I spent much of yesterday morning at the NASDAQ for the IPO of our portfolio company MongoDB (now trading as MDB). This is a big milestone for technology companies in New York. We have had New York IPOs before, including Etsy in our portfolio, but MongoDB is the first core technology (as opposed to applied technology) company that’s based in New York city to reach this milestone. As someone who came to New York in 1999 at the height of the dotcom bubble, when it first felt like the city could be a force in tech, and then lived through the tech winter that followed in the early 2000s this moment feels particularly sweet.
Why does this matter? Because it is one more step along the way of demonstrating that geography is no longer destiny. You do not have to move to San Francisco / Silicon Valley to start a tech company. New York is not unique in this regard, we are just maybe a bit further along than other cities in the United States. Globally there are many places that are building healthy tech eco systems, including Toronto, London, Berlin and Beijing.
My congratulations and thanks to the team at MongoDB that has worked tirelessly to make this possible. Keep up the great work!
