Matt Harrigan – Grand Central Tech [audio] | Hacker News Reader

Matt Harrigan – Grand Central Tech [audio]

soundcloud.com

21 pointsdevy9 comments

Matt Harrigan mentions that the average company in their accelerator has raised over $500K before being accepted with exceptions being for formidable founders (their words).

From GCT's website:

Q: FREE rent and ZERO equity fee? Sounds too good to be true; is it?

A: Nope. Believe it. We only ask two things: One, to be a great community member and to take on at least one intern from our internship program. In the past, 85% of our interns have been offered ongoing, paid work with their companies. They are great. Two, to commit to staying in the building after your year in GCT provided doing so is not deleterious to your business. We’ve built a highly configurable, 40,000 square foot coworking space to fit your company’s needs as they grow and our rates are competitive with the market. Our intention in making this request is to maintain the most valuable asset you’ll acquire during your time at GCT – the camaraderie and support of your peers.

> to commit to staying in the building after your year in GCT provided doing so is not deleterious to your business.

So is the long-term play here for them to attract tenant to their office building?

I'd wish they would be clearer whether this is a profit-driven enterprise, and if so how they intend to make their money.

Matt talked about the analogy of tech industry in Silicon Valley now vs. the financial industry in New York in the early days. My understanding is that this is definitely a long term play. Along the way though, this process also helps local economy, job growth and helping New York City to become the leading tech hub in the east coast etc. Obviously, those will all help boost the real estate market. Don't forget the 3rd partner in GCT is from the Milstein family[1]. All in all, this is one stone multiple birds :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Milstein

Fair enough, but it is a bad signal that they aren't being completely forthright. Thanks for the info.

I worked as an intern at one of the companies based out of Matt's old high school four years ago. I also had the chance to use their space for two weeks a year ago and the space/environment is fantastic. It's amazing to see how far they've come from their first summer four years ago. I can't speak for GCT, but I don't believe it's profit-driven. In its first form, the accelerator was an extension of Matt and Charlie's (the other Co-Founder of GCT) high school which is an all-scholarship school for Catholic boys in New York. In short the students pay nothing; the school subsists off of alumni donations. The school's mission was to give a great education to students who otherwise wouldn't be able to access it for financial reasons. Matt and Charlie tried to preserve that benevolent attitude when founding GCT: an accelerator purely dedicated to the success of the companies in its classes.

I used to work for a company working out of GCT. It was a great experience. Matt and Charlie have done a great job with both GCT and Build Grand Central.

Off topic: Is there any way to play SoundCloud audio at a faster speed besides ripping the files from their site and playing it locally?

I don't know of a way using their site.

The fastest way I've found otherwise is to run mpv https://mpv.io/ with the URL as an argument, and use the ']' shortcut to increase playback speed.

Can we get an Audio warning on this? Never a nice surprise when something autoplays.

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