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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of hype around emerging NYC tech scene. And this hype has been growing over the last 6-7 years. However, IMO, this is still a largely empty hype, due to 3 reasons 1. NYC hasn't produced a blockbuster startup, nor is there one in the pipeline. I am talking about tech startups >$50bn in value. The next giants are either in Valley (Uber, Lyft, Airbnb) or in China (Didi, Meuitan, etc) or in India (Ola, Flipkart). There is 1 in LA (Snapchat)

2. NYC tech portfolio is lacking startups in emerging technologies - self driving cars, VR/AR, 3D printing, drones, robotics, space, batteries and charging, energy

3. Lots of high profile failures, but few high profile exits

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I've heard "this is the silicon valley of..." a thousand times when referring to areas with strong tech communities. NY's tech community is probably very impressive compared with most of them.

There's nothing actually like Silicon Valley in reality, though. This place is unique. Paris for fashion. New York for...(a lot of things) Hollywood for movies. Dallas for cheerleaders. St. Louis for half a McDonald's sign. Some places will never be duplicated.

$50 billion? Why that number? That seems extraordinarily high. Target has a market value of about $53 billion, and Deutsche Bank $49.7 billion.

Monsanto, $42.7 billion.

I think its fair benchmark. Adobe ($48B) is a relatively successful company of decent size- Not as big as Google and not as small as a borderline unicorn

Potential to be a >$50bn tech company seems to be a pretty generous one to be considered blockbuster. Especially considering the frothy valuation scene. There is no point in comparing with low margin business like Target. Let's look at the biggest tech companies today - Apple (~$600bn), Google (~$500bn), MSFT (~$450bn), Facebook & Amazon (~$250bn), Oracle (~$250bn) so on and so forth. If we are concluding that NYC is catching up to Silicon Valley, then at least one startup needs to demonstrate potential to be worth 10% of Google. That doesn't seem extraordinarily high metric to me.

$50B as the bar for a blockbuster startup? How did you determine that figure? Tesla is at $32B right now, still not good enough?

Apparently not even whatsapp is a "blockbuster startup" either.

See my response below. I am saying "potential" to be >$50bn. Tesla is in an extremely low margin business compared to software companies. Still, I believe Tesla will break the $50bn valuation. And that will still be 10% of Google.

So WeWork, Kickstarter. Isn't Etzy also from NY and FourSquare? SquareSpace

Pretty sure the list is pretty long when all comes to all.

Tumblr, too.

Tumblr was a week away from missing payroll, so it did not have a business model to support a $1 billion valuation.

Yahoo pulled another broadcast.com on that one.

None of those startups are >$50bn in value, except Uber.

Would have been valid if he'd said >$5b.

Do you mean valid as in there are no NY startups at or above that valuation? There are definitely some NY based startups above the $5b mark, though the ones I know of are B2B, not B2C.

Who? Oscar is the biggest one I can think of, and they're <$3b.

I'd also bet on at least two of these being >$50b within 3y. {Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Didi, Meuitan, Ola, Flipkart, Snapchat} (Uber already is, so it's really "a second one")

Oh, WeWork. But I think that's the only one.

Dataminr at $10b.

Ah! Thanks -- I had them mentally filed as DC/NoVA because I know about them only from Government stuff.

That's true, but I was commenting on which startups are most likely to be in that level. If we analyze the companies who have reached that kind of valuation they demonstrate some patterns - 1. Mass market product, that most of the planet can use 2. Mobile first 3. High growth opportunity in Asia. That's why there are so many Asian companies that will become internet behemoths. Looking at the NYC startup list - Oscar health, Etsy, Cockroach DB, MongoDB etc. I don't see that pattern emerging. But that's just my assessment

>NYC tech portfolio is lacking startups in emerging technologies - self driving cars, VR/AR, 3D printing, drones, robotics, space, batteries and charging, energy

Makerbot (3D printing) started in NYC in 2009 and is still there.

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