Panelists Kathryn Finney and Keith Klain at Digital.NYC’s Five Borough Tour at Per Scholas on Feb. 25. (Photo by Joe Hirsch via Mott Haven Herald)
Four tech entrepreneurs who’ve started Bronx-based businesses agreed at a recent panel discussion sponsored by Digital.NYC that the South Bronx is an underrated and underutilized site for tech business, Joe Hirsch writes in the Mott Haven Herald.
Hirsch writes that about 100 business owners, job seekers and city officials met at Per Scholas, the IT job training institute on East 138th Street, to discuss how to promote high-tech businesses in the South Bronx.
“We’re sitting on a goldmine,” said Keith Klain, co-CEO of Doran Jones, a new software testing startup scheduled to open next to Per Scholas in March. The nonprofit will train 150 testers, both Per Scholas grads and others, in a 90,000-square-foot space. Testing jobs are often outsourced overseas, Klain said, which led him to conclude when he was running the Global Test Center at Barclays, “man, if I could teach these people how to use technology, I wouldn’t have to travel to India half my life.”
Kathryn Finney, who founded and heads tech entrepreneur consulting group Digital Undivided, said that contrary to conventional businesses in which “the creators have the money, the beauty of tech is you don’t have to do that,” which translates to opportunities for South Bronx residents.
“A startup business should reflect the community it’s based in,” she said.
Audience members challenged Mayor de Blasio’s digital director, Jessie Singleton, on the question of just how to bring tech business to a community of smaller, mom-and-pop-style businesses.
Singleton responded that “digital literacy for small businesses” is a key part of the city’s economic strategy, and “when we talk about supporting small businesses there is a digital component.” She pointed out that the new business incubator in the BankNote Building in Hunts Point is a sign of progress.
Read the original article to learn how one Hunts Point resident at the forum, who is originally from the Ivory Coast, is looking for ways to engage African youth he works with every day.