Independence Day
Immigrant founders work on holidays. Or at least they network.
I didn’t make it to the fireworks this past July 4th. Instead, I spent the holiday evening at a meetup for immigrant founders.
Somya Gupta was one of the hosts of the event, which was held at a bar on 23rd Street in Chelsea.
In addition to being the founder of AI educational company Context, Somay is something of an uber connector.
He has arranged 31 events to support and promote the founder ecosystem in New York in the past six months.
His company Context is an AI-powered learning platform that converts a professors’ knowledge into fully AI-taught courses.
I love the banner slogan Somya has on his LinkedIn page: “Born in India. Made in New York.”
For this event he teamed up with friends and fellow immigrant founders, Siam Hossain and Ishaan Das.
Somya said holding the event on July 4th served as a reminder of the crucial role immigrants have played as entrepreneurs in American history.
Many of the most innovative companies in the world today are run by immigrants including Alphabet (Sergey Brin), Nvidia (Jensen Huang), Vercel (Guillermo Rauch) and Stripe (the Collison brothers).
Somya said this was the second event of this kind the group has arranged.
Because of the large response he expects to hold more.
I found it inspirational and plan to attend more.
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ROBOTS: Only in America. You can buy a robot for $2,475 that follows you around and carries your stuff so you don’t have to.
LOVE THOSE APPLES: We’ve lost so much biodiversity, its nice to see someone doing something to preserve apple varieties.
HISTORIC PHOTOS: There is something so weird and banal about this photo of the ex-dictator discovered in his former palace.
GARDEN IN HARLEM: There’s a garden on 123rd street in Harlem that is maintained by a guy in his 90s who has been growing vegetables since he moved to the city more than 60 years ago. I ran into him the other day and he is doing just fine.
SWEATPANTS: “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat.” Great quote and commentary on life from Karl Lagerfeld.
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