Alexa Is Paperless (5)

Alexa Is Paperless (1)
Alexa Is Paperless (2)
Alexa Is Paperless (3)
Alexa Is Paperless (4)

City Bakery After PaperlessPost
Dumbo And Union Square
Friday 2 PM On: PaperlessPost.com
Alexa's PaperlessPost
Alexa Hirschfeld: CNN 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever

Alexa Is Paperless (4)

Alexa Is Paperless (1)
Alexa Is Paperless (2)
Alexa Is Paperless (3)

Alexa says she is a very internal person. As in, she does not attend many events. She stays focused on her customers and her team, and that right there is more than a full time commitment. The media and pundits are lagging indicators. They are usually three months behind. It is so much more productive to get on the phone with a customer who might feel compelled to pick up the phone.

Alexa Is Paperless (3)

Alexa Is Paperless (1)
Alexa Is Paperless (2)

Deploying the basic product meant people started sending cards out to people in their network. Everyone who received the cards were potential new users. Many of them did come along as users. And when these new users sent out cards, the circle only widened.

Alexa Is Paperless (2)

Alexa Is Paperless (1)

Alexa grew up in New York City. She attended Harvard. She was at CBS for two years after college. She did not find the medium - television - all that interesting. Everything had already been figured out. The idea for the company first came from her brother who is a cofounder. I don't know of another brother sister cofounding team to a tech startup.

She thinks the ability to appreciate what people bring to the table is key. She thinks it is important to know what she does not know. Every wanna be leader pays lip service to the team concept, but Alexa means it.

Alexa Is Paperless (1)

I managed to show up on time. I simply ran after I got out of the train. I was on time. I showed up at 2 PM. At first I went into the wrong building. I was supposed to show up at 151, but I walked into 115. The place did not have an elevator, and I am having thoughts of walking up nine flights of stairs. I will definitely be late, I thought. Then I realized I got the house number wrong. I got out quick. And I ran. I showed up. On time.



I took an immediate liking to Alexa's new office. This would be my idea of a great office space. There was this big, open space in the middle. There were work tables. People ended up facing each other, although at some distance. There were unused work spaces. Obviously Alexa had expansion plans.

Dumbo And Union Square

Image via WikipediaI am headed to Union Square Friday afternoon to spend a few hours with the PaperlessPost team and its fearless leader Alexa Herschfeld. I had a voice mail from her Wednesday and Google Voice had transcribed her name as Celexa Ourselves. Not good, Google Voice, not good.

And to me it is feeling like I am headed to Dumbo. Dumbo and Union Square are two places in town that have tech clusters. There are a whole bunch of tech startups congregated in those two locales.

If there are other such clusters in the city, I am not aware of them as of yet. I am surprised there are not similar clusters in Williamsburg and Chinatown. I know of at least one major tech company that is based out of Chinatown, but I don't think you would call that a cluster.