The Future of Cities with Shaun Abrahamson from Urban Us
The After hours crew got funky with an incredible summer edition under the disco ball at Kind Regards in New York’s Lower East Side. Shaun Abrahamson joined the group to talk about the state of urban tech investing. With his casual yet expert talk, Shaun engaged the audience by telling the story of his creation of Urban Us, his mission driven civic focused venture capital firm.
Not everyone gets to spend their days thinking about the future of cities, Shaun does.
Shaun spoke about the beginning of Urban Us and their initial investment thesis. While living in Miami, Shaun and his cofounder Stonly were initially captivated by the development of C40 Cities; a program to reduce climate change through civic innovation. Shaun saw an incredible opportunity to create an investment environment that could spur growth and innovation in cities. They began to build a community of investors and entrepreneurs that would start making an impact not just in environmental aspects of cities, but in urban innovation as a whole. Urban Us got their start by investing in four startups: SeamlessDocs, Starcity, and One Concern.
As the talk progressed, the audience began to probe Shaun about opportunity and innovation in the space. Shaun believes in the ability for young startups to lead the way in urban innovation and when asked about how governments can to do so in tandem, Shaun responded by suggesting that policy makers spend more time with science fiction writers. This can help bridge the gap between when futurists come up with ideas, and when those ideas finally trickle down to policy makers. This can often take years, and in that time, technology has already evolved.
Shaun also gave a few suggestions to the crowd of entrepreneurs. He believes the next big market for urban innovation will happen through dynamic curbs and flexible infrastructure. Portable infrastructure will allow the flexibility and interoperability to keep cities not just innovative currently, but also in the future.
To put Shaun’s idea playfully, future flexible cities may be “like burning man… but everywhere.”
After Hours is a Cornell Tech alumni run event where we host industry leaders at the coolest NYC (and as of recently, SF) venues we can find.
Interested in speaking? Know of a great space to host? Kind enough to sponsor an event? 🙏
