Digital Domain: Tech Is Booming In Brooklyn. Here's Why.

One of the more notable transformations Brooklyn has gone through over the last decade is its newfound status as an incubator for tech startups. For a variety of reasons, Brooklyn provides an optimal environment for these businesses to overcome growing pains and, in some cases, transcend the “startup” label and establish a “brand.” It also does not hurt that rent in Brooklyn is less than in Manhattan, the previous hub for Internet startups. 

The nexus for digital startups in the borough is the Brooklyn Tech Triangle, which includes the Brooklyn Navy Yard, downtown Brooklyn and DUMBO, home to such startup success stories as Kickstarter and Huge. Because of the area’s proximity to retail stores and a creative community held together by connoisseurs and thinkers from various backgrounds, the Tech Triangle has become a major draw for entrepreneurs. 

The 523 Tech Triangle businesses, which canvas approximately 1.7 million square feet of the borough, brought in $3.1 billion to the local economy in 2012, according to a study conducted by Urbanomics for the Triangle. 

“The Tech Triangle really solidifies Brooklyn’s emergence as a leader in the tech field and on people’s mind,” said Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. “It provides a great framework as well as a great launching pad for great opportunities.” 

Despite the Tech Triangle’s cachet as Brooklyn’s startup capital, other neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Bushwick are slowly ramping up to compete. 

Livestream, a live-streaming video platform with global reach, recently moved its Chelsea headquarters across the East River to Bushwick, giving the neighborhood a flagship startup of its own. Livestream offers viewers around the world access to live events run by independent businesses or the Livestream team. The company’s projected revenue for this year is approximately $30 million—$27 million from sales of broadcast services and equipment and the other $3 million from the startup’s own team shooting live events for clients. 

When the lease for Livestream’s previous headquarters in Chelsea was set to expire a few years back, CEO Max Haot decided to explore other options. After an extensive search in other Brooklyn neighborhoods, he finally discovered a large industrial complex in Bushwick that was previously occupied by the 3rd Ward artist collective. Livestream moved in this past Memorial Day, making it the first tech company to call Bushwick home. And just like that, Livestream jumped from the cozier confines of its 7,000-square-feet facility to 30,000-square-feet of creative space. 

“Bushwick is a great creative entrepreneurial community,” Haot said. “There is this energy that is hard to find. Local people here have this energy that is really positive, creative and has a ‘maker’ energy, not just consuming but creating.”

Beyond the creative capital, there are a number of other upsides to the area. Wireless connectivity is strong and the L train is just a stone’s throw away, keeping the company physically connected to the hip neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan. Not that proximity to Manhattan is as important as it used to be. Rents in Bushwick are considerably lower than in Chelsea, so many of Livestream’s employees can afford to live nearby the new office, and enjoy an easy commute by bicycle to work. There is also significantly less pressure for the company to utilize every square inch of its space, as there was in Manhattan, Haot explained.

“For every floor we would have gotten in Manhattan we get an extra A snapshot of Kickstarter’s office in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle. two here, so we have a lot of room for expansion, flexibility and stability, because we have a ten-year lease,” Haot said.

Forty-one million unique viewers watch at least one Livestream event a month. Of those 41 million, 30 percent are from the United States and the other 70 percent from abroad. The company’s bigger space in Bushwick allows Livestream to bring in-house the manufacturing element of its business. One of its products is Studio Surface, a modular switching system that is a mixing board of sorts for filmmakers.

“That is what livestreaming is all about,” Haot said. “It’s not thinking about it as a TV audience, but thinking of it as a multiplier of a physical event.” 

GETTING HUGE

Huge, a full service agency located in the DUMBO section of the Tech Triangle, provides digital strategy, marketing and design services to some of the world’s biggest and most well-known corporations. The company got its start in 1999 and quickly grew from a small to a medium-sized business, when its first client, IKEA, hired Huge to revamp its websites. 

“We were founded in Brooklyn because it was the most practical place to grow our kind of business,” Huge’s CEO Aaron Shapiro said. “We never felt the need to be based in Manhattan to pretend to be something other than who we are.” 

Huge has since collaborated with a host of notable for-profit ventures and cultural institutions, among them the Museum of Modern Art, Reuters and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, recreating and, at times, constructing from scratch, their websites. In October of last year, Huge teamed up with National Geographic to create Your Shot, the magazine’s now popular virtual photo assignment community. 

Despite its tremendous growth over the past 15 years, Huge still manages to maintain a startup culture within its headquarters, placing an emphasis on fostering a sense of community. 

“The key is to always stay hungry and never rest on your laurels,” Shapiro said. “I think one of the hardest but most important components to this is to make change a part of your culture. Change is hard. It’s exhausting. It can be frustrating. But unless you change you will eventually become obsolete and in our business it’s important to be changing ahead of the market so that we can help our clients manage that change as well.” 

Shapiro notes that most of the world’s biggest and most profitable companies came into existence and created their business models before the Internet dramatically changed the societal and commercial landscape. As a result, they must now “rebuild themselves internally and externally” to remain viable. 

“Huge was founded on helping companies not just design websites and software to facilitate those interactions, but also to help companies manage the organizational change that’s necessary to turn a business into one that’s as tech-first as a Google or a Facebook,” Shapiro said. 

Like Livestream, a significant portion of HUGE’s employees live in Brooklyn, commuting to work either by bike or by ferry. 

“We’re excited to be part of the technology industry that has grown up around us over the years and Brooklyn is such a part of our DNA we could never leave,” Shapiro said. 

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce has help nurture tech startups, partnering with NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering to secure a grant to expand incubator space and launching an IT community partnership to address the skills gap at local businesses. 

“I never liked that quote, ‘Brooklyn is the new Manhattan.’” Scissura said. “Brooklyn is Brooklyn. We’re bigger, bolder, more creative and more innovative. We are where small and big companies thrive and we are no back office or shadow of Manhattan. We are our own borough.”