The NY Startup Scene

Jack and the mayor A few weeks ago I had dinner with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. Earlier in the day he had met with the Mayor of NYC, Mike Bloomberg. Turns out the Mayor was trying to convince Jack to locate his new startup in NYC. At dinner, Jack asked me about the ability to scale a tech company in NYC and I told him it can easily be done. I pointed to Doubleclick, Right Media, and a bunch of other tech companies that have scaled nicely here. And then I introduced him to Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, co-founders of Doubleclick who have created the Alley Corp incubator that has produced, among other things, Gilt Groupe and our portfolio company 10Gen. Kevin and Dwight told Jack the same thing. NYC is a serious tech startup community with the talent to scale a large tech company.

I tell you this story as a lead-in to yet another link to Chris Dixon's blog. Chris has post where he suggests that NYC is "poised for a tech revival". Chris argues that for the past decade, hedge funds and wall street have been a huge talent suck here in NYC and now that they are scaling back, our kinds of companies will find it easier to attract the best and brightest. I agree completely.

But I take some offense to Chris' view that NYC was "irrelevant" in the 2003-2008 internet boom. TACODA, Right Media, Gawker, Quigo, Delicious, Etsy, Meetup, Indeed, Tumblr, Return Path, etc, etc.  I don't call that irrelevant. I call it misunderstood. Good thing people, including our Mayor, are waking up to what a good thing we've got going here.

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Comments (Archived):

  1. chris dixon

    Hey Fred – I love NYC. I fell in love with this city the day I stepped foot here 15 years ago from Ohio, and will probably never leave. Those companies you mention are all great. But realistically, California has just crushed NYC this decade. You would know better than me but my impression is in the 90s, NYC was much closer. I am attributing this gap to the financial bubble and am hoping that the bursting of the bubble will lead to a resurgence in NYC.

    1. fredwilson

      Out of curiousity, what would be the companies that “crushed it” from the west coast? i can give you YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Zynga. What else?

      1. chris dixon

        Well, Google itself is a 2000’s story mostly, isn’t it? LinkedIn, Yelp, Netflix. I don’t know enterprise as well but Salesforce comes to mind.

        1. Donald

          additional California winners recent history (internet); Open Table (OPEN), Bridgepoint Education (BPI), Netsuite…………look no further than today where the talent is; today alone Skyfire, Coupa and Thread.com announced VC financing. Though of course still lots to show.Cali is the king

          1. ShanaC

            What’s old is new again with Thread, eh. I have a bunch of people who need that….

          2. fredwilson

            No argument about that. My point is that NYC is a much bigger deal than it gets credit for, not that it is king

        2. fredwilson

          And youtube

      2. ceonyc

        Yeah… I was wondering about that… Add in LinkedIn, but given the size of their startup market, it’s not like there have been a ton of huge exits there lately either.

  2. Ted Rogers

    NY already is the East Coast center of social media and it will only become more so. One thing not mentioned by Chris or Fred — NY has two excellent universities (close together) pumping out more strong entrepreneurs and ideas every year.Only hitch — the thesis of Chris and Fred depends somewhat on the 800-pound gorilla of Wall Street scaling back. The tide is going out on Wall Street now but it will come back in — its a cyclical thing, not permanent – and it will take some air out of the tech scene when it does. Silicon Valley doesn’t have that inhibitor — the tech community IS the 800-lb gorilla.www.vc-brazil.com

    1. ShanaC

      One of the things I long term hope to see is that the two groups work together. Wall Street culture used to be a much happier place, from reports I hear. Also, like law, to some degree it is an up or out culture.Finding space for partnership for corporate media and tech needs and not have everyone chasing after youth culture (there is wisdom in being somewhat older), might serve long term needs well.

  3. Mark Essel

    When it comes to breathing life into a pre-startup I don’t think founders have the luxury of discounting talented, passionate, contributors no matter where they hail from. Having a pool of local talent may be a favorable beneift to a starting home base. But I believe the future model of startups will follow the trail blazed by Matt Mullenweg with Automattic

    1. fredwilson

      no doubt

    2. maxniederhofer

      Can you explain what you mean by “the trail blazed by Matt Mullenweg with Automattic”? I’m not sure I follow.

