Why you should start a company in… New York
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
Do the same thing in California and state law makes the startup I've been working on in my time with my money, mine.
To me this simple fact gives California a huge advantage in maintaining a startup culture.
YMMV...
(I guess my point is: do you have more than anecdotal evidence to back this up? I don't, but you don't seem to either - I'm not aware of anything in NYS law that requires all that you do while employed at a company, even when not done on employer dime/equipment/time/space, to be owned by said employer)
Detailed discussions with a good lawyer about NY state law is that there are three classes of employee. Those are contractors, hourly, and professional. If you are not working by the project and don't have to track your time on a clock, then you are a professional employee. By default any work done by a professional employee which relates to that employee's job function belongs to the employer. (If a programmer writes a novel, the novel is probably his. But a program written is probably not his.) It is standard and customary for employers to add clauses to contracts reiterating that principle. This makes their case even stronger.
And yes, I've been personally caught on the wrong side of this. And yes, I personally know other people in an unrelated incident whose startup folded in exactly this manner.
OTOH if your contract has clauses protecting you then you are likely protected from this. However the common default is otherwise.
By contrast in California state law work done on your own time with your own equipment which does not use your employer's intellectual property is never a work for hire. This right cannot be signed away. The result is that your startup on the side is always legally protected.
And yes. This is among the reasons that I now live in California, and not NY.
I read the article half way, looked at some of the phrases and guessed http://www.avc.com / Fred Wilson who's been pushing NY as a Startup alternative for a number of years now. Will this idea crumble when finance recovers?
Why? B/c there are no girls in silicon valley. If you are in your 20s, or early 30s, you are probably wasting your best dating years away.
I like to work hard/play hard and NYC seems the perfect place to do it. In SV, you work hard/get more bored. You are surrounded by boring suburbs. SF is fun for a while, but good luck finding dateable girls. (If you are into hipster chicks, it is perfect). Eventually work hard without corresponding fun becomes tedious, and people burn off, and move on.
NYC seems to have a better balance. When people leave NYC, (or Manhattan), they seem to settle for the cheaper boroughs, or New Jersey / RI. When people leave SF/SV, they just move away.
Fred Wilson should start emphasizing this more in his posts. He doesn't realize how bad the 'dating' situation is here, and just be in a city where you meet lots of well educated girls, is a huge perk for many single 20s-30something engineers.
Ps. I have been talking with some friends also, that are in the same boat. Our plan is to actually have at least an office there. Seriously. I guess it is just like rock bands, where people join them "to get the chicks", so will be my next startup. "To get the chicks". Life is too short. :D
Who knows, maybe it's just a case of the grass being greener on the other side...but I feel like an 8 here, is only a 4-5 in California.
Contrast this with SF. I was there a couple days staying at the CLIFT a few months ago.I was sitting in my room and I decided to go out and see what the SF women were like. I went down to the bar and was presently suprised to see that it was packed...with men. I mean there might have been 2 girls for 50 guys.
I'm not saying that that makes it not worth the numbers advantage, but it certainly tempers that edge. I'm also not saying girls are swayed entirely by a man's financial prospects.
* - generic example, not you specifically
But you could try the jzw approach ("our 'use case' should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?") and still stay in the valley ~ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
</more-than-usual bias>
(We're headquartered in NYC and Chicago).
Of course, I disagree wholeheartedly with Thomas on Chicago unless you're bootstrapping. If you don't want to do SV, Boston and LA (especially now with Jason's Open Angel Forum events) are pretty good options.
But New York is huge and you can find a little bit of everything. Brooklyn alone is larger than most large cities, with 2.5 million people (over half the size of metro SF, and about the same as metro Pittsburgh). Everything gets much, much cheaper when you leave the ultra-density of Manhattan. It's like any other city center, just scaled way up.
Also, DUMBO in Brooklyn is fairly easily accessible and is becoming quite a startup hub. NYC seems expensive, but if you look hard enough you can find good deals anywhere.
Don't be afraid to look outside of the manhattan/williamsburg/dumbo/long island city areas, either.
Most people who think that NYC is incredibly expensive (I've even gotten this from folks who live in La Crescenta, CA) haven't bothered to explore beyond Manhattan.
Brooklyn really isn't that expensive - you can get a decent enough railroad style apartment for around $1100. That's more than enough space for one person. You can dial it down to $6-700/mo if you're willing to move in with flatmates.
I find that most of the expenses of NYC come with the nightlife. I actually live cheaper up here (rent + $400 or so for food + transport, monthly) than my brother does down in Durham, NC.
Disclaimers: I don't go out much, and when I do it's typically on the cheap. I live in a pre-gentrification area of Brooklyn (Bushwick), but I've only felt unsafe once - and that was due to some stupid mistakes on my part. The hipsters are starting to trickle over from Williamsburg, but it's not annoying-roof-drink-n-drugs-college-party-ville yet. My landlord sucks (but don't they all?). And I've never (Disclaimer^2: I've only been here for 3.5 yrs) had issues with bedbugs.
/s