Brick City the next Silicon Valley? Tech start-ups get help in Newark

Joan Verdon
NorthJersey

Jeff Bezos didn't choose Newark for an Amazon satellite headquarters, but Newark's tech community has a plan to create the Jeff Bezos-style tech mavens of the future. 

On the day when Amazon announced its decision to locate new headquarters campuses in Crystal City, Virginia, and Long Island City in Queens, Newark was the scene of a conference focused on helping minority and female entrepreneurs to turn their bright ideas into high-growth business models.

The conference brought together entrepreneurs and business owners like Floyd Thompson, owner of a Newark accounting firm that is developing a virtual bookkeeper that can deliver financial information and analysis to a small-business owner's cellphone; Chisa Egbelu, who as a Rutgers student co-founded Pedul, an online tool that connects students with scholarships and funding sources; and Cyndi Gill, an Englewood attorney who created Krewr, which helps people connect with others for activities ranging from karaoke to skiing, hiking, shopping or almost anything else.

(L to R), Philip Gaskin, Cheif of Staff/Director of Entrepreneurial Communities, Tawana Murphy Burnett, Global Team Lead, Facebook and Kathryn Finney, Founder & Managing Director, digitalundivided, discuss about the future of Newark  during the Startup Newark Symposium at Hahne & Co. building in Newark on 11/13/18.

The conference was held in the remodeled Hahne & Co. department store at the corner of Broad and Halsey streets, one of the most visible symbols of the city's renaissance. The formerly palatial department store, which sat empty for over 30 years, has been redeveloped to include apartments, a Whole Foods store, an upscale restaurant, and office and event space for Rutgers. 

The entrepreneurs learned about resources for start-ups in Newark, received business tips like "hold on to as much equity as you can" and got inspiration from black and Latina women who found a way to make it in the mostly white and mostly male tech world.

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The conference was organized by digitalundivided, a non-profit networking organization based in Atlanta that brings tech start-ups together with potential investors and mentors. Digitalundivided, which is based in Atlanta, announced Thursday that it was opening an office in Newark and bringing one of its tech incubator programs to the city.

Gill, creator of the Krewr app, which connects people looking for potential friends who share their interests, said she is planning to apply for the incubator program. She grew up in Newark and was an undergrad at Rutgers-Newark.

(L to R), Philip Gaskin, Cheif of Staff/Director of Entrepreneurial Communities, Tawana Murphy Burnett, Global Team Lead, Facebook and Kathryn Finney, Founder & Managing Director, digitalundivided, discuss about the future of Newark  during the Startup Newark Symposium at Hahne & Co. building in Newark on 11/13/18.

Kathryn Finney founded digitalundivided after feeling that she was being left out of the conversation, and the competition, for investment funding as a black female tech entrepreneur. When she would go to pitch meetings, the response typically was that a woman, and a minority woman, could not launch a tech business.

Newark was the city that helped her launch her first digital business, a fashion site called The Budget Fashionista. It gave her an affordable place to live, she said, and quick access to Manhattan

Other speakers Thursday also had Newark roots.

"There's opportunity that feels homegrown in all the right ways," said Tawana Murphy Burnett, a global team leader for Facebook and one of the speakers at the conference. Murphy Burnett went to Rutgers-Newark as an undergrad, and feels it prepared her for a job with a global corporation. She had a roommate from Zambia, a roommate from Greece, and a good friend from Ghana. "There's a global community here that is probably unexpected," she said.

Philip Gaskin, director of entrepreneurial communities for the Kauffman Foundation, another financial supporter of digitalundivided, said he spent summers in Newark while growing up and "there was a vibrancy and community that was raw, that was soulful, and very loving."

Digitalundivided on Thursday also launched a website, StartupNewark, that provides information about resources for tech start-ups and information about current tech start-ups. 

Migdelis Perez and Floyd Townsend, of Newark accounting firm Floyd D. Townsend & Associates, showing the smartphone app they have developed to help small businesses with their bookkeeping, at the StartupNewark tech conference Thursday

Startup Newark is supported by an advisory board that includes representatives from universities, businesses and economic development organizations in the city. The conference and StartupNewark were funded with a grant from Prudential.

"We really think this is an opportunity to bring together the resources, the access to capital, that start-ups need for high-growth entrepreneurship," said Kimberly Ostrowski, vice president for corporate giving at Prudential Financial.

William Lutz of Morristown, who has started tech companies in the past and is looking for his next start-up, said the energy of Newark reminds him of Pittsburgh 10 years ago, when he lived there. Newark feels like it is poised to take off and make the kind of tech gains seen in Austin, Pittsburgh or Portland, he said.

"A lot of the raw ingredients are here: proximity to New York, low rental prices, easy to get space," he said.

Egbelu, the Pedul co-founder, said Newark's tech potential in some ways is the best-kept secret in the tech world. "It's really about execution," he said. "We need to build the city we want to see."