

For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure - mindblink
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/technology/for-tech-startups-new-york-has-increasing-allure.html?pagewanted=all

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dr_
This quickly fell off the top of the list at HN, and rightfully so. There
haven't been many recent super-exits out of NYC. The only one that comes to
mind is Quidsi, which was acquired by Amazon, but they weren't even actually
in the city, they were in Jersey City. This is the NYTimes doing it's job of
tooting the city's horn by citing a couple of examples (I give them credit for
leaving foursquare out this time), and a "recent report from the Center for an
Urban Future, a New York-based public policy organization" (ok, if the name of
this institution itself doesn't suggest an incredible amount of bias i don't
know what would). The mayor has fallen in line as well, so his legacy will not
be a collapsed financial services industry(not his fault) but instead, he
hopes, a tech startup paradise. And still not quite sure what the point of
this Tech school on Roosevelt Island is. Stanford isn't a tech school, it just
has a solid tech offering. MIT is a tech school yet Boston has failed to
become a tech mecca on the same scale as the Valley.

What matters it the culture of a city or environment. NYC's culture is not
tech startup, it's finance and media. It's foreign investors buying large
buildings and apartments to park their black money. It's gritty and
boisterous, which can be fun, but it's not nurturing.

Sure there will be a few hits, but there will be a few hits from many cities
around the country. That doesn't mean they are going to become the next tech
mecca and take down the Valley.

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sabalaba
Worth noting, the PwC / National Venture Capital association Money-tree report
shows total deal size and activity on a per-region basis. Silicon Valley gets
5.5x more capital and almost 3x the deal flow of NY Metro area. [1]

I think of any ecosystem as having energy. More things happen when molecules
bounce around and interact. That energy is capital.

I think it's great that NY has 'allure', but the distribution of capital
amongst the various regions follows a really clear, winner-take-all power law.
SV is king and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

[1] <https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?page=region>

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keeptrying
I think at one point SV had 10x more capital than NYC. The difference is
slowly decreasing.

(I moved from NYC to SF to start a company.)

Another big reason I see that NYC will catch up is that you just dont need
that much to start a company. And also VCs are beginning to have offices in
both areas.

The only real difference is the ease with which you can meet someone really
important in SV. You can get an introduction to PG through one of his startups
within the week if you can show you have some traction and get the respect of
some founder he has backed.

And all said and done, startups are realizing that investors dont matter -
creating a product that people want to use is the bottom line. If the costs
are low and you can afford it, you might as well forget about having to deal
with VCs and investors except for advice.

~~~
gersh
New York had a greater percentage of investment during the dot-com boom in the
90s. Since then, it has fluctuated. However, New York hasn't produced too many
big tech companies. I think New York's biggest success has been DoubleClick.
Outside of media, what other big tech companies have been started in NYC?

There is a lot of media in New York, which includes internet media. Also, I
think there are a lot of bloggers in NYC. Although, I don't see evidence the
New York tech boosters claims match reality.

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jsherry
New Yorkers who play any serious role in the tech startup scene - whether it
be as company, investor or advisor - know what Quora is. Please don't let this
shallow piece of reporting steer you into believing otherwise.

~~~
sethbannon
I think the point that is (clumsily) trying to be made is that your average
'person on the street' in NYC isn't stuck in the tech bubble, and hence might
give you more perspective. As a NYC founder, I certainly find this to be true.
In Silicon Valley, you can live your entire life and rarely meet someone who
doesn't work in tech. In NYC, you can't help but meet artists, writers, ad
execs, people in finance, etc. These people are often your users, and
interacting with them provides an invaluable perspective.

~~~
redwood
About to move to NYC (grew up in SV) and looking forward to experiencing this
paradigm shift. I have grown to resent the hive mind around social networking
and big data around my home town. The one thing I worry about is moving away
from the hardware backbone that made SV great originally. I've been very happy
to discover a lot of 3d printing and open hardware work going on in NYC at the
very least, even if it's a little "softer" than some of the R&D out west.

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wfrick
I'm biased as I'm a writer covering Boston, but it's worth noting that New
York's rise is tilted in the direction of a specific area: internet/mobile
startups. But if you look at other innovation sectors like healthcare, energy,
robotics, etc. New York is still extremely nascent.