      1. loupaglia

        Max: Matt and Toni have built a company in Automattic that is pretty remarkable that it builds such great stuff and is basically completely virtual. The have engineers all around the world. They have an office in SF which is normally empty except for socials and I think the last I heard their highest employee count in any one city was four.

        1. Mark Essel

          Thanks Lou I was tied up during the day and you more than explained my thoughts. Appreciate the mention of Toni as well, his expertise is pretty incredible (on the business side).

  4. kskobac

    not all that tech related, but Metro had a small article today highlighting the NYC start-up incubator efforts; many of the businesses are being given cheap desk-space in the NYU Polytech building and grants for work:http://www.metro.us/us/arti…It’s interesting to see the city fund growing business like this, and it’s great to see it’s beginning to attract (at least in the one example in the article) international talent coming to the US.

    1. fredwilson

      real estate is not a scarce resource in NYC, but every little bit helps

      1. ShanaC

        YOu would know this better than I would, but how many startups are happening outside of NYC borders but in commuting distance? (IE Nassau/Suffolk, Weschester, Eastern CT, Jersey?) Not everyone has to be in Manhattan and Brooklyn, right?

        1. fredwilson

          Indeed is in stamford, ct. Not everyone is in nyc proper. But most are for recruiting purposes mostly

        2. Dave Pinsen

          A start-up I worked for started in an incubator in Trenton, NJ, of all places. The AC didn’t work there, so our joke was that it was hot like a real incubator. It then moved to a non-fancy town in central NJ called East Windsor. Meanwhile, if memory serves, one of its better-financed competitors was based in Boston and the other in NYC. Long story short: the company I worked for is still around (and in the middle of the pack on the Inc 5000 list), and its two better-financed competitors aren’t.When I was there, I used the company’s non-prestigious location as a selling point, noting for potential end-user clients that it enabled the company to offer them lower costs, and noting to potential private label partners that it demonstrated the management’s prudence. It also helped though that much of the skilled labor pool for this particular industry was located in central NJ, so the location made sense on that score as well.

  5. thomasl824

    A few years ago there was an attempt to turn Governors’s Island into a tech center. Maybe it’s time to revisit that idea.

    1. ShanaC

      Ancideotally, when you hear office listening at NYTECh, a lot is happening in Brooklyn. They like it for the same reason a lot of people are liking Brooklyn. Hey, even I think parts of Brooklyn are cooler than Manhattan for the same or less money…

      1. fredwilson

        Brooklyn rocks. I’m headed there now to meet with one of our companies. A lot is happening in brooklyn

        1. robsayre

          Should see something along the lines of Y Combinator Bushwick soon. Maybe you should find out who’s doing it and invest. 😉

          1. fredwilson

            We can’t play favorites by backing one incubator and not another. But we’d love to look at the companies you are incubating

      2. Dave Pinsen

        There’s also, apparently, an emerging scene of culinary-oriented entrepreneurship in Brooklyn too. I wrote a post a few months ago on this, after reading an NYT article on the subject, Lessons from Brooklyn’s New Economy. I didn’t mention it in that post, but another example of Brooklyn-based culinary entrepreneurship was Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her “Post Punk Kitchen”. She’s since decamped for Portland, OR though.

    2. ceonyc

      Too far from the Shake Shack.

      1. ShanaC

        Could someone clue me in on what the Shake Shack is? I see references to it all the time, and I have no idea what anyone is talking about….

        1. Philip

          It’s a popular burger joint in madison square park. I believe there is another one but not sure. Only been to that one.

          1. BmoreWire

            People seriously line up all the way out to the flat iron building for that place….it’s kind of ridiculous.

          2. fredwilson

            Unless you dig their burgers like I do

        2. fredwilson

          Best burger joint and just two blocks from my office in madison square park

  6. Jonathan Betz

    Fred – great point about the scaling back of Wall Street, but what do you expect from Google NYC as the economy returns? My guess (having worked there from 03 – 08) is that they will start hiring a large portion of the available talent pool starting early next year. On the whole, that’s good for building a tech economy – it’s easier to go to a startup when there are reliable fall-back options in the same market, but Google could also wind up hiring a lot of potential founders.

