Brokers looking to click with red hot tech startups
20.05.12
“Understanding them and having a resume that you’ve worked with similar companies in the past — they dig that,” said Jason Schwartzenberg, a corporate managing director at real estate services firm Studley.
Getting on the right side of one of the fastest growing office space users in the country seems like a wise move in a market where traditional New York tenants, such the financial sector, are contracting.
According to Cassidy Turley, tech-driven firms accounted for 28% of Manhattan leasing in 2011, up from 18% last year and helped drive down vacancy rates in midtown south to the lowest in the country.
Schwartzenberg doesn’t just work with digital companies and startups — he worked for them. In 1999, he packed his belongings into his red 1992 Chevy Blazer and drove from Hasbrouk, N.J. to San Francisco, where he joined a tech startup called Digital Commerce.
In 2001, imbued with the booming California tech scene’s energetic spirit and on the heels of the dot-com bubble, Schwartzenberg moved back east and worked for a range of digital companies and startups as they moved in on New York City. There was Websplit, creator of a web browser; Interworld, a former ecommerce software provider; and, most recently, Torry Harris Business Solutions, a software solutions provider and the only survivor of the bunch.
Source: Real Estate Weekly