How MakeSimply makes hardware doable [interview]

Alan Hyman is the co-founder of MakeSimply. In this interview, we cover how he started his company, why hardware’s time is now, his best advice, and yes, we talked body augmentation.

MakeSimply helps people bring their productions to reality. It’s idea to production simplified. They help with almost every phase of hardware: product development, outsourcing, manufacturing, and logistics. They’re a much-needed source of leadership and advisement for hardware startups.

How did MakeSimply come to be?

In 2009, a friend who wanted to create a tracking device approached me. The device was for small animals and used the iPhone. I used my connections at NYU to arrange some meetings. Everyone we talked to asked, “Where is your prototype? We want to see it working.” My friend wanted to approach a factory to ask them to build it.

I was simultaneously getting my master’s at NYU with my future co-founder to be Allen Shieh. One day, he gave a presentation on his family’s business. His family has been in manufacturing for over 30 year and has incredible relationships. They can’t do everything hardware companies need, but they could facilitate the relationships with partners who did. Those partners can do PCB, PCBA, metal machining, and injection plastic molding. They could do it at variable levels of scale and with inexpensive pricing.

I was floored. I needed this, so other people must need it too. I approached Allen about my friend’s product. He told me there was no chance a factory would build us a prototype. That’s okay. I decided to build it myself. I used a couple of Arduinos and a jailbroken iPhone and built it in two weeks.

Two people besides me were involved in the project. One person’s reaction was anger. I did something that she didn’t want me to do. But the other person was relieved. She was relieved because this could actually be built. She was secretly terrified it couldn’t be. That really drove the point home of how important prototypes were.

The project concluded. Allen and I connected again. We asked ourselves what’s going on in the community?

I was involved in hacker spaces. I was into the Open Hardware Summit, the Maker Faire had just begun. We looked around and the time seemed right. We came together, wrote a business plan, and decided to create MakeSimply to help hardware companies execute.

We both agree hardware is a really exciting place. But people have talked it up for years. Why do you think hardware’s time is now?

Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is where processing power doubles every six months while prices drop. Realize this: the power in your iPhone would have taken up multiple large buildings in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Now it’s a small little chip. That’s incredible! That also has tons of ramifications.

The biggest is democratization. Now anyone can play with powerful chips. These chips don’t cost hundreds of dollars anymore. The chips from the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are in the dollar figures. The cost of experimentation is significantly cheaper. I can get a lot of power at a cheap price and not be concerned about blowing the chip if I do something wrong.

These cheap components are what led to the Arduino in the first place. Arduino is an open source prototyping platform. It does complex things in simple ways. It’s electrical engineering with a community that builds libraries that in turn let resources spring up around the Arduino. If you want to see how you send a command in serial to the Arduino, Google it. Find the code, cut and paste, you’re done. It’s instant gratification. Or create your own code, post it online, get peer reviews, revise, and go forward. It lets you be creative. You need to know some basics, but it’s all well documented.

And think about this: the Arduino costs $29. In 2009, I was looking at other prototyping platforms that cost $10,000.

The cost for hobbyists and tinkerers to get started is now practically zero. Everyday people can get into hardware and play. Community gets built. There are places like SparkFun and Adafruit. LadyAda is amazing. Go to her website and get code to do anything with Raspberry Pi or Arduino. You can find out how a whole catalog of parts work and can be integrated into your product. What amazing resources people have created!

Hardware’s hard. You hear that phrase more than anything else. That said, where do people trip up most?

Mostly in manufacturing expectations. Manufacturing just is not that flexible. It has benefited from various technical advances, but as a startup you don’t have access to them. You can’t go to Foxconn and tap into their capabilities. You need a reality check on what resources are available to you.

Next, people don’t realize that when you’re prototyping you don’t have a manufacturable product. You need to have somebody to analyze the prototype to make sure it can be manufactured within your cost structure.

Besides cost, there are real world constraints. I’m working on an electric pen project right now. We have a sketch of it, but that’s not what the manufactured product will look like. The rendered piece is beautiful, but there are collaborations and trade offs that need to happen to bring it to reality.

It’s worth saying that while hardware includes software, hardware has a totally different knowledge base. People get software development. It’s well documented. Hardware? Not yet. Engineering is still an academic field. You learn it in college. It hasn’t been made less technical. I think that’s changing. The language will eventually become more mainstream.

From an investment standpoint, what do you think is the most interesting in Internet of Things?

I’m intrigued by fashion and technology. It’s all about the design, brands, and the marketing. Fashion can be designed to enable technology in very subtle ways. The user experience can be very well planned out.

