As someone who has spent their whole career in and around startups in NYC, I think it boils down to a handful of things:
- The dot-com bubble in the early 2000s left a bad hangover, but also built up a set of young people with tech experience and lots of ideas who enjoyed working for non-traditional companies
- Those people often went to go start their own companies (disclaimer: I am one of those people). In the early 2000s, though, it was tough to find top tier VCs who were willing to invest in NYC. I remember in 2004 meeting a VC who said they would love to invest at a great valuation if we committed to moving the company to boston or the bay area
- Consequently, the selection criteria for NYC companies who got VC funding were often those with strong revenue streams, which led towards less sexy, less "moonshot" companies to those that sold products for actual money.
- The other driving criteria was those where geography was an advantage, which also led to financial services/enterprises or advertising
- As those businesses grew, expanded, raised more capital, it drove more VC money to NYC, which created more air in the room for more startups.
It's really a very straightforward evolution. As far as why Seattle "flails", I think it's even simpler - Seattle has a population of 650k people. A handful of large companies, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. can take a huge percentage of the engineering talent, and there's neither the educational base of graduates that the bay area or boston offers nor NYC's base of large corporations to sell to.
I've spent 6 years now in the Bay area and before that 5 years in NYC all with startups. When I left NYC the biggest difference between the areas (other then easy Bay area money) was that most startups in NYC seemed to be started by business people while out west they are mostly started by tech people.
My time at 3 startups while in NYC were mostly the same. The founders and exec team looking at the engineers like a dime a dozen work force that they could easily replace. When I moved out west it was a shock that engineers were held with high regard.
Things may have changed but that's the main reason I felt was holding NYC back.
Just made the jump myself, my experience with NYC was similar.
Also, NYC has like 3 big VCs: Union Square Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Union Square Ventures.
So you really just have to stop pretending and get in front of Silicon Valley VC firms that all have a variety of different interests and objectives. They also don't want to talk to anybody not in SV.
I don't think your perspective is valid anymore - in the mid-2000s USV was the only game in town, but today there's probably 5-10 good size NYC-based VCs focusing on tech, tons of little firms (<$100m funds), and many other SV firms with a NYC presence, and then the whole second order of NYC investors in PE or funded from a vertical perspective (like real estate investments, etc.).
Yeah, a lot of big bay-area and boston funds now have NYC offices too. General Catalyst - mentioned as being based in Cambridge in the article has an office on Lafayette street in NYC now with a couple of partners in it. This has changed the funding game more than the homegrown VC's (USV, as an example).
Just look at the funding numbers between different areas. NYC still pales from an infrastructure perspective and general mentality of paying it forward, compared to SV.
Oh sure, I'm not trying to compare NYC vs. SV directly, SV is clearly an order of magnitude larger. I was just comparing fundraising in NYC today vs. 10 years ago, and it's lightyears different. I can tell you from working with VCs, the whole attitude towards nyc startups is very different.
As far as the general mentality of paying it forward goes, I've got a healthy sense of cynicism towards that (maybe it's the new yorker in me). I find successful individuals are equally supportive here as in the bay area, but in NYC there's a lot less of the ridiculous hustler optimism that technology can cure all ills, and fewer ridiculous startups get funded out here.
But sure, yes, SV is much bigger than NYC, that's not in doubt.
NYC definitely has a "money up front" attitude, but the enterprise ecosystem is really taking off here in part because there are so many customers, but also because of the great community builders like http://www.work-bench.com/
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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")
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.
It's weird the article conflates "tech" with startups.
Within the next few years Facebook, Google will have huge headquarters (currently under construction or planning) right next to Amazon's collection of buildings in Seattle, and Microsoft near by.
I think the issue startups have in Seattle is they expect to pay less than in SV, because cost of living is cheaper. However with some negotiation the Big 4 will pay you the same as in SV, while paying a quarter of SV rent for a nice apartment with a walking commute.
I guess that lingering smell of urine keeps people coming back to SF?
Yeah what is a tech company? I here people in Bay Area saying they work in tech all time time. Uber is a transportation company not a technology company. If Uber is a tech company then American Airlines is a tech company too. Both have an app which will let you get on some form of transportation and get one place to another. Boston Dynamics is a technology company for example. They build robots for the sake of building robots and hoping to sell the technology.
