Went over to the NextNY meetup yesterday. Not bad. A good turn out. I was hoping that the talk would focus on products, creating great products, marketing a new company, figuring out markets to enter, you know basically things someone starting out would need to know. Instead it focused entirely on VC funding and locations for your office. In fact only 5 minutes at the very end were left for actual Q&A from the crowd, though that was supposed to be the majority of the time.

I think the people running it have the right idea in mind, perhaps at the next event they'll be a bit more focus and a few less invited speakers. Also one VC speaker is probably enough. At this event the majority were VC related and they tend to bicker amongst themselves.

Personally I think if you're starting a business getting VC funding is the last thing you should worry about. If you can get customers and make sales you'll be able to grow organically without worrying about all the overhead of a VC (excluding business which obviously need funding like hardware companies). I suppose it depends on your goals. Mine were to be my own boss and run a successful software company. If your goals are to be "famous" VC may be a better route. I'd rather be happy for along time then have a year of huge growth and back to the job market 6 months after that when the money runs out.

Just today there's a great example of why getting caught up with lots of employees, VC's, millions in bank loans and so on is not the way to go:
Bob Wyman - PubSub Death

I am looking forward to the next event though and continuing my participation in the community. It's nice to have some tech momentum on the east coast.