We’re also coming towards the end of wearables. People have figured out what all these sensors do already. Are there any new sensors beyond heart rate and steps? If a startup tries to do steps, what differentiates them from every other tracker?

So the next logical step is body plus technology, like body augmentation.

Body augmentation is a loaded phrase. It can freak people out.

I wouldn’t label it augmentation. I’d call it body enhancements. But it’s much more than a wearable.

The medical applications are interesting. Companies are making attachments to the iPhone so you can detect various ailments by examining someone’s eyes. Google now has contact lens that measure glucose in your blood.

What’s your favorite connected device?

My phone. I carry it with me everywhere.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m wearing a very old style Casio watch. I collect digital watches. They’re geek sheek. I think they’re kind of fashionable again. Products like the Pebble are nice, but I think after a while they get annoying. I don’t need to be notified about everything that’s happening to my phone.

That’s a problem with wearables: there’s too much information. They release too many notifications. We need another level of computing power evolution, where we have things like Siri, Cortana, and Google Now to be that in between layer.

That’s my favorite connected device of the future. An assistant that can skim through anything I could be interested in reading and surface an article written by someone who I may not even know but it’s still relevant for me.

Contextual assistants that can surface long tail information for you.

Exactly.

What other advice do you have for potential hardware investors?

Make sure the company has a working prototype. It doesn’t need to be beautiful but it needs to work. Especially if you’re not an engineer, you can be sold on something that’s not physically possible.

I go to a lot of startup presentation events. I remember, at one of these events, an angel investor who judged a business plan competition. A company presented a product and portrayed it as simple solution that can change your life by accomplishing X, Y, Z. The angel, tells them flat out, “This sounds like an infomercial. Why don’t you tell me how you’re really going to do this? Your team has no one on it who can execute.” My advice to hardware startups is to make sure you have a balanced team, technical and business. The team is everything.

What advice do you have for would-be hardware founders?

If you want to do hardware, do it as a fulltime job. Don’t do it part time. You need to dive in and build your prototype. You’re going to have bumps. It’ll take you seven months, maybe even two years, to reach a manufacturing stage.

Know that beforehand, realize it takes that kind of dedication, and do it.

My co-op’s luddite response to Airbnb and my solution

Technology revolt in action

Airbnb is on my mind (and not because of their new unintentionally graphic logo).  My co-op slipped a two-page letter under the door forbidding its tenants and shareholders from becoming Airbnb hosts. They refer to the company as “Airbnd.” I wouldn’t make fun of a typo. They actually have no idea what it’s called. I think that’s illustrative of the problem.

Language like “this building is our home and not meant to be treated as a hotel, B&B or weekend getaway for others” and “illegal subletting to strangers not only compromises the safety and environment of our building, it is unfair to fellow shareholders who follow the rules. Utilizing your apartment as a B&B cheats the corporation out of sublet fees that go toward building operating costs” and the resulting penalties make it clear: the board intends to govern with an iron fist. They are actively monitoring Airbnd to identify rule breakers.

Consequences

Get caught violating these rules and face serious consequences.

• $1,000 fine by the corporation
• $1,600-5,000 fine by the city, which they’ll contact directly to issue the violation
• For repeat offenders
  • Injunction by the board
  • Additional fines
  • Jail time for contempt of court (woof)
  • Eviction (double woof)
• If you’re a tenant and not an owner, immediate termination of lease and forfeiture of security deposit

I’m a tenant. I will not be put out on my ass. Therefore, I won’t ever be a host for Airbnb or a similar service.

The building’s response feels a bit draconian and reactionary. Maybe it’s time to think different. Look around. Airbnb has been illegal in New York since it began but that hasn’t stopped growth. It’s a wave you can either ride or be swept away by.

So what does it look like to ride the wave? How can any building take advantage of Airbnb from a cash flow, marketing, and safety perspective? Let us examine.

What is a guest

This building is our home and not meant to be treated as a hotel, B&B or weekend getaway for others.

This is partially legitimate. If the building constantly turns over it fundamentally alters its culture. Constant turnover is one reason many buildings maintain a maximum-rental-units policy, i.e. only a certain number of apartments can be occupied by renters and not owners. Ownership occupancy implies a minimum level of care. But that doesn’t mean our building isn’t infiltrated by guests daily.

