Welcome to my series on OG NY Tech -- celebrating 30 years of NY tech ecosystem, from 1995 to now.

Howard Morgan started as an engineer and professor in the early computing days, and ended up building three (four? five?) huge and import investment groups. Renaissance... Idealab... and listen for more on the early computing gods through to Bitcoin and AI.

Computers Before PCs, Venture Before “Venture,” and the Hidden Origins of Quant Finance

00:00 – Recording everything

Louis Armstrong’s house in Queens, tape recorders running 24/7, and the idea that capturing everything matters—an unexpected entry point into a life spent documenting and building the future. 

02:00 – Why keep doing this?

Why founders and investors in their 70s, 80s, and 90s keep starting new firms: curiosity, youth by proximity, and the refusal to stop building. 

04:00 – 1995 is arbitrary (but useful)

Why the mid-1990s are a convenient marker for New York tech—even though the real story starts decades earlier. 

06:30 – Browsers before browsers

Early web commercialization: Mosaic, Spyglass, Quarterdeck, browser history, and the moment when the web quietly crossed from research to product. 

07:30 – City College, 1962

Discovering computers via a desk-sized machine with punch tape—and deciding, very early, to go all-in. 

09:00 – Dick Hamming’s intervention

A Bell Labs legend redirects a physics student toward computers, operations research, and what would become modern computing. 

10:30 – Speedrunning academia

Three years of high school, three years of college, three years to a PhD—becoming the youngest assistant professor at Cornell. 

11:30 – The first computer-printed PhD thesis

Punch cards, justified text, and convincing the university that this was the future. 

12:30 – Making computers less stupid

Early spell-checking, syntax correction, semantic error handling—and the belief that computers should fix mistakes, not punish users. 

14:00 – Databases, UX, and email (1970s)

Large databases measured by the ton, early email, and building user-friendly systems long before “UX” was a term. 

16:00 – Windows before Windows

Multi-window systems, color vs. black-and-white debates with Alan Kay, and building what Xerox PARC would later popularize. 

18:00 – Personal computers as an experiment

DARPA hands out minicomputers to see what researchers will do—and accidentally invents networked personal computing. 

19:00 – The wine list incident

Creating one of the earliest online interest groups—and being told to shut it down before Congress notices. 

21:00 – First taste of company-building

Commercializing Unix, meeting Jim Simons, and realizing that investing—not academia—might be the real lever. 

23:00 – Jim Simons before Renaissance

How a math professor accumulates capital, discovers computing’s power in markets, and dreams of a money-making machine. 

25:00 – Founding Renaissance (1982)

Splitting time between quant trading and venture investing—before either category really existed. 

27:00 – Early deep tech investing

Encryption hardware, LCD panels, Unix tools, QA software—companies that look like modern “deep tech” decades early. 

31:00 – The great split

Venture returns at ~25% IRR, quant at ~38%—and the decision to spin venture out of Renaissance. 

33:00 – Medallion Fund mythology

Capacity limits, extreme fees, internal-only capital, and quietly becoming the most successful hedge fund in history. 

35:00 – The quant ecosystem forms

D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, AQR—time series, statistics, and data replace “market intuition.” 

38:00 – Alternative data before it had a name

Clickstream analysis, URL bars, and predicting Amazon revenue before earnings calls. 

42:00 – Why Idealab mattered

Company-creation as a system: projects before companies, cheap experimentation, and speed as advantage. 

44:00 – The 2000 peak

Raising $1B+ at a $9B valuation, surviving the crash, and why Idealab outlasted its peers. 

46:00 – Citysearch, GoTo, Overture

Search, local discovery, and the foundations of modern internet advertising. 

48:00 – Returning to New York

From Philly and California back to NYC—just as New York tech finally coheres as a scene. 

49:00 – New York New Media Association

Meetups, early angels, and the connective tissue that becomes the New York startup ecosystem. 

50:00 – Deals you miss, deals you hit

DoubleClick envy, Half.com’s sale to eBay, and why timing always beats intelligence. 

52:00 – Seeing it all (except the iPhone)

Why most of the future was visible decades early—and why consumer mobile computing still surprised everyone. 

54:00 – The hidden history of New York tech

Before startups were cool, before venture had a name, before quant was dominant—New York was already shaping the future.