Today 10gen hosted New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg for a meet-and-greet with the staff. He arrived around noon, where our founders, Dwight and Eliot, greeted him at the elevator. Our President’s three kids were at the office and gave the Mayor a high five as he entered the office.
#nyctech RT@nycmayorsoffice: Today we visited NYC tech company@10gen to talk about tech#jobs instagr.am/p/OWwdnGzhOu/— NYCEDC (@NYCEDC) August 15, 2012
The founders walked the mayor around the office, explaining the importance of MongoDB as a technology and discussing 10gen’s expansion in New York City and beyond. The founders chatted with the mayor in a conference room while the rest of the staff gathered in the center of the office. We had our “virtual water cooler” running during the visit so that staff in our Palo Alto, London, Dublin, and Sydney offices could participate.
With a MongoDB coffee mug in his hand, the mayor emerged from his meeting with the founders to address the staff, talking about his experiences as an entrepreneur building technology for financial services companies. He spoke candidly for 10-15 minutes and then answered questions from the 10gen team for another 30 minutes on everything from politics to technology to his favorite restaurant in New York City!
Taking on an entrenched competitor like Oracle is a big challenge, and many are surprised that 10gen is doing it from New York City. My colleague Gary asked the mayor how 10gen fit into the city’s initiatives to support technology in the city, and the mayor responded by saying that “business begets business.” I hope that as other entrepreneurs see 10gen building a successful company here, New York City will be perceived as a viable place for starting pure technology companies.
To wrap up, here are some of my favorite tweets from the event:
OH: “Everyone put your shoes on, the Mayor is going to be here in 4 minutes”
#MongoBerg— Steve Francia (@spf13) August 15, 2012
“If intellectual capital is the foundation of your business, New York is where you want to be” –
@mikebloomberg twitter.com/10gen/status/2… — 10gen (@10gen) August 15, 2012
OH
@mikebloomberg on nyc being an intellectual center: “nyc has more graduate and undergraduate students than boston has _people_”— kristina (@kchodorow) August 15, 2012
Pep talk for
@10gen from@mikebloomberg. He is telling us how he got fired at Solomon & got into “computers” twitter.com/OSKroll/status…— Matthew Kroll (@OSKroll) August 15, 2012
You have picked the right place and you’ll see more and more people coming here to be with the best.–
@mikebloomberg twitter.com/10gen/status/2…— 10gen (@10gen) August 15, 2012
The mayor has been incredibly supportive of the technology community in New York City, and I’m extremely grateful that he made the time to visit our team. The energy in the startup community is amazing, and outreach like today’s visit helps build on that momentum.
Thanks again to Mayor Mike Bloomberg for visiting, and for the team at the mayor’s office that helped arrange this amazing event!