    1. fredwilson

      hi Jonathanwe are seeing talent coming to and going from Google NYCit’s not a one way street anymore

      1. Elie Seidman

        Our office is right next to the Google NYC office and come 5pm the Googlers can be found cramming the elevator. Reminds me of the parking lot exodus from Microsoft when I was an intern on the Redmond campus back in 95. Sure, there were some folks who burned the midnight oil but by then that was the rare exception – Microsoft was very much BigCo. With 10K+ employees – Google is BigCo. In my experience, founders are not the kind of people who go work for BigCo once it is already BigCo. It might happen but I don’t worry about Google sucking up that specific type of person.

        1. Aaron Klein

          Not to completely disagree with your comment, Elie — but I think some things about how we work have changed too since 95. Laptops and fast internet access weren’t quite as widespread to allow highly productive work from home.Offices are becoming much more about the place to have meetings and the productive work often gets done elsewhere. (Although in my own case, my office is a very productive place…)

      2. Jonathan Betz

        Great point – the flow out of Google has been a bit slow over the last year, but it’s very likely to pick up as the economy improves.

  7. Farhan Lalji

    Hey Fred, is there any way to have discuss comments applied to all posts discussing the same topic? Shame there’s two different conversations here on your blog and on Chris’s.Made the point there that it’s not just NYC, but the same idea could be applied to London where a lot of my classmates at B school went the Big bank, hedge fund etc route rather then the start up route a few years back, this is changing with this years class – definitely a good thing.

    1. fredwilson

      Yes. I could have grabbed some disqus code and stuck chris’ comment thread at the bottom of this post. Its too late to do that now unfortunately.Business Insider does that when they re-run one of my posts on their blog

  8. Gerald Buckley

    NYC certainly has the population and the opportunities to produce talent. Law of large numbers dictates a more predictable, stable pool of talent there. How about the cost of living (as opposed to the quality of living)? Twitter is past that startup stage and barreling into it’s next stage of maturity so this may not apply so much to them (or it might)… How does a city like NYC affect the burn rate on capital v. someplace like, oh I don’t know… Tulsa? :)Noah from Twitpic started up here. One guy. Low cost of living. Sean and Adam of Ping.fm… same thing and they’re down the hall from me. Vidoop was here (and arguably should have stayed put). There are lots of us doing ambitious bootstrapped startups and getting LOTS more runway out of a lower cost of living. And I’m sure it’s that way across the country. Topeka. Fargo. The Long Tail of Startups. Can the ROI on our exits make for a compelling equation for the VC to pay a little more attention to the deals here?While there’s no shortage of potential deal flow in fly over country… I keep hearing from the startup scene here and Kansas City and Oklahoma City and Little Rock that the VC aren’t doing many term sheets here because of locale.What if a quality startup showed eagerness to open an app dev satellite office in Manhattan or Mountain View but remained headquartered in the heartland… Does that change the equation for the VC at all? Board meetings can still happen at the startup’s satellite office, etc.Am honestly curious to know if this tips things. Or, does it really come down to a fundable startup can be anywhere these days (an airplane, a barge, a sailboat or Laramie, WY)?

    1. fredwilson

      I think you should do your startup where you want to live. If that is Tulsa then that is where you shoulkd do it. The issue will come when you want to scale it into a real business with sales, customer service, tech ops, etc. Finding the right talent and the people to manage that talent at scale is simetimes hard outside of the big startup centers like bay area, NYC, seattle, boston, etc

  9. Elie Seidman

    Since it’s apropos to the post – don’t forget the mother of all NYC startup scale ups – Bloomberg himself. With 19M people in the metro area, there are more than enough people in any field – be it engineering, development, design – etc to be able to easily scale up a business. From 2000 to 2006 I scaled a business based in NYC. Despite competing with the wall street bubble, we were still able to attract smart, passionate people in all of the relevant disciplines we needed. We never once wished were in the valley – especially not at 11pm when we were leaving the office and wanted food options other than In-N-Out Burger (which is delicious). While I don’t have any real data to support this, my instinct is that employees in NYC are less likely than those in the valley to quickly jump ship to the “next cool thing”; a startup can’t win by hoping that weak competition for its employees will keep them grounded where they are but a little less frothiness does not hurt either.

    1. Dave Pinsen

      That’s an interesting example, when you think about it.Fred, if you haven’t written one before, any chance you’ll write a post on how Bloomberg (the company) continues to thrive with its retro user interface?

