Listen to the most recent episode of Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast, a play.it original in collaboration with CBS!
Charlie Bonello and Matt Harrigan became fast friends when they were students at Regis, a prestigious tuition-free Manhattan prep school. Years later, over beers, they lamented the careers of many of their former classmates—all smart, all talented, all with a huge amount of creative potential, and now, seemingly all doctors or lawyers. Their classmates were certainly successful—but not in a way that broke any molds. Charlie and Matt determined that part of the problem was the lack of access and exposure to alternative career paths they had received as high school students—and they decided to do something about it. During Summer 2013, Charlie and Matt convinced Regis to provide them with empty classrooms to be used by nascent startups, with the promise that the startups would take on Regis graduates as interns, and the Regis Tech Accelerator was born. Their first class had 7 companies that hired 18 interns, and they knew they were onto something.
A fellow Regis alum, John Conway, took notice of the innovative use of empty classroom space and introduced Charlie and Matt to the Milstein family, a prominent New York real estate dynasty that saw the value in bolstering the NYC tech scene. The Milsteins made Charlie and Matt an offer that they couldn’t refuse—15,000 square feet of free space (Facebook’s former headquarters) overlooking—you guessed it—Grand Central. There, they launched what is now Grand Central Tech, a unique accelerator that provides free office space, support, and resources—all without taking equity in the growing companies.
GCT announced its second class of startups in mid-July and isn’t slowing down. Download this week’s episode of Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast to hear more about GCT, and what Charlie and Matt are learning as they try to create a new tech hub in Midtown Manhattan.