Uber is definitely a tech company. They have internal software infrastructure that would rival any other, and attract similar talent as other tech companies. American Airlines is probably as much a tech company as Walmart is...
Yeah. You're absolutely right. I suppose working in "tech" is probably a more powerful distinction than working at a "tech company". For instance, if you work on the data science side of a political campaign, it's probably fair to say that you work in "tech".
I'd buy "quarter of SV rent for a nice apartment" or "a quarter of SV rent for an apartment with a walking commute" but I can't see the walking+1/4+nice all together. But that's splitting hairs, I assume.
Having grown up in Seattle and now working SV, I think the issue is the combination of being too close to SV, and not having the funding.
Obviously NYC has all the money you could need for a startup scene. Whether enough of it is being sent to startups can be argued, but the money is there. That, and it's a massive city near other massive population centers, and nowhere near the Valley. I think proximity to one big "scene" can hurt others.
I loved it, snowboarding was 50 minute drive for 9 weeks straight with powder each time this winter. Ooops, us locals aren't actually suppose to mention how good it is up here (in the 80's all week so far)...ooops, did it again.
Interestingly, I've heard that Facebook will pay 25% more to work in the Seattle office over the Menlo Park office (say when relocating from Menlo Park).
There are some people who will live cheaper by commuting from the East Bay and pocket more of the money while spending less on rent. It's not all cut and dry.
Seattle doesn't have the raw cash NYC does. I think that that's the core difference. Seattle punches above its weight and is a good place, but it doesn't have the wealth and easy access to wealth that NYC has.
Also, culturally, I don't think Seattle has a high risk appetite, and there's a pronounced anti-commerce attitude among many of the long-term locals.
I live in Seattle, but have worked remotely on a startup based in SF. There is definitely a cultural difference. Many of the SF folks I know seem to be ashamed to work for a big company and not "doing their own thing". These people work for very well respected companies with great products, but always seem to be planning their escape to something new. If you are doing some crazy ridiculous experimental thing in SF, it is "cool".
In Seattle, I have talked to many employees of Amazon and Microsoft and they seem more proud of working at a top big-name company. They are working on products that are already used by millions of people around the world. When I mention that I work on no-name startup, I sometimes get the feeling that they feel bad for me. It's like "Oh that's cute, if you are looking for real job, I can probably get you in at Amazon".
> many of the SF folks I know seem to be ashamed to work for a big company and not "doing their own thing".
I really wish that this weren't so prevalent. Sacrificing your ambitions to provide stability and safety for your family is a noble thing, and I wish the public rhetoric appreciated this more.
It's not necessarily good for society on the extreme either way.
It's beneficial to the world to encourage people to take some level of risk. It's bad to encourage people to take stupid risks, but it's also a bad outcome if the next Elon Musk decides to spend his life working as a line engineer somewhere forever for safety. This is one of the biggest problems with inequality/etc. -- a person from a poor background gets a $20/hr job and would be unable to do anything which puts that at risk, even if it has a huge positive expected value. A rich person could comfortably optimize for EV.
(Incidentally decoupling survival from wages is one of the big benefits of basic income; it's possible this would lead to a more beneficial deployment of human capital and thus greater wealth overall.)
Go elsewhere, the majority of the US thinks working for a big company with a stable future is the dream. The thing that makes silicon valley special is the encouragement to take risks and 'disrupt' the status quo.
I think amazon has lots of turnover because they treat people like shit and overwork them. 25% of seattle programmers are recovering ex-amazon people. another 1/4 are angry or depressed ex-microsoft people.
Seriously. I think they make it clear even to non-techies that GE is the place for Train Engines and Bulbs! I was shocked they were perpetuating the perception people have of GE.
1. There's an enormous amount of MS created wealth in the Seattle area. Yes it doesn't match NYC, but it's also a pool of people likely to be interested in investing in software and technology startups.
2. Seattle is a huge city with a ton of people, saying "Seattle doesn't have a high risk appetite" is a pretty absurd generalization. It'd be best to talk about specific causes and effects rather than making assumptions about millions of people's psychology.
1. NYC wealth dwarfs the rest of the US. You're right in that it's a good pool, but there isn't the aggressive experimentation in tech that SF has. I attribute that to culture, bringing me to point #2.