If I’m in town, I can have multiple friends stay over for a night, week, or month and it’s acceptable. But if I’m out-of-town overnight, guests are no longer permissible and I don’t understand why. My presence won’t physically restrain them from making noise after hours. It also doesn’t change my responsibility and liability. If they make noise, I’m stuck with the consequences. Rightly so.

Must I know this guest personally? Our friend’s brother stayed overnight a few weeks ago. I don’t know him, but I trust him because I trust my friend. And must trust be earned through personal relationships? Or can it be earned and recorded on a public ledger instead? You know, like reviews from hosts garnered after multiple stays in their homes. Isn’t that prior behavior reassuring to the building?

Buildings allow these weekend-getaways when they allow guests of any kind to stay over. I don’t abdicate responsibility for my guests’ actions and should be held accountable. Is the smart thing to ban Airbnb guests altogether? Or is it smarter to reward tenants and shareholders who bring in good tenants to the building? And likewise, penalize those who behave badly. AKA, my guests are assholes and I can’t have guests stay over anymore.

Unfairness to the building OR we need to get paid

C.R.E.A.M. get the money, dolla dolla bills ya’ll

Illegal subletting to strangers not only compromises the safety and environment of our building, it is unfair to fellow shareholders who follow the rules. Utilizing your apartment as a B&B cheats the corporation out of sublet fees that go toward building operating costs.

Safety is convenient cover for wanting to get paid. We have doormen for a reason and we already hold responsibility for our guests.

Let’s get to money. I’m not sure if leasing your apartment results in additional fees to the co-op but sub-letting does. So let’s allow that the building misses out on revenue unfairly. That can be remedied.

If you want to become a host, apply to the building’s board.

As we discussed with maximum-rental-unit policies, for many buildings only a certain percentage of apartments can be rented out. Perhaps only a certain percentage of the building should be host-eligible. Once you determine that number, let eligibility be determined by lottery, rotation, or just let people apply for it. Charge them a fee anytime someone stays in their apartment at a level commensurate with fees charged for subletting. Charge them a fee just for applying. Why not?

Look, it’s good for you ya big dummy

Many of your shareholders, owners, tenants are going to use Airbnb or similar services. Does it really make sense to fight it?

If you’re concerned about who gets in, set guidelines and regulate it. Maybe only people who have successfully stayed X-number of times with a minimum review score of Y are allowed in. Maybe people can only do it for a maximum time period of Z.

If you’re concerned about money, and you are, why don’t you monetize it? Take this black market activity and bring it to the light. As a tenant, I’d be happy to rent my place for $200/night and fork over $50/night to the corporation. It gives me additional revenue to make rent, maintenance, or mortgage payments easier. It gives the corporation more money for improvements.

And lastly, think about the marketing potential. You have a new apartment for sale. The building has an elevator, part-time doormen, located in a beautiful neighborhood, and, oh, you’re allowed to put it up on Airbnb to supplement your income. Suddenly the line between investment and primary property becomes blurred and that property becomes even more popular. I can see that positively impacting prices in the whole building.

My message to my building and others like it is this: take advantage of the situation or don’t, it’s gonna happen anyways.

Could we be in a tech (real estate) bubble?

The dirty little secret isn’t that we’re in a huge tech bubble. Could we be in a tech real estate bubble though?

This is a speculative post based on conversations I had recently about New York coworking. Last year Steve and I looked at office spaces for Pilot Mountain Ventures.We made the strategic decision to locate full time in a coworking space since no other venture firm had done so. We did research, made visits, and now reside at WeWork Soho. We believe in coworking.

The scene’s changed since then.

Here’s the Rise and the Future of NY Tech. Here’s the NYC Tech Economy report performed by New York Tech Meetup. New York Tech is booming and real estate along with it. This information’s now centralized in Tong Xiang’s Gotham Coworking. That’s a Fullstack Academy project based on Charles Bonnello’s data in Google docs. Great website, I recommend startups looking for space to head there.

But how much is too much? Much of Charles’ data wasn’t around when we looked. New spaces are constantly opening and existing spaces are expanding. As a consumer, this is great! We’re benefiting from the competition and lowered prices. But that, along with a rebound in commercial real estate, means companies must be getting squeezed. What’s this done to margins? Right now there’s waiting lists at many of the top spaces. What happens if their occupancy rates drop?

We’re in the coworking expansion phase. Eventually some (or many) companies will fail. So what to do? Differentiate yourself. Some will by price. Others by location. Still others by what the connections that space offers. Community is helpful but not sufficient for success. I believe connections + cost will be the winning combination. Cost is why places like Detroit are starting to flourish in tech. As for direct connections, simple intros to lawyers, advisors, contacts in industry, investors.Think of an accelerator without the equity charge or a demo day deadline. I’m interested in watching the space shake out.

