These Guys Started The Biggest Single-Day Startup Event In The World - And It's Happening Right Now In NYC

When Alec Harman and Jesse Podell first came up with the idea for a New York City-based celebration of local startups three years ago, the tech scene was just starting to heat up.

"There were very few exits, there wasn't much investment money in New York," Harman told Business Insider. "But it was was starting to show promise."

The duo had a lot of techie friends working on cool things, but there was no easy way to have everyone share ideas, find talent, and show off what they were working on. So, they put together the first TechDay NYC event. Just under 200 startups attended and 5,000 other people registered to stop by, way more than they expected. They were blown away and realized that they'd hit on something special.

Today, the New York City tech community is bigger and stronger than ever, and so is Harman and Podell's event. There'll be more than 450 startup exhibitors this year, nearly 1,000 open jobs represented, more than 10,000 attendees, and over $20 billion in capital represented (excluding the more than 100 angels coming). Harman says that those numbers make TechDay NYC the largest single-day startup event in the world.

"New York startups - the companies that we're building here - are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives," Podell says.

There are fewer tech-for-tech startups in New York than in Silicon Valley, with companies ranging from financial tech, fashion tech, social good startups, med-tech startups, hardware companies and more. The diversity ia astounding and well-worthy of a TechDay celebration.

The event is all-inclusive for startups ("You'll get big companies like Uber hanging out next to a startup still operating out of their garage," Harman says), as well as attendees - students, elected officials, investors, and tech enthusiasts will all be there.