choffstein

I am a 23 year old small business owner who just moved to Boston. I work in financial consulting; in specific, I partner with investment firms and utilize technology to innovate their investment framework. My background is in Computer Science and Computational Finance.

I am extremely fortunate to be able to work for myself. It provides me an incredible amount of freedom in my life and I love what I do. The only downside, however, is that 90% of the time, I am working alone.

I have contemplated joining start-up office spaces in the area just for the social interaction, but can't really justify it as a business cost at the end of the day. Plus, while I think I would thrive off the energy in the room, I would still be working alone at the end of the day.

I am extremely interested in getting involved in the start-up and angel investing community in the area, but have yet to really find a good way of going about it. The angel community seems to be locked up by groups of business associates that are all much older than me; people with whom I will unfortunately probably never have much opportunity for social or business interaction.

I also don't really know how I could fit into the start-up space -- I don't have time to work on new projects. I think that I am probably too young to offer myself up as a 'mentor' in the start-up space in Boston -- while I have learned a tremendous amount running my own business in the last several years, I don't feel like I am an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Ideally, I am looking for the opportunity to,

1) Meet other young entrepreneurs 2) Develop mentor relationships with local angel investors (at this point, I am seriously just contemplating cold-calling some of the groups) 3) Listen to speaker series on start-ups, entrepreneurship and investing

I would love to get involved in some sort of weekly get together to discuss new business or investment ideas, real or fictional, to foster creative thinking and entrepreneurship.

I am even more interested in meeting with other young successful entrepreneurs and investors (no offense to you older guys) so we can push each other to succeed and begin creating a tremendous business network.

Does anyone have any thoughts or know about any weekly meetings or get togethers I could start attending where I could find these things? Any thoughts on how I can go about finding mentors in the angel investment space?

I am willing to start these groups myself, but thought I would reach out to see if they already exist.

Any and all thoughts are much appreciated!

For anyone who wants to reach out, in public or private: e-mail: corey@hoffstein.com / twitter: @choffstein