's a lot of information in there. It's just, it's a quick hit and I think you, you could get a. We. It's a. I just have to say it's a great daily newsletter because it talks about tech, but it also talks about what's going on in the city that maybe doesn't have anything to do with tech. And so you get like the cross.
- [51:48]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
It's about joining the actual tech ecosystem, the culture and. Yeah, yeah.
- [51:53]
Julie Samuels
So, you know, I think one of the challenges obviously with building a startup is like, how do you balance the networking and the need to go to events with like the actual building, but you have to do some of both. If you are someone who either is building a company in the government space, you want to sell your product to government one day maybe. Or maybe you just want. Maybe you just want to get involved in the city or the state somehow. You live here, you're building a company, but you also really care about safe streets or you care about. You know, you should literally just reach out to Tech NYC. We're a pretty small team. We're about 14 people and this is what we live to do. We live to plug tech people in to the civic infrastructure of the city. That might mean working with a local nonprofit. That might mean volunteering for the city. There's a bunch of fellowships like, that is my world. That is my team's world. We know those people. And you can literally send an email to infoechnyc.org There are humans who read that I am one of them. And someone will answer, that is the best way if you really want to get involved. And you should join Tech NYC, which you can go to technyc.org, well, but.
- [52:57]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Think about that as a resource. That old sort of hoary cliche of like you show up in New York City and you've just got the clothes on your back or whatever and you don't know anybody. No, you do.
- [53:08]
Julie Samuels
That's right. You know us.
- [53:09]
Interviewer (possibly Brian)
Tech NYC can help you get your feet and build something. Julie, thank you so much. This has been amazing.
- [53:17]
Julie Samuels
Science is really fun.
- [53:31]
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