Welcome New York Founders & Investors!

A welcome from our founder, Bob Crimmins:

Greetings NYC founders and investors! I’m looking forward to getting to know you. Here’s a little about how we got here.

I learned early in my career that no one can help a venture-scale founder more than another venture-scale founder or investor. When I accidentally founded Startup Haven in 2006, I was already a serial startup founder. By that time, I had attended dozens of startup events — panel discussions, fireside chats, pitch events, happy hours, coffee meetups, you name it. Most of them suffered from the same fatal flaws: there weren’t many serious venture-scale startup founders or investors present, those that were were hard to find and even if I found them the format didn’t support deep connections with them.

Then I began inviting founders and investors to meet for dinner and to learn to play a simple and fun card game (yep, poker.)  I was amazed to see the deep connections that were happening — real relationships were forming and everyone in the room was looking for ways to help everyone else. It had real impact and it became my passion project. Fast forward 16 years and Startup Haven has grown to more than 2,300 venture-scale founders and investors, we’ve hosted more than 350 in-person events, launched an accelerator, raised a venture fund and created literally more than 2,000,000 opportunities for founders and investors to connect.

I could not be more thrilled now to extend an invitation to New York founders and investors to join Startup Haven’s other remarkable members across the country. It’s clear that New York doesn’t need any help building a thriving startup ecosystem. My hope is only to provide a conduit to expand horizons and help connect New York’s venture-scale founders and investors with others around the country. I hope you’ll join us.

Meet Your Chapter Director, Marty Ringlein