NY Ousts Boston as No.2 Tech Hub | Hacker News Reader

NY Ousts Boston as No.2 Tech Hub

bostinnovation.com

21 pointsekm9 comments

I'm originally from NY and currently running my startup in Boston. I came here for undergrad, and after graduating, I thought hard about whether to run my company from Boston or NYC. I had been running a profitable online business by senior year, and knew that upon finishing school, I'd be hiring and scaling the business.

I ultimately chose Boston over NY. While I found the tech scene in New York to be vibrant with many great entrepreneurs and engineers, I also found the scene to have too much "noise" for my liking with what seems like a lot of bandwagon jumpers. In Boston, I find much more genuinely passionate techies who seems much less distracted by the hot new thing.

Granted, I love NYC and think it's great city. I also think that there's so much business and so many industries that are so ensconced there that it'll breed some really new transformative web-based businesses. Sectors such as traditional retail (esp. high-end), traditional media, and finance are ripe for great tech companies to join/transform the already established cultures there.

FWIW Los Angeles' startup scene is quite vibrant right now. If you're in the area feel free to swing by LA Hacker News this weekend http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Hacker-News/events/1894228...

That's funny because I remember reading a HN post about how the startup scene is rough in LA.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2775317

Well, if it was on HN, then it must be true :)

But LA is where media is, tons of opportunities are here.

Isn't the majority of this funding for bubbly website development vs. traditional "tech" like HW, FW, application development? Would be interesting to see a breakdown.

Considering how much bigger NYC is than Boston I don't see what the hubbub is all about.

A. There really was no tech industry in NYC if you went back in time to just 20 years ago. On the other hand Boston is home to MIT and was really a hub of the industry as late as the 80s. So in terms of tech for eons Boston was bigger...

I wonder if some of this has to do with guys like Fred Wilson really evangelizing the tech scene there. Most Boston VCs are just plain a-holes imo.

It has everything to do with people -- NYC has an amazing talent pool. The problem has always been the high cost of living and the fact that in the past most of the tech talent would be absorbed by Wall Street. It has taken over 20 years but I've slowly have watched this change through the hard work of many folks who don't just include VCs but event organizers, academics and yes even art school grads. But this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, NYC was the birthplace from quite a bit of tech in the past from Morse Code to the television industry.

Signed a Silicon Alley Vet who got his start back in the 90s

PS The road to this was paved with quite a bit of failure, especially after the dot.com bomb and 9/11 meltdown

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