Comment by asanwal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asanwal | Hacker News Reader

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NYC is a great place to found a startup. It's overtaken Boston as the #2 place for VC funding which means capital is available and more and more west coast VCs are setting up shop here which is good if $$$ is one of the things you are seeking. (see here: http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/new-york-vent...)

And there is a thriving and ever-growing tech community as well and as evidenced by the "made in ny" effort, it is coming together to support one another. Additionally, for certain sectors (fintech, fashion, ad tech, ecommerce, etc), the city is very well positioned given many of the customers/partners are based here.

Of course, the Valley continues to be the leader in VC funding availability and a place where the startup ethos is part of the fabric of the place, but NYC is getting there. Of course, Rome was not built in a day, but NYC has exploded quickly and that progress could accelerate with some of the large potential companies and exits that could come out of NYC...

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NYC is very clearly dominant with respect to the media/government/finance thing; unfortunately the tech scene gets taken there with it. This is a draw for some people, if you're into one of those sectors then NYC is roughly the best place to be in the world.

However, the city is terrible at "technology for technology's sake." Take a look at most of the companies on this list; virtually none of them would have come out of a university research lab. That's not a bad thing; arguably most of HN focuses on the "agile web startup that defines itself on execution" style of company. I personally wanted to work on something with a bit more intellectual substance; startups that focus on research and engineering (as opposed to social coupons or selling stylish eyeglasses online) tend to be near Boston/Austin/Seattle/SF.

Also note that tech journalism coming out of NYC has the finance/media/gov't/social slant as well; I tend to distrust the Times' technology reporting because it's going to inform me about Foursquare instead of a radical new GPS chip company. If the latter did come up, it would be viewed through the lens of investment and profit instead of the underlying tech.

I strongly agree with this. Working at a NYC startup, talking with developers at other startups, and observing the broader tech scene, the focus here is certainly not "technology for technology's sake".

This is one of the fundamental differences between NYC and SF. NYC does have a rather amazing tech ecosystem, but I don't believe its as granular or technologically substantive as SF/Silicon Valley.

I think each region has its strengths and its great to see NYC develop its tech sector. There are some pretty amazing startups here and lots of excellent hackers doing interesting work.

Actually there isn't much government stuff here — you see that more around the DC area. Also if you think of the fact that a company like Google depends on ad revenue or that Apple is so focused on the the consumer space the fact that NYC is a media center can be a very good thing. Also while the city doesn't have a recent history with tech hardware if you look at IBM or AT&T they all grew up in the tri-state area.

> if you think of the fact that a company like Google depends on ad revenue

Google's ad platform was the result of combining Applied Semantics' ad matching algorithm with DoubleClick's penetration/established partner network. In other words, the engineers in the Bay needed a way to pay for their sweet search engine development and just bought ad companies in LA and NYC respectively :)

DoubleClick had more than a sales staff -- they did have technology. Granted it may not have been as cool, but give NYC some time!

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