I like Handybook’s customer service

I had a terrible landlord. Just horrible. I may go into specifics at a later date, but for now I’ll just say I don’t enjoy them. Because of that, Meg and I lugged all our belongings into a new building over the weekend and had movers come on Monday for the big stuff. My old building is very… unique. I lived on the 4th floor of a circular-staircase walkup. You can’t even make that up.

When we  moved in two years ago, the 3-person couch had some issues making it up. One Couch Doctor-knockoff phone call later, my beloved furniture was sawed into two pieces which made their way up the stairs and were reassembled to restore my couch to its former glory. To prepare for this move, I scoured the internet for couch doctors, couch MD’s, couch whatever’s. The quotes were $250-300 and up and I needed a cheaper/better solution.

In comes Handybook. Handybook bills itself as “Uber but for household services.” They’ve been handing out promotions at my subway, on my dry cleaning, and anywhere I looked. It was a big guerrilla effort and great timing for me. While it was tough to find an exact match for my service, couch assembly and disassembly was available. I selected the large-couch option, which gave me 2 hours of work  for $98. I scheduled it to coincide with my movers so they could get the pieces over.

Move day comes. 11:00am, I text my guy and let him know if he wants to get here early that lunch is on me (so we can get it out of the way). Noon, no response yet. 12:45 I call, no response. 1:20 I call Handybook, letting them know my guy is a complete no-show just when I needed him most. By 1:30, Handybook calls back and says they were unable to get a hold of him, but I was going to get a full refund. Plus, they were sending over their best guy in New York, Johnny, to take care of everything. Johnny’s their fixer. He came over, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work. Within 2 hours, the job was finished and everyone walked away satisfied. Especially me.

I had a very tight time frame and I’m happy to say Handybook had a very speedy and customer friendly response. My job got done and my credit card was left uncharged. Now I’ll gladly use them again. Bully on you Handybook, for really putting the customer first.

Oh – and check out Johnny’s project Bridge City Hustle. These guys rock.

Clear eyes, full hearts

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Boston today. Sitting in the office, I saw the same videos and pictures of explosions and the wounded as everyone else. It is tragic, truly depressing, and simultaneously infuriating. Someone somewhere decided they needed to take this course of action. I don’t know what the death toll will be, or how many people lost arms or legs, and I can’t calculate the amount of people this has impacted. But it’s because a selfish decision was made. And that makes me angry.

Personally, besides immediate reactions of grief for everyone involved, I started wondering about friends I saw on Facebook. I remembered pictures of people in Boston, getting ready for the run. On Instagram, I saw one of those friends post a picture from the finish line very close in time and proximity to the blast. I finally saw a message on her wall that she was safe. I texted my brother, telling him our family friends were safe. Then he told me he just caught the 1:45 from Boston back to New York. I had to think too much about taking the subway from Grand Central to Times Square, through Penn Station and back to my stop. I hate feeling this way. I’m at a loss.

Every time something like this happens, I feel like whatever innocence I might have is lost anew. I’m afraid some day I’ll stop being surprised.

To those who ran towards the blast and the victims instead of away, thank you. To the first responders, police, hospital workers, everyone else trying to do good in the face of this: thank you too.

Boston Marathon Tragedy: How To Locate Friends and Family and Donate Blood

Knowing What I Don’t Know

On the 14th, I attended my second Ultra Light meetup, titled Future Energy. With deference to the other meetups I’ve been to, I think Ultra Light is my favorite so far. They assemble a wide variety of entrepreneurs and investors for an audience, eight to ten startups to pitch, and a panel of investors to poke, prod, and ultimately provide actionable advice. I planned to write about my first one, held at Columbia a short while back, but never got around to it. Excited for another shot, and to see what kinds of incredible things people might be doing in the energy space, I grabbed some pizza and settled in.

