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John Barry's mid-Manhattan office has a view of the Empire State Building and several other landmarks from New York's industrial-age heyday It's appropriate, because Barry's venture capital firm, Prospect Street Ventures, aims to be an icon of the city's ascent to information-age hub.
New York has emerged as a locus of "new media" Internet companies. And Prospect Street is one of a handful of New York-based VC firms that focus on these "Silicon Alley" information technology concerns.
"There is a Silicon Alley community, although two years ago it was just a label," says Barry, Prospect Street's managing general partner. Indeed, when the firm began focusing on New York-area IT in 1997, the scene was still in its formative stages. "Frankly, we were early," admits Barry.
But New York took to the Internet, perhaps, he jokes, because the cheapest local real estate was cyberspace. Last year, the startups of the mid-'90s began to reach the IPO stage in critical mass. In August 1998, Prospect Street celebrated its first Internet IPO with New...