      1. ShanaC

        Don’t you really wish we could interview the mayor about this very subject…now that would be so cool. FYI he looks awesome in the photo op.

      2. fredwilson

        Its called a monopoly. In their case on a communication system. Bloomberg’s mail/IM system is so dominant on wall street that you can’t do business without access to it

    2. fredwilson

      Yeah. Bloomberg is the archetypical nyc entrepreneur. Too bad he’s so detatched from the nyc startup scene. Maybe his willingness to court Jack means he’s changing his tune

  10. phineasb

    Fred-I agree with you that “NYC is a serious tech startup community with the talent to scale a large tech company.” and over the last few months I have been really taken with the talented people I have met and their efforts to foster and support the start-up scene in the city.Wall Street is certainly cyclical, but I believe the entrepreneurs who decided to build companies in this downturn, who are investing in the NYC community now, are taking risk out of the equation for those who will be making career choices in the upturn and I hope the virtuous cycle is beginning and that it will extend well beyond the advertising industry.However, relatively speaking, we have a long way to go as illustrated by this chart ( http://frc.vc/74 ). Granted, some of this is due to the industries that are attracting investment in these geographies, but if we are going to compare NYC to the Bay Area, these numbers need to change significantly.Phin

  11. jeremystein

    are you finding that the distribution of people who leave wall st for startups is skewed to older/more experienced?

    1. fredwilson

      No. Its the opposite. Tends to be the younger ones who don’t have the golden handcuffs

    2. fredwilson

      No. Its the opposite. Tends to be the younger ones who don’t have the golden handcuffs

    3. fredwilson

      No. Its the opposite. Tends to be the younger ones who don’t have the golden handcuffs

      1. jeremystein

        Do you think that trend is going to reverse? Although jr finance positionsare relatively scarce every bank raised base salaries when they took onTARP. Not every large bank has repaid TARP which will impact an md more thanan analyst.

        1. fredwilson

          I think wall street will permanently shrink

  12. David Semeria

    If Zemanta managed it from Ljubljana (no offence intended) – one can only conclude there is hope for us all.

    1. fredwilson

      That is still a work in progress. A very exciting one to be sure. But I wouldn’t use the past tense

  13. Chris Dodge

    Being a ex-NYC’er in Boston for the past 10 years, do you have a quick comparative analysis between NYC and Boston with respect to the start-up scene and tech talent pool?My vague hunch is that we may be loosing some ground up here lately, but I can’t exactly put my finger on the how or why. Perhaps it’s in the strong emergence of Social Media applications that can tap into NYC’s rich history in Advertising and other creative pools of talent?

    1. karen_e

      I am interested in the Boston/Cambridge question as well.

    2. marko

      I’m a new transplant to Boston also. Would appreciate opinions on the area. My raw first impression is that the universities attract a lot of talent and have a lot of interesting research projects, but I haven’t come across a lot of consumer internet start-ups. Everything seems heavily tilted towards B2B. Not sure if its a misinterpretation on my part, a local cultural thing, or what….. thoughts?

    3. fredwilson

      I think its a legacy problem. Boston made so much with minicomputers, desktop software, and comm equipment. That’s their legacy and muscle memory. It’s hard to unlearn those tricks when you’ve made so much money with them

      1. Carl Rahn Griffith

        Interesting use of the term ‘muscle memory’, Fred – nice to see it used out of the confines of my dreadful golf swing!Very true – how the legacy of a region’s industry/services stays in the psyche decades later. I spent a lot of time in the Mass’ region back in the 80s/early 90s and know what you mean. Virtually everyone in any company I met seemed to hail from DEC. A great, innovative company for a while back then, but not necessarily a healthy thing – “We did it this way at DEC” etc …I sense the danger of the same kind of thing happening in even what is considered to be the more contemporary software business nowadays. Same old, same old.This is why I very much subscribe to the ideas explored in ‘Funky Business’ – a book/philosophy probably already consigned to the ‘no longer radical’ bin, but a book worth re-reading in this context.

        1. fredwilson

          Headed to my kindle asapThanks for the tip

  14. William Mougayar

    I like to see Ecosystems competing with each other. That’s healthy overall.

