
The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene - younata
http://www.techendo.co/posts/the-ongoing-battle-ny-vs-sf-tech-scene
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jtoeman
Is there a "battle"? I mean, a battle to me means there is a likely winner,
and people are pushed into making decisions and taking sides. In 15+ years
working at tech companies, I've never had to "pick" \- I choose to live in SF
- thats it.

Further, I've literally never, ever, heard a person who is actually running or
employed at a startup consider it a battle.

But it does seem like a good headline for getting lots of clicks...

~~~
carriemelissa
I heard it referred to as a "debate". When I got there, people were asking me
left and right about what I thought was different, so it seems like the
comparison is already being made.

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rayiner
I hate to say anything good about SF, but frankly only people in the NYC tech
scene think they're in competition with SF. I doubt people in SF think much
about the tech scene in NYC.

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rml
I work at a large tech co. in NYC, and we don't really talk about being in
competition with SF at all. Besides, many of the really _big_ SF-based cos.
have offices here anyway.

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seiji
Google spent a few billion dollars to buy an office building:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/nyregion/03building.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/nyregion/03building.html?_r=0)
(they later expanded it for even more).

eBay's 6th Ave office costs $2-3 million _per month_ (what's a million dollars
between friends?).

(This isn't really relevant though. I just like reminding people huge sums of
money are in play. Your little "$50k to $200k angel round" isn't as big a deal
as you think.)

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bennyg
Damn, what if the 200k angel round leads to a billion or two dollars? I feel
like your last line is totally irrelevant.

~~~
seiji
Meta irrelevancy.

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jaboutboul
Too bad it's going to be destroyed now that DeBlasio was elected. He has no
idea what to do with the tech sector. Bloomberg spent millions to basically
stump for the tech scene in NY. DeBlasio plans on doing no such thing, he has
no clue and no plan. When all the other candidates visited numerous startups
during the campaign, DeBlasio showed almost no interest.

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kimar
"[NYC] is home to fashion, art, film, literature, theater, banking, and more."

Maybe its just closer to Europe?

More seriously, agree with the article. SF's strength is also its weakness: a
huge concentration of bright like-minded people focused on similar objectives.

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eshvk
Interesting that you fail to mention the other side of SF, the people who have
lived here from before we started coming in. The New York Times had an article
on them today [1].

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/backlash-by-the-bay-
tec...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/backlash-by-the-bay-tech-riches-
alter-a-city.html)

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jbarrec
I wish the tech scene on Long Island, NY was a tenth of what it is in NYC.
It's amazing how the culture dies within a few miles of NYC. Is this the same
on the west coast?

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seiji
You can picture west coast internet tech as a heat map. SF has a big solid
color blob. About 20 miles south, Palo Alto is smaller and half as dark. About
10 miles south, Mountain View is a little larger and darker than Palo Alto.

There are little blobs of heat map down by San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa
Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. There's a little dollop of color up at Portland.
There's a half-SF color sized blob in Seattle for Amazon. There's a small, but
solid color around Bellevue and a faint twinkle over at Redmond for the fading
empire.

~~~
jbarrec
This was very helpful. I plan on visiting SF sometime very soon. I want to be
sure to hit Palo Alto, and Mountain View while I'm there!

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jvalencia
Unless you are visiting companies or Stanford, it may not be terribly exciting
;-)

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seiji
It's exciting to walk around Stanford slack jawed, staring at the giant stone
architecture, landscaping, never-ending expanse of learning, research, and
sleaze-trepreneur while constantly exclaiming internally, "How much money do
these fuckers have?! Haven't they heard of _normal_ sized buildings? Every
lecture hall here is a goddamn castle!"

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jamesmcbennett
David Karp agrees with you

“you’d have to be out of your mind to live in Palo Alto.”

[http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp-
is-...](http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp-is-tumblrs-
reluctant-technologist/)

~~~
argonaut
As someone who lived in Palo Alto, yep. But if you're well-off and looking to
start a family, Palo Alto is perfect.

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eshvk
How are salaries/living expenses in tech different in SF and NYC? Assuming you
are living in SF or NYC, of course. Are they higher in NYC or lower or vice
versa?

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w1ntermute
I would say both are lower in NYC. Salary is definitely lower, and rent is as
well because the infinitely better public transit in NYC gives you more living
options that have a short commute.

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fennecfoxen
I'm making comparable salary in NYC, and rent is pretty much in line with San
Francisco area standards: $2300/mo studios in desirable areas... the
difference in the housing market are these. First, there are more medium-
awesome areas to choose from close to town (head to Astoria or East
Williamsburg and you might shave $500-1000 off that studio, but you can still
catch the N train to get to work and the neighborhood's reasonably cool). And
second, if you want the apartment, there's a good chance you can get the
apartment (whereas last time I went apartment-shopping in San Francisco, there
would be 20+ people in line for the open house, including many couples who
were new-hires at technology companies. it was insane.)

~~~
eshvk
> First, there are more medium-awesome areas to choose from close to town
> (head to Astoria or East Williamsburg and you might shave $500-1000 off that
> studio, but you can still catch the N train to get to work and the
> neighborhood's reasonably cool).

Would this be like living across the bay in Oakland or something? The flipside
of such a situation would be that you get back home from SF at midnight before
the last BART or you would have to be stuck when BART decides to strike.

