There’s a palpable energy right now around the New York City startup scene that’s been building over the last couple of years. One organization right in the middle of the action is General Assembly, a campus for technology, design and entrepreneurship.
“The idea [for General Assembly] was really kind of a grass roots community building project in New York,” explains Adam Pritzker, Co-founder of General Assembly. “And what we wanted to do is we wanted to get really bright, young entrepreneurs under one roof in a really collaborative environment.”
Pritzker and three co-founders, Matthew Brimer, Brad Hargreaves, and Jake Schwartz, founded GA in 2010. They leased a 20,000 square foot space on Broadway and began polling the New York technology and design communities to determine what they wanted in this environment. What resulted is a combination of work space, communal space, a library and a classroom—a true entrepreneurial campus.
“The classroom is really the most interesting part,” says Pritzker. “One of the initial things we did is we said, ‘Ok, we’re not going to charge too much for the desks, but we know we have really bright people working here—people who have started Etsy, people who have started Vimeo, people who have won Emmys—what we do want to do is have those people teach classes to a wider community and have anybody in the New York community who wanted to come learn have that resource available.'”
Courses are designed to build upon the basic liberal arts education that prevails at most American educational institutions by providing more specific skills necessary to thrive in today’s workforce. GA appears to have identified a significant gap in the market as demand has been great and has outpaced expectations.
“Over time,” says Pritzker, “as demand outstripped the supply we could offer, we have started to put processes in place to be able to think about who might be a part of our community. And that really is twofold—number one is how serious are the various people about what they do and about developing their craft and, almost more importantly, what they want to give back to the community, because this whole thing is based on reciprocity. I’d say that’s the core of what we do. So someone may be totally brilliant but if they’re not at all interested in getting involved in the community, it doesn’t really work.”
Dedicated memberships, those with a dedicated desk at GA, cost $600 per month. Communal memberships are currently $300 per month and include 24/7 access to all of the common areas at GA, early access and discounts to classes and events as well as some special members-only perks like Rackspace hosting and access to private fireside chats programmed just for members.
“We have all these major, legacy industries [in New York] of retail, entertainment, finance, publishing, and advertising,” explains Pritzker, “and everyone’s kind of realizing now that we’ve reached this inflection point where technology is touching every one of those. I think employers and employees alike are wondering, ‘Where do we go learn about this. What are my resources?’ So GA is hopefully, if we do our job right and focus on what we’re doing, going to become that place.”
More info:
General Assembly web site: http://www.generalassemb.ly/
General Assembly blog: http://www.generalassemb.ly/blog
General Assembly profile on Twitter: http://twitter.com/GA
Im wit it!!!