2. The Puget Sound region is 2 million, roughly. Seattle is 650K, roughly. These are not huge by any global scale, even in the American scale. As I am reminded by the Seattle Times, the PI, and the Stranger (particularly), techies are not really welcome by the True Seattlite, and we aren't Welcome - (this is even true on reddit r/Seattle, which is the techiest of the techy). The grandiosity and merchantilism that characterizes NYC and SF isn't here. It's more about getting up at 6, working out, working hard 8-5, then going home or the bar, turning in at 11. Not doing whack experiments in a coffeeshop all night long to turn into a company. Generalizations, I know, but it's a constant drumbeat; it's the way the city is.
I'm surprised that more Microsoft and Amazon money hasn't worked it's way back into the Seattle tech echo-system. Is it a lack of VCs, rather than a lack of seed money and engineers?
Many qualified investors around Seattle are nervous to enter the Angel/VC game. Seattle Angel Conference is working to fix that issue. Introducing both investors and companies to the process. Investing about $200k every 6mo in Angel rounds
I can't answer that with definitive nature; my impression is that the virtuous cycle of senior folks with great exits becoming VCs doesn't occur as much.
Could the issue be that Seattle Microsoft millionaires are more risk averse than Silicon Valley millionaires? Recirculation of capital (with advice that follows) is a big part of silicon valley.
I'm amused that the tech company map from the article doesn't have an entry for the Google NYC office, considering that there are at least 2000 engineers working there (dwarfing everyone else on the map AFAIK):
Palantir is building a 9 story office across the street from Google too. I was surprised to not see either of them. Uber has one too, but it's only a couple of teams there.
I have lived and worked in both Seattle and SV, am currently a founder living in Seattle, and am at this moment writing this from Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto. The business culture in the valley is more aggressive and the community knowledge about the informal processes at successful startups is stronger. In Seattle the community is more insular and there's a noticeable "us vs SV" complex. Having said that Seattle is a good place to build a company, just know that as a founder you are likely to spend a bunch of time in the Bay area.
Looking at that list, I'll have to ask again: why isn't Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill on it? I haven't been there myself, but it confirms my suspicions that while that place might be a tech hotbed, it's more of the research park bigcorp and research institution type, than of the startup variety. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just interesting because on HN we usually associate "tech" as the former and not the latter. So other places like RTP or DFW might get overlooked.
I'm not sure I would be comfortable in a state where the government favors passing laws that _prevent_ anti-discrimination laws from being passed. I don't know how that area leans towards this issue and so I'm not saying that area is to blame, but I find it hard to want to go where the state actively tries to allow discrimination. Granted this only happened recently, but my opinion of NC before was that it didn't have a sterling reputation in welcoming non-White, non-Christian Americans.
And you may point to CA's Prop 8 passing as a counter-point, but I think one of the reasons for it passing was some voters assuming it wouldn't pass, and also the confusion of whether or not you're suppose to vote for/against if you're for/against same-sex marriage. Regardless, at least the State of CA fought against it and refused to enforce it.
Please stop this recreational outrage. For something that is as fresh as a tomato(not even a month old), you are inserting a topic (perceived anti-lgbtq law) that has little to with the macro trends of the past decade. This constant overreach poisons the discussion.
"constant overreach"? Are you addressing the comment or just getting angry over a perceived slight? They literally said "Granted this only happened recently" but you're lecturing them about how recently this has happened? It's not controversial to say that people not from North Carolina have an opinion of it being place with a history of racism (really, you could say that about just about anywhere).
Social issues are a symptom of the lack of acceptance of different ideas, which along with access to capital, people with the right education and abilities, along with a core of existing software companies that can calve off people with money and trained developers are some of the main reasons why certain places do succeed as startup incubators. That law was more than some mere pesky "social issue", it is about fundamental human rights.
>...lack of acceptance of different ideas, which along with access to capital, people with the right education and abilities
Are you suggesting that the Bay area's success rests on the back of unimpeachable diversity? The demographics of Bay Area founders skews young, rich, pale and male. Women and non-whites tend not to have limited access to VC, as countless blog posts & news articles will attest. Heck, even white males from the 'wrong' schools struggle.
So you can strike out diversity as the engine driving the Bay Area, and likely not holding back NC.
LOL, sorry my post was so long that you can't even read it in its entirety. I literally addressed what you said in my post; that law is but the most recent example of a history of suppression of minorities.
"Macro trends", you mean like the Voter ID laws? The continued traditions of Jim Crow Laws such as keeping blacks from being in the jury of black criminals?