~~~
fennecfoxen
This would be like living across the bay in Oakland, but much better. Compared
to NYC's subway as a general-purpose transport system, BART's more like a
commuter rail line that happens to be underground in downtown San Francisco.

Heck, when the MTA decides to strike (which is occasionally, but less
frequently than BART) you can _walk_ to Manhattan from Astoria. Try _that_
from Oakland-to-SOMA.

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jboggan
Meanwhile Silicon Beach soldiers on and the weather is looking mighty fine
this time of year . . .

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berberous
What's the tech scene out there like? It's 30 degrees here in NY :(

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hkmurakami
Lots of media/content space companies from what I've gathered in the few
months living here.

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calciphus
Agreed. Santa Monica is is a solid spot for media startups or a handful of
mobile apps. Some good work being done in the recommendation / metasearch
space, and a handful of crowdfunding startups. Safe to assume everyone funding
you has ties to Hollywood, since that's the majority of the VC money down
there.

~~~
hkmurakami
And that's a perfect way to differentiate themselves from SF/SV, much like how
many of the most prominent fashion startups have been born from NYC. :)

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bch
> First, there was far less elitism. This was surprising to me given that the
> East Coast is home to finance giants and "old money".

Immediately reminded of "Money talks, wealth whispers."

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mikeg8
I really like the idea behind the takeaways and can imagine some truth to
these observations... but it's hard for me to know how true it really is based
on the OP's one week trip. Maybe the OP was lucky and just walked into a
welcoming and diverse co-working space.

~~~
carriemelissa
Hi Mike, I'm the writer. I totally agree-- one week is not enough time to make
sweeping generalizations. Though I did spend a ton of time talking to everyone
I met in tech about what they thought of the "scene" and our differences--
people from Stack Exchange, Skillshare, and a few other startups I admire. I
just found the atmosphere so incredibly different from the get-go.

Also, yes, I was lucky to be in a great co-working space (New Work City). I'm
sure they're not ALL like that. Just as in SF, there are "bright spots" and
"meh spots".

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rexreed
Not to shock or surprise anyone here, but there's a lot of the tech scene
outside BOTH NY and SF. Where's the largest private software company? Cary, NC
[1]. Microsoft and Amazon? Based in Seattle. IBM? The non-NYC parts of NY
(White Plains and Armonk, NY). And what's happening in different regions like
Chicago? Lots going on. DC and Baltimore? Tons of activity -- including a
$2.7B acquisition [2] and an IPO or two [3]. Raleigh? Philadelphia? Las Vegas?
Indianapolis? Kansas City? Miami? Atlanta? Austin? Estonia? Berlin? ...

And let's not forget Boston / New England ... which is STILL #2 in total
Venture Capital investment. [4]

See where I'm heading? This idea of an ongoing battle between two locations as
being the core of the IT / Startup ecosystem belies the fact that a
considerable amount of activity is happening outside these two regions.

I love NY and I love SF. And I think good entrepreneurs should do their best
to network in both of those scenes. And YES there's a ton of VC in SF /
Silicon Valley and a huge amount of activity in NY. But entrepreneurs outside
of NY and SF can do just fine too. Ask Tony Hsieh from Zappos (Las Vegas) or
Jeff Bezos (Seattle). I say, let these two cities battle it on while everyone
else focuses on making their company and their local entrepreneurial scenes
better.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute_Inc).

[2] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/cisco-agrees-to-
buy...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/cisco-agrees-to-buy-
sourcefire-in-2-7-billion-deal.html)

[3]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/03/29/millennial...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/03/29/millennial-
media-shares-more-than-double-from-ipo-price/)

[4]
[https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?page=region](https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?page=region)

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jacques_chester
When all you have is a slightly upgraded monkey brain, everything looks like a
status play.

Edit: Apparently humour needs to come with captions now.

This is a play on the "hammer/nail" truism, observing that folk love to frame
things as X vs Y zero-sum games. Possibly because of the human fondness for
associating the status value of markers (places, brands) with the status value
of our own selves. Thus arguments over NYC vs SF or iOS vs Android or Facebook
vs Google or Node.js vs Go are not really about X vs Y at all. They are about
establishing status in a troupe of great apes.

Indeed, this edited text is about status.

~~~
carriemelissa
Ha, I thought it was kind of funny and I wrote the darn thing.

For the record, I did hear someone refer to it as "the ongoing New York/SF
debate". This isn't something I just invented. I had personally never thought
there was any comparison to be made until I heard that people out there make
it all the time.

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jacques_chester
I only knew it was "a thing" from HN, actually. I recently took a holiday to
visit both NYC and the Bay Area and I liked both of them a lot.

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jweir
It is TriBeCa. Triangle Beneath Canal.

edit : Below not beneath (as the below comment points out )

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bradleyjg
Below. Beneath Canal is the subway.