    1. fredwilson

      Very feisty ceonyc! But well said and lots of data to back it up

  15. Dave Morgan

    Not only does NYC have a strong start-up scene, but it’s getting better all of the time.When I started Real Media in 1995, NYC lacked a lot of the basic infrastructure, services and institutional culture that Silicon Valley had in spades – we didn’t have real estate folks that knew how to deal with start-ups. Our law firms and accounting firms didn’t understand the unique needs of start-ups. There weren’t pools of tech-savvy talent ready to take start-up risks. When I started TACODA in 2001, it had gotten much better, but it was still far from where the Valley was in terms of start-up “friendliness.” Having revisited these issues once again when I started Simulmedia late last year, I can say that a lot has changed; a lot has improved.NYC real estate brokers and landlords now understand us and offer leases with the kinds of flexibility start-ups need. Many professional service firms in NYC are now very start-up savvy and friendly. We now have lots of talent eager to join start-ups, and more is coming into the city every day. And, just as important, the city government and the local and business media now focus on start-ups and start-up investors and now celebrate the successes of the start-up community and recognize that NYC is not just about Wall Street. Silicon Valley has provided a great environment for start-ups for many, many years, however, I suspect that it hasn’t improved that much over the years, certainly not to the extent that New York City has.

    1. aarondelcohen

      Dave, I actually think it’s even bigger than this.We are becoming an increasingly networked community through Shake Shack events, tonight’s NY Tech Meetup, conferences, and a community of 20-somethings that work hard/play hard. I think the city is starting too build more of the Valley’s informal networking institutions that play such a crucial role in how the Valley interconnects its people.

      1. Dave Pinsen

        Shake Shack events? I could use the excuse to get another great burger there. Do you have a link re these events?

    2. fredwilson

      I agree with everything except possibly the government. I think they are still clueless on how to help and focus on low value stuff like real estate and creating seed funds that aren’t organized for success

  16. GraemeHein

    60% marginal taxes in the next few years and the most expensive city in North America makes NYC a great place for startups to leave.Obama’s war on corporations isn’t going to help either, nor will the attack on general partners (60% vs 20% tax is going to be huge for hedge and vc, unless you’ve already made a few hundred mil).Move to Toronto – lower corporate taxes, lower income taxes, much cheaper on all metrics, and a stable financial system (pretty much the only one globally). Plus a Toronto domicile makes you impervious to all nativist posturing in congress or exclusionary wording in spending bills that can hurt companies with headquarters in other parts of the world, especially offshore centers.On top of all that, you’re 1.5 hour flight to Newark and 2 hours to O’Hare on the best airline in North America. Porter gives you the best experience, has the best hub with Toronto Island Airport, no lines, a free 5 minute ride from downtown. One way from $104 US, 6 flights daily.

    1. GlennKelman

      I’ve just always felt that costs are less relevant to a startup than talent and revenue. Or put more precisely, you can control costs anywhere. California has high taxes too, but you don’t see many companies leaving for Nevada.

      1. GraemeHein

        Actually you are seeing people & businesses leaving for Nevada.You are also seeing firms & people fleeing London for Zurich & Geneva.If you’re not concerned about costs and taxes, you have no business in management. Toronto is very competitive on all the other dimensions – financial sector, media, advertising, corporate headquarters… so how much value is there in being in Manhattan vs being close enough to Manhattan.

        1. fredwilson

          Lifestyle and being around the most creative and stimulating people in the world is what keeps me here

      2. Carl Rahn Griffith

        Agree.

    2. fredwilson

      Yeah but you don’t live in the greatest city in the world then. I’d rather pay 60pcnt in taxes than live anywhere else

      1. Carl Rahn Griffith

        You can’t put a price on the value of the external stimulus from your environment – that’s why there’s a ‘New York Minute’ but not a Nevada/etc one.

  17. jonathanmendez

    NYC is (and will continue to be) the epicenter of advertising & publishing. As these mediums experience sea change it is inevitable that homegrown start-ups will be the ones that help revive the old and create the new.

    1. fredwilson

      Yes. Same is true of finance

  18. Carl Rahn Griffith

    I’d take NYC over Calif’ as a startup base any time. Much as I love California.Same applies for Sheffield vs London 😉

    1. fredwilson

      You might have to root for chelsea if you lived in london carl

      1. Carl Rahn Griffith

        The underdog supporter spirit would probably prevail – so, would probably have to be Charlton, Fred 😉

        1. fredwilson

          I’ll join you in that!

