Image via Complex Original
It's hard to make a name for yourself in the tech industry, especially in such fast-moving times as these. And yet, there is a select cohort of innovators, business execs, and techies who have managed to cement their legend both in the tech world and in New York City. What follows is our list of Silicon Alley's most important names to know. Just remember who told you first.
Jonah Peretti
Company: BuzzFeed
Position: Founder
Jonah Peretti, the all-knowing Oz of BuzzFeed, is what The New York Times once referred to as a "viral marketing hot dog." And it's true, he knows his stuff. Just think about this: Peretti founded BuzzFeed after he helped found The Huffington Post. And as BuzzFeed continues to grow, Peretti's legend will only embolden.
Brooke Hammerling
Company: Brew Media Relations
Position: Founder
Search Public Relations maven on Google and a photo of Brooke Hammerling just might pop up. She runs the show at Brew Media Relations, an aggressive PR firm with a who's who of startup luminaries, including GroupMe, Zong, Bluefin Labs, Adaptly, and Wordpress. Her secret? "We make introductions [for clients] that lead to investment, that lead to partnerships, that lead to customer acquisition," she told The New York Observer. “It goes beyond getting a story in a publication.”
Hilary Mason
Company: Bit.ly, HackNY
Position: Chief Scientist, Founder
Mason's bio best captures her spunky personality: "I <3 data and cheeseburgers" The native New Yorker has a long list of accolades and accomplishments, too, but the most notable may be her gig as Chief Scientist at Bit.ly and as co-founder of HackNY, a "non-profit that helps talented engineering students find their way into the startup community of creative technologists in New York City." To paraphrase Biggie: The sky's the limit.
John Borthwick
Company: Betaworks, Digg
Position: CEO
As top dog at Betaworks, John Borthwick has helped shepherd in a new era for an old company. Acquiring Digg, the news aggregation site, Borthwick was able to return the once-struggling site back to relevancy online. It's no surprise, either. When you're the former CEO of Fotolog and SVP of Alliances and Technology Strategy for Time Warner, it's all in a day's work.
Chris Dixon
Company: Hunch, Founder Collective
Position: Co-Founder
Chris Dixon is who we talk about when we talk about making dreams come true for startups. As Business Insider noted, he "is one of New York's most active angel investors and he has backed companies" including Warby Parker, OMGPOP, Drop Box, Kickstarter, and Foursquare. The Harvard MBA is proof that good ideas should never go unnoticed.
Noah Brier and James Gross
Company: Percolate
Position: Co-Founders
Noah Brier and James Gross had a genius idea: Build a platform intended to assist CMOs with managing social media content. And as it happens, helping to "humanize the voice" of a brand was very much in demand. The end result: Percolate has over 30 Fortune 500 clients who pay $10,000 a month for Brier's and Gross' expertise. Not bad for a startup that's only a few years old.
Alexis Ohanian
Company: Reddit
Position: Co-Founder
Alexis Ohanian may be more known for his work as an Internet activist and entrepreneur, which is surprising when you realize he co-founded Reddit, one of the most influential social sites on the web. The Brooklyn-based techie was named one of Fortune's "30 Under 30" and is currently working on a book--Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made Not Managed--that is sure to cause an uproar.
David Karp
Company: Tumblr
Position: Founder
He's been dubbed the Internet Boy Wonder--and for good reason. David Karp, who launched the micro-blogging and social networking site in 2007, has been hailed as one of the world's top innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review and has an estimated net worth of $200 million. To say Tumblr is redefining the way we communicate with each other would be putting it mildly.
Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler
Company: Kickstarter
Position: Co-Founders
Plain and simple, the future will be shaped by Kickstarter projects. The popular crowd-funding platform has ushered in a new era of technology where anything seems possible. The company has backed a diverse body of enterprises, including the innovative Pebble watch, sports-commentary site The Classical, fantasy role-playing video game Project Eternity, and much more. Thanks to Chen, Strickler, and Adler, the future of technology looks brighter than ever.
Daniel S. Loeb
Company: Third Point LLC
Position: Founder, CEO, Hedge Fund Manager
Simply put: Dan Loeb is an influencer. As the a founder, CEO and hedge fund manager of Third Point, he has perhaps been most influential in ousting former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson and replacing him with Google's Marrisa Mayer. When one man is able to shift the course of an entire company because he feels like it, then, as Wu-Tang once put it, he ain't nothing to fuck with.