But hey, answering why someone wouldn't consider N.C. as a place to live by completely dismissing their opinions is definitely not poisoning the discussion right? And definitely not a social issue at all.
Upvoted you, but RTP is like Austin, TX. Bright blue on a red background. Most people from SFC would feel perfectly at home, except for the jarring experience of buying a nice house with land and less than a 30 minute commute for under $300K.
I think it's unfair a bit to single out NC specifically on HB2-like, voter ID, et al laws when it's a part of a broader national political initiative to push model legislation by one party (skirting the subject, look at the similarity in laws passed in states with conservative legislatures and executives, like how NC finds itself currently).
That was my main issue with the article. It conflates "tech sector" with "startup ecosystem". Seattle would not be landing so many engineering outposts if it were really flagging.
Well, one thing is that RTP and DFW tend not to have the laws that places like California does, regarding employee protection against non-competes. Meaning that people are generally not empowered to create their own startups, which is a key component of Silicon Valley's success. Another is the lack of money, and a third, especially true now, is the fact that bills like NC's HB2 can actually be passed in those states.
Non-competes suck. You have a few options when leaving a company:
* Get the blessing of the old employer to work at the new company.
* Work around the restrictions (geographic area, industry, list of companies, ...)
* Fight it.
* Ignore it, ensure the new company will too, and hope for the best.
Anecdotally, I've heard of companies sending out cease and desist letters. The letters were ignored by the new employer/employee and it went no further.
Thing is, with the exception of Los Angeles, all those other cities in the top 10 also suffer under the chilling effects on labor mobility that RTP and DFW do.
I grew up nearby, and virtually all of my friends from high school are attending universities in the Triangle.
After looking at the criteria used to compile the list, I can say that RTP still fails to compete in multiple categories. There is still little funding available in the area for people looking to spin up a "tech" startup, especially for series A and later. The region hasn't had many exits recently (at least, that I can recall), hurting the area in the "performance" category. Additionally, this means there aren't many "startup veterans" around to mentor younger business, dinging the RTP in the "startup experience" category.
There is certainly a growing entrepreneurship scene in the area. There are plenty of healthy, bootstrapped SMBs in the area applying tech to novel problems. But these aren't the types of businesses that come up on Hacker News regularly.
Went thru an accelerator there. Great area, awesome people, and punching up a bit on what they've accomplished startup-wise. But there is damn near zero funding there, particularly for anything in consumer/media.
This is incorrect, a lot of people want to live there. There are many ways of calculating population growth, but Forbes says that the triangle is the 4th fastest growing metro area in the country:
Having lived in NYC and Seattle, I recently visited Durham and it was pretty rad. Great local breweries and local coffee, fun independent music scene, great barbecue. It certainly isn't midtown Manhattan levels of urban, but I could totally see it being a fun place to live.
This is a pretty good comparison, imho (lived in Cary since 2003, first for an RTP-based company, then one based on San Jose, and relocating this year to CA). I'm trading my beautiful suburban 4300sqft home on a nice lot in a neighborhood with 2mi of private greenways and very little traffic that I only paid $499k for ... for a 1700sqft ranch built in 1950 costing $1.4m and loads of traffic everywhere you look. The upside is the new job and the tech community, but I'm not 100% convinced I'm trading up re: quality of [family] life.
I'm currently a grad student at NYU, and previously Cornell Tech, plus I worked in San Francisco at a startup for a couple years as an SE. Let me say, I had my doubts about NYC in comparison to SV, but something is changing. There is a lot more interest in programming in the city than there ever was. Lots of initiatives by schools to introduce programming at the high school level, and lots of people in finance, fashion, marketing, etc. who want to learn how to program. Accelerators are popping up left and right. The research community in AI and VR is super active. There's even a hacker community that's constantly demoing cool stuff they're working on. It feels like a renaissance. I need to write a blog post to give more details, but NYC is definitely making moves so don't be surprised if some the power houses emerge over the next few years. All things aside, I'm having much more fun working in NYC than SF, and recommend it as the top place for anyone entering the tech workforce.
