Upstart Start-Ups

Jason Calacanis

Age: 26

Publisher, Silicon Alley Reporter

If you work in new media in New York, Calacanis knows you and has likely snapped a photo of you in a compromising position. As the publisher-editor--delivery boy of his industry magazine, Calacanis started the SAR last December with gossipy dish, copyediting snafus, and a big anti-Microsoft grudge. But in the space of nine months, the SAR has grown from a stapled broadside to a glossy, 48-page, full-color magazine--a business and lifestyle bible for Silicon Alley. Though Calacanis fancies himself an East Coast version of Wired founder Louis Rosetto, he's really a spectacular PR agent. His Pseudo radio show--cohosted by Joystick Nation author J.C. Herz--regularly attracts the biggest heads of the NY businesses, if only to give them a chance for self-promotion. ''It's absolutely silly to compare the three-year-old Silicon Alley to a 20-year-old Silicon Valley. It also shows how nervous the Valley is about us,'' Calacanis says. ''I'm not so concerned with three years, they're just the prologue to the movie. It's the years from 2000 to 2010 that will be the interesting part.''