I am in no ways an expert in the energy space, but I thought whatever knowledge I did have would enable me to make informed thoughts and opinions. That was incorrect. The startups that presented were interesting and some tried to do revolutionary things. While it was a small sample size, I don’t have the background, desire, or risk-appetite to invest in these businesses. Here’s some reasons why…

Daily Desired Startup

My friend Brian is moving into an apartment in two weeks. While we grabbed lunch today, he told me he spent the previous day visiting various bedroom furniture stores (Macy’s, some non-brand name store). Macy’s was really expensive. The non-brand name store was a little too carsalesman-like, and less than ethical. One of those places where “Well, it costs X with a credit card. But it only costs .5X if you pay in cash cash cash!” I hate that guy. Pay your taxes. Besides those options, of course, he can visit Ikea, the giant. Ikea’s proven it doesn’t cost thousands of dollars to buy furniture. You can buy for much less and get a crappy piece from them (sorry – I dislike Ikea furniture). Lastly, there’s Craigslist. I argue that all of these combined still don’t make for an easy or seamless furniture shopping experience. There has to be another way.

A quick Google search doesn’t yield any great solutions. Here are some of the top hits: Quora, where people defaulted to Ikea. Peter Thiel’s recent Brazilian investment Oppa, an Ikea knockoff. Deal Decor, a “group-for-furniture.” And lastly, this 2010-London startup, Made.com, which I’ve never heard of/isn’t in the states.

Made.com and Deal Decor both use some type of crowdsourcing model. Deal Decor gets a bunch of people together to buy in bulk, a factory-direct style model. Made.com gets people to submit designs, groups orders, and sells directly. They’ve both cut out the middleman. Neither, unfortunately, are available in New York. I think both ideas could work here, but I also think a furniture store-aggregator would work too. Take everything from Craigslist, big stores, small stores, and everywhere else, and bring it together. Let people search easily. I don’t know if they should turn it into a marketplace or not, but it’s possible.

Someone please exploit this gap. Show me all the new, used, expensive, and cheap furniture I can buy in New York City.

Empowering the Middle Class in Emerging Markets

Jeff Stewart is the CEO of Lenddo, a NYC-based startup. Lenddo seeks to empower the middle class through small life improving loans. They qualify borrowers not on traditional credit scores, but based on trustworthiness derived from their social networks.  Jeff is a serial entrepreneur with a vision to help millions. Enjoy our conversation. 

The New, New Homebuying Experience

Michele Serro is a founder at a NYC startup called Doorsteps. Doorsteps’ goal is to take the home buying experience and simplify it. They want you to buy a home in the most simple and painless way possible. Based out of General Assembly in Flatiron, they’ve just recently released a new version of their service. I visited Michele at GA and we talked about Doorsteps’ origins, its future, and the state of the real estate and mortgage markets. For more from Michele, you can follow her on Twitter at @micheleserro. Read on…

NYC Pioneers: Cyrus Massoumi and ZocDoc

Cyrus Massoumi is the CEO & founder of ZocDoc. ZocDoc is a New York-based company that helps you book doctor appointments online. After getting an ear infection on a long flight and not being able to get into a doctor quickly, Cyrus came up with a new solution, ZocDoc. Cyrus was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk about startup hurdles, hiring, cultural changes, and many other topics. For more from Cyrus and ZocDoc, please visit their blog and find them on Twitter at @Zocdoc.

In a recent TechCrunch article, you talked about how things didn’t go so smoothly when ZocDoc launched. What were the biggest hurdles you faced and what’d you do to overcome them?

There were a few things – first, we launched shortly before the worst economic recession many of us had ever seen, and people thought that companies wouldn’t be able to raise venture capital financing again. The harsh environment forced us to be extremely focused with the few resources that we had at our disposal, which was a blessing in hindsight because it forced us to stay focused. For our first two years, ZocDoc only offered appointments in New York in order to hone our business model and make improvements to our service, ensuring scalability and a great patient experience.

Secondly, this was a completely new concept at the time to doctors. Initially, it was an uphill battle in selling this service to them. Doctors are constantly bombarded by reps seeking their endorsement or use of a product or service, so we had to break through that noise. There was a time when I was going door to door with a PowerPoint presentation, and I’d be in a doctor’s waiting room for hours before I was able to get in to give my pitch. It took a lot of hustle to get our first doctors to sign on.

Lastly, people thought we were overly ambitious to think we could change the way people access healthcare in this country. In launching ZocDoc, we weren’t David going up against Goliath. Rather, we were looking to change patients’ existing behavior. When we launched, we thought that we’d have this incredible amount of patient demand on our hands. In reality, it took time for us to get our first few appointments. But after we got a few dozen of them, word of mouth kicked in and the growth increased dramatically – and it has been compounding ever since.

ZocDoc spent its first few years conquering New York. Now, you’re going nationwide, seemingly rolling out to a new city every few weeks. What are your plans after that?

