Alex's Tech Thoughts

People always email me asking about securing venues for events they are organizing. This post will include all the potential locations in NYC for events, how many people they can hold, the point people there, and the general feeling of what type of events make sense there.

The venues I cover are General Assembly, Dogpatch Labs, AOL Ventures, Google NYC, Cooley LLP, NYU, and Columbia. 

General Assembly- 902 Broadway, 4th Floor, at 20th Street

Great For: Hackathons, events that cost money, and classes.

Capacity: 150-200 in main area. 20-40 in classroom.

Point Person: Adrian Ryan runs events for GA.

Summary: In under a year GA has turned into the center of the NYC startup scene. GA has weekly classes, hackathons on the weekends, and more. All events at GA are high quality. If you plan to do an event here, you will probably need to charge.

Dogpatch Labs NYC- 36 E 12th St at University Place

Great For: Events that help early-stage startups, speaker series.

Capacity: 50-100 in main area.

Point Person: Matt Meeker runs all things Dogpatch Labs NYC.

Summary: Dogpatch Labs is an awesome place for early-stage startups in NYC. If you are thinking of throwing an event in NYC that will benefit early-stage startups then think about doing it here. I have seen many speaker series with investors happen at Dogpatch. There is no formal process of putting on the event there- it’s just getting in front of Matt and seeing if he thinks it would be a good fit. 

AOL Ventures- 670 Broadway 4th Floor between Great Jones & Bond Street

Great For: The space can do everything. I haven’t seen a hackathon- but could probably pull off a small one with a little moving around of desks.

Capacity: Under 150.

Point Person: You can contact Keegan Forte (Chief of Staff) or Mike Brown Jr who heads up AOL Ventures to book the space.

Summary: I’ve been to a TechStar’s after-party, a small gathering, happy hours, and more here. The space is great and can hold a ton of people. They try and stick to doing events that are focused on the engineering/hacker community - they host ML, Ruby, Predictive Analytics, Hadoop, etc meetups. A great spot to have an event.

Google NYC- 76 Ninth Avenue, between 15th and 16th Street

Great For: Panels, Kick-off events, Product launches.

Capacity: Under 200

Point Person: Christopher Fong is the person I have spoken to about the space.

Summary: I’ve been to Google NYC for a few select event. The Dreamit Ventures Accelerator Kick-Off was the best. The place is a perfect mix of networking and seating. There is no specific type of event held there- they are pretty open to being pitched about events.

Cooley LLP- The Grace Building 1114 Avenue of the Americas at 42nd Street

Great For: Panels.

Capacity: 100 comfortably

Point Person: Kim Dreyer is the gatekeeper of events in NYC.

Summary: I have put together three amazing events (if I do say so myself) at Cooley in the past year. We quickly outgrew the space but Cooley was always very helpful in planning and organizing. Cooley isn’t known to do a lot of events specifically for the startup space but the location is great and the room is spacious.

NYU- Skirball Center For The Performing Arts- 566 LaGuardia Place at Washington Square South

Great For: Huge meetups

Capacity: 800 people

Point Person: Not sure, haven’t put together an event there. Nate Westheimer, Brandon Diamond, and Jessica Lawrence (from NYTM) should know.

Summary: This space is the biggest of all for the NY tech scene. The New York tech meetup is held there the first Tuesday of each month. I have never put together an event there, so I can’t really speak of doing anything there.

Columbia University- Uris Hall, Room 301, 3022 Broadway at 117th Street

Great For: Speaker Series, Panels.

Capacity: Up to 250.

Point Person: Fernando Ng and Avani Patel are the current co-presidents of Entrepreneur Club.

Summary: I have been to one event at Uris and the space is nice. The space is near the red line for convenience. I almost put an event together there, but it ended up falling through. 

Obviously things change but this is a good list to start.

If you have any info that can make this list better, hit me up in comments.