I agree whole heartedly. I moved to NYC for a startup job three years ago after graduating. I didn't expect the tech community to be as large as I found it to be. Honestly, I've actually come to prefer the community here. When I was in SV, the tech community seemed so self-absorbed. All they talked about was tech, their startups, and VCs. In NYC, the atmosphere is different. You have tech workers, but a good portion of them are doing tech in a non-tech company (fashion, finance, etc.). The conversations I've had here are much more interesting and applicable to the rest of the world. SV may have the top spot for tech, but it feels so insulated from everywhere else. NYC has tech, but it's just one of many industries in a truly global city.
> SV may have the top spot for tech, but it feels so insulated from everywhere else. NYC has tech, but it's just one of many industries in a truly global city.
This really sums up the difference. A lot of the companies doing tech in NYC are not in the "hot" or "flashy" realm of tech companies. They're not dime a dozen apps or services that are so prominent in SF. A lot of them are in other sectors, and often with business models, so they don't come across as being relevant when they really are.
> When I was in SV, the tech community seemed so self-absorbed. All they talked about was tech, their startups, and VCs.
This is one of the biggest things keeping my wife and I from considering a move out there. Every time I see the stupid amounts of money being thrown at engineers out there I get this itch to move, even if just for a few years. Then I remember this part, and have serious reservations.
I would add that there is too much smug superiority going along with what you describe. It's a minority of people, but a large-enough minority that I really don't want to deal with it.
... which is about as far away from NYC (185 miles and a 3.7 hour drive from Manhattan, according to Google Maps) as Cambridge, MA is. It's near the NY/VT border, north of MA.
I'd guess that "just outside of NYC" is a typo for "just outside of Boston" rather than an ignorance of geography.
The only times 'adult supervision' has been added to startups I've been employed at, it has been the pointy-haired, wingtipped, point-the-company-in-the-worst-possible-direction-for-all-involved kind.
My own hunch is that it's at least partly to do with the 2008 banking crisis, where NYC was the epicenter. How many of those smart, driven people who are making their mark in NYC startups would have, instead, been drawn into finance if it hadn't been for that chaotic period where Wall Street's draw was lessened? I'd bet that what we're now seeing is at least partially the natural consequence of a temporary interruption in the "brain drain" from the finance sector where, 6-8 years into their careers, these talented people are starting to make their mark.
I wonder whether it will be sustainable now that finance is, once again, able to recruit the best and brightest who want to work in NYC. Silicon Valley will always have this advantage over NYC...out west, tech is king. In NYC, no matter how successful tech gets, it's always going to be smaller than Wall Street.
> I wonder whether it will be sustainable now that finance is, once again, able to recruit the best and brightest who want to work in NYC.
Banks are still cutting jobs, and many hedge funds have had a rough patch for the last few years. What finance companies are recruiting the best and brightest?
I'm a Sysadmin/ops guy these days, not strictly a dev, and I wouldn't put myself into the "best and brightest" category, so my experience might be different, but I have a constant barrage of calls and emails from recruiters for hedge funds, hft companies, and some other finance related companies (I generally stop reading the second I see that it's a finance company so I'm not sure what they actually do)
I work for an SV startup that has a satellite office in Seattle. We're in Seattle for the engineering talent. I think Seattle's role in the startup world has a good foundation because it's about talent. As for NYC I can tell you what the founders say around the office. That is that the foundational tech doesn't come from the East Coast. The business culture is aggressive and well financed but not as innovative in tech as SV. This has lots of downstream effects. Incorporating leading edge tooling is faster in SV for example. Learning from failure is a norm not an embarrassment in SV. Fundraising means driving to SF and Menlo Park, not flying. It's easier, more networked. Etc. At this point SV's advantages compound each other. What will happen is that SV will spread to Oakland and Berkeley, the next frontiers.
Yeah, but they've been saying that about tech since the late 90s, and about California in general since at least the early 80s, where my history begins. Supposedly they've been saying it since the 50s or 60s.
This article is pure fluff. Instead of gathering or analyzing any data, the author merely cites a report, and then uses that as fuel to waste countless paragraphs celebrating the cultures of New York and Silicon Valley, while condemning Seattle as a bunch of scared, boring people. Most irritatingly, it turns a massive blind eye to the largest factors that affect whether a community of people do "risky and interesting" things with their lives:
Foremost, it helps to be born incredibly wealthy, or be born into a world where you have connections to incredibly wealthy, powerful people.
Secondly, whether it's the bootstrapping founder or the speculating funder, the person sitting on their mountain of cash and influence has to be unsatisfied with sitting on a mountain of cash. There's many things money can't buy, but there is one difficult--yet attainable--thing you can do with wealth:
Be famous.
