From Acclimation to Momentum — Another Successful Year in NYC

In startups, there’s a certain feeling you get when you’re building something new. It’s thrilling, full of energy, and at times, daunting and overwhelming. To keep the momentum going, you must harness day one energy. You frequently remind yourself why you’re building what you’re building. With intent and focus, you work hard to push your product into the world.  

If your product is marketable, valuable and usable, there comes a moment when you don’t have to push so hard because the market pulls you into it. 

Innovatemap is two years into building a New York City presence and we can confidently say the market wants and needs us there. We’ve amassed several new partnerships with venture capital firms and ecosystem connectors, we have a team of four talented product experts located in Manhattan, and ten percent of our annual revenue now comes from NYC-based clients.

But two years in, it’s still day one. 

“Two years ago when we set out to enter NYC as a new market, we had to acclimate ourselves into the tech ecosystem. It took intentional strategy to gain traction. I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished and yet so excited to continue our growth and momentum,” says Mike Reynolds, CEO and Founder of Innovatemap. 

Innovatemap set three original goals for expanding into NYC:

• Grow our product expertise by working with a wider variety of tech companies
• Access more, high-quality product talent
• Grow outside our headquarters in Indianapolis

As we begin year three of operations, these goals still guide our why.

As we gained momentum in NYC, we expanded our idea of what it means to have an office and a team. Our headquarters is the heartbeat of Innovatemap, encouraging us live out our values. Why would our NYC footprint be an exception? From reimagining our Village common room inside a Fifth Avenue WeWork to creating new team rituals, we’re discovering our NYC culture as we navigate the market.

We are a service provider that philosophically believes people do business with people, so providing services in person remains important to us. This year, we not only met for hospitality and networking, but we held our first client kickoff in person in our NYC office. We bet on founders who wanted to build connections in person — and it worked. 

As a company, we’re nine years old, but growing our presence in NYC is like building a startup. We flexed the startup muscles that we hadn’t flexed in a while. Now, we no longer have to solely rely on asking for referrals to people we should know. Our NYC rolodex is rapidly growing like our Indianapolis rolodex grew several years ago. Because of this, “I heard about you” is our favorite complement to receive from NYC-based founders. Strategic marketing efforts like our participation in New York Tech Week, our events with New York Startup Guild, and the one-to-one networking efforts of our growth manager Ashley King drive this outcome. At the root of our success remains the excellent work we do for clients who then act as megaphones for our brand.

As we reflect and share why we made this strategic decision, there are countless people, companies and organizations who helped us start our third year with confidence. We could not have entered this market three years ago without our NYC-based team, our existing relationships and our relentless dedication to help founders build marketable, valuable and usable products. Thank you for your support, your partnership and your trust in our team.