We’ve only been able to succeed at ZocDoc through focus, and right now we’re laser focused on offering our service to patients and doctors nationwide as soon as possible. We’re currently live in 19 markets and expanding at a rapid pace, but we still have a lot of work to do on that front. We like to say that it took a thousand 0.01% improvements for ZocDoc to work, and we’re still making those changes every day. So, our plan right now is to continue to make these incremental improvements as we serve more and more patients. Once we’ve made more progress, we can start to explore solving other patient problems within the healthcare system.

What’s it like going from a startup to more established company from a culture perspective? What has changed?

It’s funny, around the office we often ask ourselves – when are we not a startup anymore? Even though we’re now over 300 people, I think we still consider ourselves a startup and we approach our work in that spirit. We try to stay nimble, to be open to new ideas, to be scrappy and agile and able change direction quickly, just as we did back when we were five people. I will say, I am just now reaching the point where it’s getting harder and harder for me to know everyone’s names. I came back to the office after travelling for a few days and there were 50 news faces. But we make it a priority to ensure that everyone is connected, that it’s a fun place to come to work, and that there’s a sense of teamwork and camaraderie. For instance, we cater in lunch every day so we all eat together, and I also make sure to have lunch with our new hires each week. It’s a great way to get to know them and for them to have a chance to ask me anything. Also, something that’s been helpful in maintaining our culture as we grow are these seven core values. They have served as a guidepost to help us preserve all of the things we love about working here.

You constantly talk about how important hiring is. What do you look for in people?

One of our investors, Vinod Khosla, gave us the good advice that the first 20 people we hired would set the tone for the company’s culture, because they’d help attract and hire the next bunch, and so on. We’ve always been really particular about who we hire and we challenge everyone here to hire people who are better than themselves. We tend to attract very curious and intelligent people who like to solve big problems and who are incredibly mission driven. Even more specifically, we want to work with people who speak up, who own it and who make work fun.

With dedicated accelerators like Blueprint Health, Rock Health, and Healthbox, healthcare is a growing field for startups. You’ve transformed how patients get into their doctors. What coming changes should we be excited for?

As a company that felt like we were swimming upstream back in 2007, it’s been exciting to watch health tech become such a hot space. In the first quarter of 2012 alone, health IT companies raised $102 million in 2012 (up 75% over the same period in 2011). That’s amazing growth on the investor side and with recent legislation changes it’s an area that’s increasingly ripe for disruption. At ZocDoc, we solve one patient problem around access to medical care via online scheduling, but I think that’s only one of many interesting pain points that needs to be addressed. I think we can see expect to see improvements in cost transparency, in mobile diagnostics, in products and services for the quantified self movement and it goes on and on.

ZocDoc was started in New York before it was trendy to be here. Why didn’t you go out west?

You know, it didn’t even occur to us to go out West. My co-founders and I had all been in NYC for a while, and it didn’t feel as though geography would be a barrier. Also, in looking at our core business, New York has an incredible volume of doctors so it was an exciting place to start. We also knew that if we could prove this concept in New York, one of the most dynamic and competitive medical markets, we could be successful anywhere. Now, when we see New York dubbed “Silicon Alley,” we’re proud and humbled to have been among the first wave of companies putting down roots here.

What does the future hold for startups in New York?

Possibilities for startups in NYC are as endless as they are for startups anywhere. With the democratization of the web, great ideas and great companies can grow from anywhere. I think it certainly helps to be in places like San Francisco or New York where there are rich pockets of talent, investors, etc. but I think it’s an exciting time for startups in general.

During your CNBC interview in April, you mentioned about 20% of MBA grads are going into startups. After a few years at McKinsey, you did too. If you knew you were going to create a startup, would you still have made the decision to go to Columbia? What would you advise other potential founders to do?

I think there are lots of different paths to success, and what may work well for one person may not be effective for the next, but for me, business school was a great experience. I think it can bring tremendous value in expanding your network, opening doors and learning historically from others’ successes and failures. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Who’s been your biggest influence and why?

My father. He was a physician and I saw firsthand how the changes in our healthcare system over the years have made it increasingly difficult for physicians to run a successful business. Given reduced reimbursement rates, physicians have to play a volume game and see more patients than even in order to maintain the same quality of life for their families. Without this insight gained through my father, I don’t think I would have fully understood the need that ZocDoc fills for physicians.

Besides ZocDoc, what’s your favorite startup?

I’m a big fan of Warby Parker (in fact, such a big fan that we gave everyone at ZocDoc a pair for the holidays last year). They’re delivering a quality product in an innovative way, and they’re managing to do a lot of good while they’re at it.