In Silicon Valley, those who are merely wealthy-but-not-famous feel envy toward Jobs, Zuckerberg, and all of California's movie and music celebrities. These people are / will be remembered after they're dead. If you die with ten Ferarris in your garage, you're just as non-existent as a blue collar worker who has a couple dozen people show up to his funeral.
In New York, those who are merely wealthy-but-not-famous have spent generations sitting on old wealth, but the '80s are long gone. Stock brokers aren't cool anymore. Goldman Sachs is hovering somewhere between evil and being a joke. Manhattan's wealthy are starting to feel envy toward Silicon Valley's fame, so they're throwing money at their young relatives and friends in Brooklyn. They do this in the hopes that some of that money will stick to something famous, and they'll be a part of something more eternal than their own lives.
Seattle's wealthy tech giants aren't glamorized. Gates is the quintessential nerd who made Microsoft Windows, the eternal punching bag of boring corporate software. Jeff Bezos is strange to say the least, and Amazon, the WalMart of the internet, is a company that somehow manages to be even more culturally boring than Microsoft.
In fact, the concept of using wealth to achieve fame to achieve immortality isn't lost on Bill Gates. He isn't spending the second half of his life trying to buy in at the ground level of the next big American corporation, he's becoming immortal by spreading his name throughout the developing world via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
So what does this article really mean when it talks about being risk-adverse? Most people don't have the luxury of avoiding risk. If having rent money is an actual concern in your life, the uncertainty of attaining that next round of VC funding pales in comparison. What's more risky than putting your life savings into opening a small shop or restaurant? But since that's not a tech startup, it doesn't count in the rankings, and so the author of the article condemns Seattle as being a city of people who are frozen in fear of failure.
In fact, the article even manages to touch on the right idea, while missing the truth behind the statement:
"Seattle's weak spot is funding."
In other words, the ultra wealthy of Seattle just don't care as much about tech startups. It's not good or bad, it's just a fact.
If you're rich in NYC or Silicon Valley, status means buying into someone else's good idea so that you can claim your role in being a part of the "next big thing." If you're rich in Seattle, status means that you have the best quality of life: Wealth means a beautiful house by the water, a boat, a nice camper van, and enough free time to regularly take it out of the city. Extreme wealth doesn't mean that you get to look over business plans and sit on the board of directors for what you hope is going to be the next Snapchat. It means that you found a charitable organization, host big community events, create crowd-pleasing spectacles, and put your name on them.
This article is one person's feeble attempt to put attention-grabbing spin on a statistical study. The cited study is likely trustworthy and indisputable. The article is pointless fluff and arbitrary value judgements. Everybody already knows where to move if you want to network with wealthy startup investors, we didn't need some fool writing an article about how Seattle "flails".
SV has Stanford, which seems to be a unique factory of technical talent.
NYC has Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale to draw from, and the associated financial support from the world's finance hub.
Seattle has UW and the wealth blast radius of Microsoft.
Seattle is just weird. Not really fair to describe as flailing. It probably shouldn't exist as a major tech center. Amazon and Microsoft growth occurred because of disastrous miscalculations by established businesses. There isn't any magic chemical in the rain water that creates our tech industry. It's the gravitational influence of the growth in a very few companies. Also, it seems like most of the dividends of that growth are going into the creation of a skyline in Bellevue, rather than VC funds. Maybe if we had SF's inability to build, investors would bet bigger on startups.
Great article. One small issue. In a group of developers the other night. A young lady walked in, the team of (all males), were asked by her. "Where do you think I should go, where to end up?"
The answer from ALL 10 developers was:
California
California
California
California
California
California
California
California
California
California
It's the nature. The weather here, really summer is great, but otherwise, it sucks. We have had months of just cold, rainy ,lousy weather. Nature? Line up to rent a car.
NYC is so crammed with bodies, it's jut not fun. Try to get on the 6 train at 5 PM. I say no more. If that's "fun" for you, I'm assuming that inserting a pointed stick in your eye is too. (IMHO)
What's Philly's scene like? I never hear anything about it even compared to say, Pittsburgh, despite the size and prestige of the city. Boston/Cambridge, NYC, and Pittsburgh tend to dominate the East Coast startup discussions.
Even if it's temporary, it's still beneficial for the temporary time. Maybe you could also purchase a house in that area, and later on have it appreciate.