  19. Ryan

    Not discussed is the kind of products the respective locations seem to produce through tech startups. I went through the whole school and startup scene in silicon valley this decade, and relocated to NYC this year after tiring of the disconnect between the technology developing in the valley (e.g. flash widgets, ad networks) and real value-add utility to a consumer. Not that there aren’t lots of exceptions to this perception, but in general.

  20. Chris Phenner

    My history: Four years in Chicago, five years in the Bay Area and five years in NYC, and I look forward in the future to working in all of them. I have worked in startups in all three cities (e.g., Spyglass, Napster, Thumbplay) — my point is I bring no strong biases and firsthand living/working into this thread…three comments:1. ceonyc’s response, because it actually has data, is great (http://bit.ly/jKhSX). If you read Chris Dixon’s post, you will not see one, single dollar sign or numerical figure — I can’t believe it created this fuss.2. Kevin Ryan presented data-driven PPT at the June 2008 New Tech Meetup for Internet Week (cannot find a link) that concluded $35 billion in tech/startup assets had been created over the previous decade, and that this was a strong second-place to the Valley — he also confirmed the ‘closing gap’ trend.3. Using macroeconomic data to talk about the feasibility of scaling a startup is so apples-to-oranges it’s crazy. Four or five committed people turn a zygote-stage company to a Series A contender — to compare that to the ‘labor pool’ or who’s leaving Google or anything macro is simply missing the point. The talent exists anywhere — what’s ‘easier’ in the Valley is getting over-funded too early, in my view.I do think there are geographical biases in the fundraising scene that make being in NY or CA a huge advantage, and those are the only two states where digital downloads are exempt from state sales tax 🙂

  21. GG

    the NY tech company landscape and is very much underrated … in addition to the companies mentioned in the post, aCerno was sold to Akamai for 90MM, Media Whiz is a 70MM company, 360i is among the largest of the independent agencies, Tremor is here, most of Joost is / was here, Blip – small but innovative, Massive was a NY company before being bought by msft. And NY is clearly the hub for for compnies working on innovation in the display ad space – AppNexus, Media Math, Collective Media, AdMeld, Media6 are all here and run by teams on their second or third NY tech start up. And these are the few that I came up with thinking about it for two minutes.So .. the argument that you can’t scale a tech enabled business in NY might have been valid in 99 it doesn’t hold up in 09

    1. fredwilson

      I left out HuffPo, College Humor, Daily Candy and a bunch of other big ones too

  22. jturner

    I think Chris makes a logical argument about a lot of talented people being available due to job losses in the finance sector, but I think that the difficult economic environment is going to make it very challenging for startups to get the funding, especially as the cost of capital continues to rise for speculative companies. On a somewhat related note, as an investment opportunity, I would be quite skeptical investing in many of these tech startups at a time when the consumer is in terrible shape and the govt is trying to keep the financial markets from imploding. Instead, I think a safer alternative is to invest in gold related assets, given the Fed has made it clear they are going to try to avoid deflation at all costs. And all the money printing will lead to a lower dollar, and most likely a higher gold price, as further discussed here: http://www.goldalert.com . There are some serious long term inflationary consequences of the govt’s plans.

  23. Tristan Louis

    Lower relevance (or lower noise) may actually be a feature of New York instead of being an impediment: Here’s my more fully formed thoughts on this: http://www.tnl.net/blog/200

    1. fredwilson

      I agree and have made that argument myself

  24. Sanford Dickert

    Fred – I believe we still have some work to do to bring NYC to the level of SPICES that we need. SPICES, in the sense of addressing a number of the issues that are still facing NYC Tech companies and entrepreneurs. I discussed it here: http://sanford.blogspot.com

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t agree with your spices analysis. None of that is holding us back. I don’t even think we are being held back. I’ve been doing early stage VC in NYC since 1986. The first ten years NYC was not much of a player. The second ten year we were a player but many of the spices issues were holding us back. Now, I think we are good to go

  25. J.D. Falk

    Much of Return Path’s management is in NYC, but almost all of the techies are in Colorado and California…so I’m not sure we count towards that relevance metric.Some of the others are impressive, though I can’t help noticing that there’s a strong bias towards marketing support rather than consumer products. Is this because NYC is the historical home of the ad biz?

