
What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need) - joshuacc
http://cdixon.org/2011/08/02/what-the-nyc-startup-world-needs-and-doesnt-need/
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old-gregg
Great post, as usual. And agree with almost everything except this:

 _> You can rent a decent place in a cool part of town on a typical startup
salary._

"Decent" and "typical" are open for interpretation, but I can tell that for
most interpreters I know the expression above evaluates to False. :)

~~~
tomkarlo
This... I'm originally from New York, and I know lots of good engineers who
grew up there, but quickly realized that you don't make anything more for
working in New York versus San Francisco, Austin, or Denver.

Yes, you can afford a place in Manhattan on an engineer's salary. But it's
going to be too small for a family, and if you want a bigger place you're
going to need to do a long commute. Compare that with other cities where a
well-paid software engineer is at the top end of the income ladder and can
rent out a full house for what they'd pay for a 2-bedroom in NY.

(And yes, it's even a lot more expensive than SF. I've looked at apartments in
both cities - while rents in SF are comparable to New York, you're still
generally getting a much larger place for the same price. That matters if you
have kids.)

Brooklyn and Queens are nice (if not that much cheaper for the areas near
Manhattan.) But if working in New York means you have to live 40 mins outside
of Manhattan, or in Hoboken / NJ, what's the point of being in NY? Might as
well be in Denver with a 4000 sq ft house.

It's unlikely that NY rents are going to drop a lot. If startups in NY want to
attract more top talent, they're going to have to pay significantly more than
startups in cheaper locales.

~~~
jamesteow
Once you live in Brooklyn, it's possible to go days without having to enter
the city. Plenty of awesome neighbourhoods in the BK (Greenpoint, Park Slope,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, South Slope, DUMBO). I saw a LOT of
young professionals with families in DUMBO/Park Slope/Brooklyn Heights.

Certainly, if you're intent on living in the city, you'll pay a premium.

~~~
look_lookatme
Heh, days? If you work from home, try _weeks_.

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tomkarlo
If you're going weeks without going into the city, why not live somewhere else
instead of paying still really high rents (and yes, Brooklyn rents are still
usually high compared to everywhere else but Manhattan.)

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jamesteow
Because Brooklyn is awesome.

Great parties, concert venues, cafes, restaurants, parks, bars, and lots and
lots of super talented people ranging from musicians in Williamsburg to
artists in Bushwick. NYC is more than just Manhattan. It's also easier to bike
around.

It's like thinking that the Bay Area is just San Francisco and that there is
no reason to live in the BA if you don't go to SF.

~~~
tomkarlo
I love Brooklyn, but the rents aren't _that_ different from Manhattan if
you're in the "hot" areas. Maybe 30% cheaper, but not 70%. Yeah, there are
'low' rents if you're willing to live an hour outside the city, but if you're
in Williamsburg or Park Slope, it's not really appreciably cheaper.

And at least for software engineers, you probably _do_ make more in SF than
NY, since it's a much more competitive job market for hiring a good software
engineer. Just look at the wars that have been going on between FB and Google
over hiring top talent. There's still nothing like that in NY.

~~~
look_lookatme
I came to New York for work, but stayed for the people. Most of my friends
live in nearby neighborhoods or clos-ish areas of Brooklyn. Certainly if I
worked in the city I'd socialize a bit more there, but I'm not going out of my
way to go in on a regular basis.

My rent _is_ probably about 30% cheaper than the equivalent place in
Manhattan, and that's savings of about $475 a month, which is nothing to scoff
at.

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spodek
My biggest challenge in NYC has been the availability of dependable salaries
for coders and designers from non-startups, especially from banking and
finance. Start-up equity isn't as valuable here to people who can get great
pay from a bank or hedge fund.

I see saying NYC needs some extremely successful startups, more engineers, or
more product designers as well intentioned, but it's like saying mice need
more bells on cats. Everybody agrees, but no one knows how to make it happen.

Also, Parsons has a design and technology program like NYU's ITP. I've taught
at both and they're both excellent. There may be other programs. I've worked
with two Cooper Union alumni (one artist-turned-graphic-designer and one
engineer) and both were among the best people I've worked with.

~~~
jamesteow
'My biggest challenge in NYC has been the availability of dependable salaries
for coders and designers from non-startups.'

I can't speak to programming/engineering jobs, but there's plenty of design
jobs from non-startups. Almost every agency (including tiny ones) are based or
have an office in NY. DUMBO has a ton of digital agencies. Motion graphics
firms are centralized in Manhattan or in LA. Small ones can be found south of
14th or in Brooklyn. Easily the best city in the U.S. for design jobs.

~~~
uberc
Indeed, I think spodek's point is that the many non-startup design jobs (with
"dependable salaries") in New York makes it harder to attract good designers
to startups.

