Exposure to new ideas and many companies. The freedom to be a generalist. These are among the benefits of working at New York City startup tech companies, said executives Sept. 28 at Sage Hall.

As a part of the NYC Tech Talent Draft, a career fair focused on technology sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), seven startup executives spoke on a panel about the benefits and difficulties of working at a startup in New York City. They represented companies in areas from art to cloud-based analytics.

As a center for new technology company development, New York City startups provide a place for young entrepreneurs to learn a lot about the industry.

Gavriel Wolf '11, co-founder and CEO of IndieWalls, recommended to those who want to launch their own startup to remember to think of the bigger picture. He said DreamIt Ventures, an incubator for startup companies in which IndieWalls participated, helped his company see what needed to be done to be successful.

Yoshi Maisami, co-founder and senior partner of Intridea, spoke about the difficulty of choosing where to work when entering the industry due to the large number of new tech companies: "The beauty of the startup is that you partner with so many companies every day. ... We get a window into each of those companies and the things that they do, so there is a variety that comes with being a startup that I didn't find when I worked for a large corporation."

At a large company employees are very specialized in what they do, whereas at a startup employees learn to do everything from programming firewalls to advertising design to phone customer support, said Peter Miron, senior vice president of engineering at bitly.

Chen Picard, vice president of analytics services for 1010data, noted that new ideas can be implemented immediately at a startup, something that can take months at a larger company. On the other hand, there is no one there to catch your fall if you make mistakes, she said.

"For people studying computer science, you want to think about what are the problems that you like to work on. If you like to work on pure technology problems, ... if that's what's going to make you happy, it's going to be hard to find a successful startup where you're going to get to focus on [artificial intelligence]. If you just like to build stuff, and build stuff as quickly as possible, then a startup could be perfect," said Andres Morey, co-founder and president of Octopart.

When asked for one piece of advice for students, Dominic Proeuss, chief performance officer of SecondMarket, advised them to surround themselves with people who are smart in order to constantly grow and learn. Picard added that this is also important to prevent micromanagement.

"Startups are extremely exciting and they're incredibly rewarding, but at the same time it can be incredibly difficult. The amplitude of your experience is much greater. Your highs are higher and your lows are lower," concluded Proeuss.

Julian Montijo '15 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.