  26. Ted Rogers

    Why don’t we clarify what we mean by “tech scene”? We are comparing apples and oranges — in the area of social media, NY is nearly as good as Silicon Valley, IMHO and it will only get stronger (for one thing, advertising is a critical component of social media business models and NY owns the ad industry). On the other hand, NY will never rival SV in alternative energy, semiconductors, etc. For what it’s worth, see link below to the study of top “high-tech” centers in N. Am. by the Milken Institute. SV is #1, then Seattle, Boston and DC. NY is #9… That and $3.89 will get you a cup of coffee.http://www.facebook.com/not

    1. fredwilson

      Do you know what criteria the milken institute used in that study? If you use VC investment dollars, you get a very different story

    2. jsrand

      This survey looks like it is based on dated information.

  27. MikePLewis

    I think it shows the larger point that you don’t HAVE to be in Silicon Valley to be successful in the internet world. But people who are located there like to think that you do. There are successful companies being built all the time all over the world.

  28. kidmercury

    here’s a great video of bloomberg being confronted for his role in the 9/11 coverup, and for his refusal to get the 9/11 first responders the healthcare they need.http://video.google.com/vid…remember bloomberg also tried to get cameras banned in the city.http://www.nytimes.com/2007…curiously, though, bloomberg said those who objected to surveillance cameras in nyc were “ridiculous”:http://www.propagandamatrix…want to question bloomberg about any of this in the land of the free? think twice. you’ll get arrested.http://www.prisonplanet.com…sorry for bringing this up, i know it gets in the way of making money. or so it seems. old timers like me though are always more concerned with the big picture — the reasons for which will be apparent soon enough, in case they are not already.

    1. fredwilson

      Is there a public official you do like kid?

      1. kidmercury

        my boy ron paul is my all time favorite, he is without question the kooks’ choice. if congress was filled with people like him we would not have any economic crisis or anything like that. we are so fortunate to have him.kucinich i also like quite a bit, with the exception of his anti-2nd amendment stance.jim demint has done a great job of hatin’ on the fed and has been active in supporting legislation to audit the fed.brad sherman of california has also spoken out about the financial terrorism that wall st and the powers that be are doing when they threatened to destroy the economy if bailouts were not granted.dan patrick is a little too much on the religious conservative side of things, but i like him, he understands and supports the basic libertarian principles.i know you like the begich guy from alaska, i am a big fan of him as well. he is a closet kook as his dad was killed for telling the truth.on the state and local level there are also some great people working hard to protect states’ rights. there is some guy in oklahoma named keyes or something like that who comes to mind.though no longer active, i like former minnesota governor jesse ventura and former congresswoman cynthia mckinney (mckinney is too socialist and supports silly things like reparations for slavery, but she has immense courage, real integrity, and fought for 9/11 truth to the extent that she basically lost her seat in congress because of it, so i have to give her mad props). former congressman and 9/11 commission member max cleland is also someone i give props to because he has basically admitted that 9/11 was an inside job.though in general it is true that i don’t like most politicians. as a general rule of thumb any candidate that gets serious attention from the mainstream media is too corrupt for me to respect. although when you look at the state of this country, can you really blame me? to be a fan of government is to be tolerant of wars based on lies and tax rates in excess of 50%.oh, and any public official who supports 9/11 truth is probably someone i have a deep respect for. here is the list.

        1. fredwilson

          You gotta start the kook party and recruit all these people to it. I’m not sure I could be a member, but I’d sure love to see you all in action. It would be good for us and fun too

          1. kidmercury

            lol, we definitely have to call it the kook party….”the kook party, founded by kid mercury”….lol can you imagine

          2. fredwilson

            You have to do it

  29. Rob @ Glohbal

    Damn, I didn’t know Alley was part of Gilt. Very impressive.

    1. fredwilson

      Yup. Those guys are smart

  30. jsrand

    This survey looks like it is based on dated information.

  31. nihal mehta

    don’t forget recyclebank, 33across, media6degrees, kickapps, buzzd and more..! i left the bay area for NY in 2005 when my previous company was acquired, and i have been complaining about NY startup excitement until now. good to see and looking forward to bringing this to the next level with all of you!