Crains New York - March 25, 2013 - (Page 39)

SMALL BUSINESS Extreme disaster planning pays off Steve Rubin, president of WorkITSafe, an IT firm in Brooklyn that works with many small and medium-size firms. It almost goes without saying that every business should meet with a good broker to make sure it has the right kinds of insurance. BY ELAINE POFELDT Here are some other tips from entrepreneurs and experts on how to prourricane Sandy tect your business—before the next drove home just how big storm hits. Do a risk assessment. Each busiimportant it is for businesses in New ness has its own major vulnerabiliYork to put plans in ties, whether it’s proximity to a body place to protect their operations of water that may cause flooding or an older roof that could be damaged from big storms. Unfortunately, many companies by heavy snow. Taking stock when you’re not in across the country fall short on this front. A 2012 study by Travelers In- the midst of a crisis will help you desurance found that 48% of business- vise the best strategy for preventing damage and disruption. es did not have a written “We see quite a bit of evicontinuity plan or disasterdence that folks are not recovery document. spending enough time It can be hard to find AVERAGE NUMBER OF thinking about their busitime for such efforts, but DAYS it took ness continuity plans,” said experts say they can more tristate Jim Gustin, senior properthan pay for themselves. A businesses ty specialist in the risk conwell-thought-out plan can shuttered by Sandy to reopen trol department at Travelprevent a costly disruption Source: The Hartford ers Insurance,which has an that, in some cases, may lead to lost customers—and busi- office in New York. Set priorities. The costs for a ness failure. “If it extends to a point where business continuity plan can easily clients cannot do business, they will spiral out of control if you try to adgo somewhere else. That’s what we dress every possible worst-case scesaw with Hurricane Sandy,” said nario. To focus your efforts, ask After securing temporary space at Quest Workspaces in Manhattan, Foursquare used social media to tell its team, said Laura Kozelouzek, chief executive and founder of Quest. “By the next morning, all of their people knew where to go to get work done,” she said. Early reconnaissance helped local firms get back to work quickly after the superstorm Plan for the possibility that employees won’t be able to get around—or enter your building. Long before Hurricane 7 buck ennis H SANCTUARY: Laura Kozelouzek’s Quest Workspaces filled up after Hurricane Sandy. yourself, “What functions or processes of the business are critical to its survival?” suggested Mr. Gustin. Making sure you can take phone calls is crucial at most businesses. When phone service was disrupted by the superstorm, the law offices of Aaron I. Katsman, a 45-person firm in Valley Stream, L.I., that works with clients around the country including banks and lenders in Manhattan, forwarded calls to a secondary site where phones were working. Clients had no trouble reaching the firm. “They were able to communicate with our office the entire week without noticing any interruption whatsoever,” said Mr. Katsman. Figure out how you’ll get work done. Finding an alternative work site after a big storm can be hard, especially if you have limited phone and Internet access, so scout around early. Make sure that your team knows how you’ll tell them about a temporary site if your usual communication systems go down. Israeli startups see NYC as promised land PART OF THE WAVE: Itay Rokni (left) and Gil Dudkiewicz of StartApp knew from the start they had to be in New York. That’s one reason why they incorporated in the U.S. Executives insist that they keep their R&D teams in Tel Aviv partly because relocating people is expensive, but mainly because they consider Israeli engineers to be better. “The only other place you can get that talent is in Silicon Valley, where it would be 30% to 40% more expensive, and people might always jump ship and move across the street because there’s a new hot startup,” said Shay David, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Kaltura, an open- source video platform that employs 80 engineers in Tel Aviv and 30 in New York. Practical knowledge In addition to working on sophisticated systems, programmers trained in the military develop a practical approach to problem solving, said Idan Cohen, a co-founder of Boxee, a media-player software platform. He and three other founders of the New York firm To sign up for Crain’s SMALL BUSINESS newsletter, go to www.crainsnewyork.com/smallbiz. ed for Roosevelt Island. “Our universities are teaching technology nonstop,” Mr. Gotsman said. “In the U.S., for a typical engineering degree, liberal arts are mixed in, which is a good thing. But if you look at the end product, [American graduates] are less prepared than the typical Israeli graduate.” Continued from Page 4 There’s also familiarity and an established network.Fellow Israelis, for instance, have helped Mr. Rokni and his family with advice on housing, schools, restaurants—and invitations to two Purim parties. On the business side, there has always been a good match between Israeli programming expertise and the needs of New York industries. Coders trained by the military in data mining and encryption have gone on to develop cutting-edge security software used by New York financial firms. Likewise, skills in targeting and data analytics have made Israelis players in the city’s ad-tech industry. Furthermore, as a world capital of fashion, advertising and media, New York has become home to the kind of startups increasingly coming out of Israel—companies that are less about Internet infrastructure and more about its consumer and business uses. And with their expertise in the areas of marketing and sales, New Yorkers can help Israelis grow their businesses globally. “There is talent [here] that is missing in Israel,” said Micha Kaufman, founder of the three-year-old onlineservices marketplace Fiverr, based in Tel Aviv, which opened an office on Park Avenue South at the beginning of March. Mr. Kaufman’s first local hire was a former marketing executive from e-commerce site Gilt. One thing Israeli companies don’t come to New York for is engineers. Sandy, Mr. Katsman’s firm hired Mr. Rubin to set up a virtualized server that would allow all employees to access their documents securely from their home computers if necessary. “We can’t have a situation where we have significant work outages,” Mr. Katsman said. His team used that system, which is built around Microsoft Windows Server 2012, to log on the day after the storm hit and the other four days their building was closed.The firm’s files are backed up offsite every five minutes, so workers had all of the documents they needed, he said. Toot your horn. Once you’ve got a smart continuity plan in place, let customers and prospects know. “It gives them a high level of security and service they wouldn’t normally have with an office of our size,” said Mr. Katsman. “It’s a selling point with potential clients.” Ⅲ learned programming in the Israeli army and never went to a university. Engineers who do go to a university tend to come out better trained, on average, than their counterparts in the U.S., according to Craig Gotsman, a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He is also founding director of the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute, a partnership with Cornell that is part of the new applied sciences graduate school slat- On the leading edge Kaltura’s Mr. David and others are hopeful that the institute, along with new programs at NYU-Poly and other campuses, will eventually provide New York with a bigger pool of advanced talent. In the meantime, the city is on the cutting edge in other ways. Benzi Ronen, co-founder of Farmigo, recently moved to New York from San Francisco to set up a headquarters location for his threeyear-old company, which connects consumers online with local organic farmers. The startup is currently operating out of co-working spaces in Manhattan and San Francisco, with its engineering team in Tel Aviv. Mr. Ronen hopes to find a building where other food-related companies can also be based,and he’s determined that it be in Brooklyn. “We need to be in a place where we see innovation around local food,” said the Farmigo chief executive.“As far as local food artisans and the culture of eating healthy and local—Brooklyn is leading the way.” Ⅲ To sign up for Crain’s DIGITAL NY newsletter, go to www.crainsnewyork.com/newsletters. March 25, 2013 | Crain’s New York Business | 39 http://www.crainsnewyork.com/smallbiz http://www.crainsnewyork.com/newsletters

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - March 25, 2013

In the Boroughs
In the Markets
Real Estate Deals
The Insider
Business People
Opinion
Alair Townsend
Greg David
40 Under 40
Classifieds
For the Record
Small Business
New York, New York
Source Lunch
Out and About
Snaps

Crains New York - March 25, 2013