Evernote-Backed Hackathon Brings More Tech Activity To the Bronx

Fordham University’s Foundry incubator hosts 15 businesses, providing them with workspace, mentoring, and tech workshops. Fordham Foundry

The Bronx isn’t often listed among the country’s tech hubs. But that may soon change, as the oft-forgotten borough plays an ever more active role in New York’s expanding tech scene.

Case in point: This weekend, Fordham University’s Foundry incubator, which launched two years ago, holds its first Hackathon in the Bronx. The event is sponsored by Evernote, whose founder and CEO, Phil Libin, was raised in the borough, and will offer winners cash prizes as well as free access to Evernote’s API. It’s the latest example of the recent surge in tech and business activity throughout the Bronx.

Of course, the business sector in the Bronx is minuscule compared to San Francisco, or even Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Yet it’s hard to ignore the growth the area has seen in recent years. According to one state estimate, the number of businesses in the South Bronx grew 25 percent between 2000 and 2011. Meanwhile, there are ongoing initiatives throughout the Bronx to foster a tech talent pool that can serve the much larger business community in Manhattan.

WIRED recently documented the so-called “urban onshoring” movement in the South Bronx, in which a group of business leaders and tech companies are working to bring hundreds of software testing and tech quality assurance jobs back from overseas.

Fordham Foundry

There are several reasons that the Bronx is experiencing this shift, says Jackson Lindauer, a Fordham student, who is director of strategy and community at the Foundry. “The most important thing is we feel like a unique community. It hinges on mentorship and helping each other,” he says. “There are also other factors, like the low cost of living, the fact that there are plenty of problems to tackle here in the Bronx, and plenty of people to be employed here in the Bronx.”

The incubator hosts 15 companies this year, ranging from student teams to established local businesses. Many of them, Lindauer says, are tackling some sort of social problem through technology, which turns out to be one benefit of building a company in an economically depressed place. The group think and focus on the frivolous that you often find in the Valley is less common when there are real socioeconomic problems to be solved.

It’s important to note, however, that much of the Foundry’s work remains focused on its student community. To get into the incubator, businesses need to be led by a student or alumni or referred by one. That can make this type of thing somewhat inaccessible to locals. And while the hackathon is open to all in the community, Lindauer says he expects most of those in attendance to be students and alumni.

And yet, it’s equally important to note that some of the country’s biggest tech centers, including San Francisco, became tech centers in large part because of their proximity to strong university technology programs. Lindauer says the Foundry is already starting to see similar effects in its own neighborhood.

“We’ve had successful engineers and tech talent graduate from Fordham and the Bronx and go to tech companies in Manhattan,” he says. “Now they’re making sure to come back and mentor and help sustain the community.”