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Kevin Ryan, head of Gilt Groupe, is one of the tech scene’s most influential people. Ryan and Dwight Merriman run AlleyCorp, a factory for startups. The firm started companies such as Business Insider, 10gen, and Gilt Groupe. The pair had early success with DoubleClick, which Google bought in 2007 for $3.1 billion.
He describes the NY tech scene as “mushrooming.” Ryan says his greatest skill is hiring the right people. Most of them—including financial journalists, fashionistas and advertising people—are in New York. Access to funding is here too. “When I was here in 1996, everyone was asking me, ‘Why aren’t you in San Francisco? Why aren’t you in Boston?’” Ryan told The New York Times. “Today, no one asks that.”
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