Ideally, the next SV is literally Anywhere, Earth, what with the promise of remote work. Which is a dream deferred for decades.
Maybe VR/AR is the tech innovation that's required for finally making this a reality? Virtual office spaces? As dehumanizingly detached from the real world that could be, at least you'd be doing so from the comfort of your own home.
Article tries to analyse why NYC is jumping spots on the top ten US startup cities list (Up to 2nd from 5th) and also what went wrong for seattle.
Article concludes that while its conventional wisdom that successful IPO's and exits help the ecosystem, in the case of NYC the opposite is true.
Failure of big startups like Fab put people back into the ecosystem who then built new companies and helped scale other growing startups. People who were previously at Fab have gone on to build some of NYC’s hottest startups from theSkimm to General Assembly to ClassPass.
Employees from FourSquare and Gilt are now in senior roles at NYC breakouts Buzzfeed, InVision, Betterment, and DigitalOcean.
While in Seattle risk averseness of tech talent, lack of capital compared to SV/NYC and unsupportive investor base are leading to it falling down places.
Original aritcle: 1950 words (10 minute read)
Summary: 140 words (less than a minute)
Summary does a good job of covering the main points of the article but there are more issues that the author goes into. Reading reccomended if you are intrigued.
This sort of summary comment is bad for HN discussion. It's actually off-topic, because the topic is X, not "what is X about". It's also not a legitimate way to promote your Apply HN. So please stop.
You're the boss, but my personal view is that this is a very legitimate way to promote his Apply HN:
it is a summary from the post (I've always appreciated TL;DR comments);
it is a demo of the product (it does not supplicate for upvotes through any sort of friendship appeal, only invites those from a legitimate audience who liked the demo to support his Apply HN);
From the FAQ:
Can I ask people to upvote my submission?
No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it.
Well, this is promotion, but also it is a promotion that ask you to judge if the idea is interesting and upvote if you agree.
The original post announcing Apply HN encouraged one to convince the community of the value of one's idea/application, I considered providing the service to HN (which is the initial target audience) as way of doing exactly that. You are the final authority on what is appropriate here and what is not, so I'll stop. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
I also disagree. HN has a system in place to decide if these comments are worthy/useful/fair.
If this kind of summary is getting upvotes it is both proof of concept and promotion of the Apply HN. I see no problem with that. What is the problem in trying to influence people to upvote his application? It seems to me that this kind of influence is a feature, not a bug of this kind of application that YC chose to test.
>I would not recommend ... it is an attempt to influence votes.
Are you accusing him of breaking a rule or a spirit of a rule? Because your comment reads like that.
To me, this is an unequivocally useful service, and those imaginary internet points are well-earned. Very often a quick summary in the user's own words bubbles up to the top because people find it genuinely useful.
I have nothing against the summaries but HN puts new comments on top for short duration and it's really annoying to sift through the summary because I have already read the article.
Because of that, these summaries are just comment spam.
I upvoted because I found the comment useful. I honestly didn't even see the one line at the end until you called it out. No problem here, please keep the summaries coming. I find them valuable.
I'd love a version of this for longer form content. A lot of business books actually do have useful content BUT do not require 200-500 pages. I'd pay the same for a 10-20 page summary.
- The dot-com bubble in the early 2000s left a bad hangover, but also built up a set of young people with tech experience and lots of ideas who enjoyed working for non-traditional companies
- Those people often went to go start their own companies (disclaimer: I am one of those people). In the early 2000s, though, it was tough to find top tier VCs who were willing to invest in NYC. I remember in 2004 meeting a VC who said they would love to invest at a great valuation if we committed to moving the company to boston or the bay area
- Consequently, the selection criteria for NYC companies who got VC funding were often those with strong revenue streams, which led towards less sexy, less "moonshot" companies to those that sold products for actual money.
- The other driving criteria was those where geography was an advantage, which also led to financial services/enterprises or advertising
- As those businesses grew, expanded, raised more capital, it drove more VC money to NYC, which created more air in the room for more startups.
It's really a very straightforward evolution. As far as why Seattle "flails", I think it's even simpler - Seattle has a population of 650k people. A handful of large companies, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. can take a huge percentage of the engineering talent, and there's neither the educational base of graduates that the bay area or boston offers nor NYC's base of large corporations to sell to.