One of my favorite days of the year is the NYC Computer Science Opportunity Fair. The idea behind the CS Fair is pretty simple: Put students together with companies, universities, and organizations that care about technology and opportunity and let the conversations happen. The energy in the room is always incredible. The CS Fair has been going on for thirteen years now, and as a result, over 25,000 NYC public school students have been exposed to the opportunities that a career in tech in NYC offers.
This year's Fair will take place at the 168th Street Armory in Washington Heights on April 21st. We are expecting 2,400 high school students who will walk the track meeting engineers, founders, college representatives, and nonprofit leaders and learn about career paths and continued learning opportunities. More importantly, they will see how the coding and AI skills they are learning in their classrooms today can turn into real opportunities tomorrow.
That kind of exposure matters a lot. When students can see themselves in the field, it changes what they believe is possible.
New York City has made a big commitment to computer science and AI education in public schools over the past decade. The CS Fair is one of the places where you can really see the results of that effort.
If you are part of the NYC tech community, you should get involved. Become a sponsor. Host a booth. Send engineers. You can sign up on this form, or contact Jennifer,
I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
One of my favorite days of the year is the NYC Computer Science Opportunity Fair. The idea behind the CS Fair is pretty simple: Put students together with companies, universities, and organizations that care about technology and opportunity and let the conversations happen. The energy in the room is always incredible. The CS Fair has been going on for thirteen years now, and as a result, over 25,000 NYC public school students have been exposed to the opportunities that a career in tech in NYC offers.
This year's Fair will take place at the 168th Street Armory in Washington Heights on April 21st. We are expecting 2,400 high school students who will walk the track meeting engineers, founders, college representatives, and nonprofit leaders and learn about career paths and continued learning opportunities. More importantly, they will see how the coding and AI skills they are learning in their classrooms today can turn into real opportunities tomorrow.
That kind of exposure matters a lot. When students can see themselves in the field, it changes what they believe is possible.
New York City has made a big commitment to computer science and AI education in public schools over the past decade. The CS Fair is one of the places where you can really see the results of that effort.
If you are part of the NYC tech community, you should get involved. Become a sponsor. Host a booth. Send engineers. You can sign up on this form, or contact Jennifer,
I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
It is certainly possible and probably quite common to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you don't relate to and don't like. But it is not fun.
The rare thing is to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you love working with. I've had the pleasure of doing this many times in my career. It is what I seek out. It is the primary thing I like about VC and startups. It is what keeps me engaged after all these years.
When vibe alignment happens between a founding team and their investor group, it is magic. It makes it easier to correctly make those five to ten hard decisions that determine the trajectory of a company.
As Michael points out in his terrific and timely post, the institutional revolving door nature of VC right now makes finding vibe alignment harder and many founders just opt for the best financial deal. That's entirely rational behavior.
But it takes all of the fun out of it, unfortunately.
When I started using Gmail, I set up the same folders, but quickly realized that wasn't necessary because Gmail search was so good I could just search all of my email and find whatever I needed.
But the truth is Gmail search wasn't that good and like all you I have spent/wasted countless hours trying to find emails that I know exist somewhere in my archives but for the life of me I can't find them.
The arrival of the Gemini logo in the upper right of my browser has changed all of that for the better.
Here are two prompts I did today regarding a multi-family residential property we have owned in Brooklyn for the last ten years:
In this one, I was looking for a proposal we got back in early 2018 for a solar/battery system for the building.
In this one, I was looking for the land survey for the building:
In both cases, these Gemini prompts got me to the exact document I was looking for in less than thirty seconds on the first try.
Before Gemini, I could have spent five or ten minutes looking through many emails trying to find the attached document and maybe would have given up.
If you use Gmail and are not using Gemini to search your emails, you need to start immediately. It's a game-changer.
It is certainly possible and probably quite common to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you don't relate to and don't like. But it is not fun.
The rare thing is to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you love working with. I've had the pleasure of doing this many times in my career. It is what I seek out. It is the primary thing I like about VC and startups. It is what keeps me engaged after all these years.
When vibe alignment happens between a founding team and their investor group, it is magic. It makes it easier to correctly make those five to ten hard decisions that determine the trajectory of a company.
As Michael points out in his terrific and timely post, the institutional revolving door nature of VC right now makes finding vibe alignment harder and many founders just opt for the best financial deal. That's entirely rational behavior.
But it takes all of the fun out of it, unfortunately.
When I started using Gmail, I set up the same folders, but quickly realized that wasn't necessary because Gmail search was so good I could just search all of my email and find whatever I needed.
But the truth is Gmail search wasn't that good and like all you I have spent/wasted countless hours trying to find emails that I know exist somewhere in my archives but for the life of me I can't find them.
The arrival of the Gemini logo in the upper right of my browser has changed all of that for the better.
Here are two prompts I did today regarding a multi-family residential property we have owned in Brooklyn for the last ten years:
In this one, I was looking for a proposal we got back in early 2018 for a solar/battery system for the building.
In this one, I was looking for the land survey for the building:
In both cases, these Gemini prompts got me to the exact document I was looking for in less than thirty seconds on the first try.
Before Gemini, I could have spent five or ten minutes looking through many emails trying to find the attached document and maybe would have given up.
If you use Gmail and are not using Gemini to search your emails, you need to start immediately. It's a game-changer.