~~~
amcintyre
_...it's worth noting that New York's rise is tilted in the direction of a
specific area: internet/mobile startups._

I thought that was the tilt of the entire blog/reddit/HN-osphere.

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crosh
This article was clearly written by someone with very little understanding
NYC's tech scene. While I would agree that there is a social/mobile bubble
here, many impressible businesses serving other sectors are being started by
incredibly bright entrepreneurs. Each of whom know what Quora is.

In terms of finding top talent, as long as a company is building products with
tangible value and the CEO can outline the immediate ROI for customers, those
that flock to Wall Street are there to be had. The East Coast also has our own
top universities, the originals - Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Princeton, Yale,
Penn, Carnegie Mellon - who are each producing phenomenal mathematics and CS
professionals with East Coast ties. The ability to staff talent is directly
correlated to the quality of the company's product and founders.

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notbitter
Some of the advantages listed in the article are questionable. A talent pool
so small that everybody knows each other, potential partners who are so out of
the loop that they don't know about your established competitors, and the
opportunity to hire ex-finance guys who were unhappy with their last bonus.

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j2labs
It's because the tech community in NYC has been very outgoing and aggressive
in sharing all the awesome things they're doing.

The Hacker culture is already awesome but keeps getting awesomer. People are
hanging out, sharing idea and building things because they want things to be
awesome.

Other cultures have vibrant communities too. Designers. Thinkers. Financial.
Branding. Services. Everyone has a network that's accessible and self-selected
into outgoing, aggressive creators.

It's not often that people are so motivated, but it's happening in NYC right
now.

~~~
jayzee
I think that the tech scene in nyc is anti-correlated with the stock market. I
remember there was no activity when I was there and it started picking up post
2008 when the banks started laying off/stopped hiring technical people...

If the stock market picks up again I think that the tech scene will start
receding. It is hard for quite a few people to turn down the pay that banks
offer for the uncertain economic rewards of a startup.

~~~
michaelpinto
Something to think about in terms of the NYC finance industry: As time goes on
it employs less and less people -- even when things are going well. I also
think that Gen Y students getting out of school (CS majors) aren't as much
into "working for the man" which make them not just more interested in started
something, but in making something. On the biz school of things if the economy
turns up it could get rid of the "me too flake factor" which improves the
quality of the community.

~~~
Swizec
I am Gen Y and I can't even imagine myself working for the man.

~~~
sliverstorm
Why? The Man has some really cool projects to work on with really smart people
and plenty of funding, if you know where to look.

~~~
draggnar
Which man matters more than the company's size.

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rjurney
Beware: things in NY may get mighty cold if the social bubble pops (eventually
they all do). Atlanta was a great place to start incubators during the dot com
boom. Less so after. Many of the startups in NY can't get to real revenue
fast, so if VC dries up things could get very bad, very fast.

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akg
Cornell's recent move to NYC (<http://www.cornell.edu/nyc/>) is going to be a
great boon to the startup scene there. This will undoubtedly attract some very
good tech talent from 3 schools (Columbia, Cornell, NYU) in a very dense area.
The one draw back about Silicon Valley is how spread out everything is. I
would imagine serendipitous meetings in NYC will spur the startup culture
there quite rapidly. Looking forward to the exciting changes there.

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melll
Heard of IBM Labs? AT&T Labs? Lucent Research? Previously the venerable Bell
Labs? All near NYC. There are a lot of good technical people and engineers
around this area and there are a lot more who are willing to move here. There
will always be those who want to be in technology and have a cultural (and
maybe fashionable) life as well. Mel <http://universeofmoney.blogspot.com>

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retrogradeorbit
Berlin, even more so.