~~~
jamesteow
Ah okay. Whoosh, right over my head...

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iposbeforehoes
I currently live in Manhattan, and work for a start up in Manhattan, and I can
assure you that it is very possible to live in NYC on a "typical" start up
salary.

While I don't know what the true "typical" start up salary in NYC, I'll give
you my experience: I interviewed with 7 start ups, and 6 of the 7 were
offering a nice chunk of equity and salaries over $100,000. If you can't live
in NYC on 100k, you're doing something very wrong.

And, great article!

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achompas
Isn't there a question about whether PayPal's employees were great
entrepreneurs or if they benefitted from network effects?

Anyway, my impression is that the NY startup scene consists of a lot of high-
profile startups. Could someone explain to me why these (or any other)
startups should aspire to be PayPal-esque, aside from being absurdly
successful?

~~~
jeremymims
He means that New York needs a PayPal mafia. I think we already got one with
DoubleClick which spawned off an incubator that did Gilt Groupe, 10gen, and
Business insider so far. The Lerers are doing their part as well to reinvest
in New York. But Chris is right that it won't hurt to have a few more. If Gilt
Groupe sells or goes public, I expect we'll see this effect.

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callmeed
#4 really surprised me. what's the underlying issue with Internet in NYC?

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daveambrose
A few lesons we learned in the last three years: we operated in Dogpatch Labs
in union square for the first half of 2010 and the wireless was painfully
slow. Some other teams actually brought in their MiFis and we used this to
connect to webmail and calendars. Mabe this changed since then.

We then moved to our own office in Chelsea and the Internet is bad here, as we
use Verizon's second best connection. Depending upon the location of your
office or where you work in manhattan, you may have time warner, verizon,
optimum, etc. and high speed Internet is usually a crapshoot.

~~~
warfangle
Fios isn't that much of a crap shoot. And it's available in much of lower
Manhattan.

I also know for a fact that many unassuming buildings have gigabit ethernet
drops that connect directly or semi-directly to 60 Hudson or 111 8th Ave.
Probably wouldn't be able to get access without some serious contacts, though.

Most of the co-working spaces I've worked out of have horribly inept people in
charge of their network allocation. They use older WiFi routers that have
trouble with packet collisions. They provision a 768k DSL line to serve 20
coworking spots.

As recently as two weeks ago, about 16 people overloaded the internet at a
coworking space I was visiting. Someone else (not affiliated with the space;
the space employee didn't know how to do this) mentioned that they'd initiated
a dhcp reset and a couple minutes later everything was back. When I asked him
how he knew the router password, he said: "Oh.. they were just using the
factory defaults." TBH, I wouldn't want to conduct business over a wifi
network whose router was using the default admin password.

~~~
nissimk
Exceptional bandwidth is available in offices in NYC for reasonable prices.
Cogent offers 100 Mbps service on their city-wide fiber backbone for 700 -
1000 / month. There are a number of other fiber / ethernet providers with
similar service around 2X that price. Cogent is lit in many buildings in
Manhattan and the list is available on their site. If you are in a lit
building they can have you up and running within 3 weeks:

[http://www.cogentco.com/index.php?continent=North+America...](http://www.cogentco.com/index.php?continent=North+America&country=United+States&state=NY&metro=New+York&city=New+York&site_type=OB&action=search&option=com_content&view=article&id=40)

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warfangle
Doubleclick was a New York startup. In reference to point #1..

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jcampbell1
I think Chris is confused about the magnitude of $100M to bring a top
university. $100 million in infrastructure upgrades to under-used land to
attract a university is a bargin. The income and sales taxes would earn back
the $100M in no time. It is pretty hard to find $100M investment, that will
bring $1B+ follow on investment, and a few thousand people on a payroll who
use very few government services.

~~~
raldi
Seriously. The city government almost spent twelve times as much on two
baseball stadiums:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-
for-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-for-
baseball.html)

The final amount that was actually spent is subject to a lot of
interpretation, but it's clearly in the nine-figure range.

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barce
Replace 'NYC' with 'LA' and it's equally true.

~~~
andycroll
Also, replace with 'Singapore' and it's equally true.

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dmix
Which NYC startups are looking for product designers?

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datums
they need diversity

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warfangle
A few off the top of my head: Square (payments), Tumblr (blogging), Blip.tv
(web series destination & distribution platform - disclosure, I work here),
Admeld (remnant ad inventory yield optimization for high volume sites),
Doubleclick (bought by GOOG a couple years ago), Indaba (music remix
platform), a range of creative services (rga and mrm and the like eat souls,
though).

There's a lot more here than finance, if you know where to look.

