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NYC tech catching up to Silicon Valley, while Seattle flails
- rjdevereux 10y ago>16-year old firm is headquartered just outside of NYC in Cambridge hmmmm... Cambridge Massachusetts?
- krisdol 10y agoApparently there's a Cambridge, NY with a population of 2000 people
- mosburger 10y agoYeah but General Catalyst is a pretty well-known Cambridge, MA based VC firm (unless you were joking, in which case, sorry!).
- greenyoda 10y ago... 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.
- bitwize 10y agoIn California miles, Cambridge, MA is just outside of NYC.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoIn California miles, I live in Manhattan.
- pkaye 10y agoIts practically in NYC.
- gohome190 10y agohttp://generalcatalyst.com/contact/ http://generalcatalyst.com/contact/ Looks like you're correct. "Just outside" is absurd
- Apocryphon 10y agoLooking 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.
- vonmoltke 10y agoThat 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.
- fullshark 10y agoThat's 100% the title's fault. The content of the story is about startup ecosystems.
- NotSammyHagar 10y agoSeattle is not lagging. It's hotter than ever.
- sbuccini 10y agoI 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.
- abhi3 10y agoSummary: 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. If you'd like such summaries for all articles before you invest your time to read them check out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535695
- minimaxir 10y agoAs mentioned by others in the other threads, I would not recommend continuing these summaries in an attempt to promote your Apply HN. At minimum, it is an attempt to influence votes.
- JesseAldridge 10y agoI like it. I'm busy and that summary was really nice. Let him have his one line advertisement.
- mattzito 10y agoAs 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.
- hijinks 10y agoI'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.
- cloudjacker 10y agoJust 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.
- ksenzee 10y agoThe idea of bringing in ‘adult supervision’ is one that was pervasive in the minds of Seattle’s investors, at least up until a few years ago. Sounds good to me. If the Seattle tech sector appreciates the value of experience, maybe I'll still have a job at 50.
- WalterSear 10y agoThe 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.
- pnathan 10y agoSeattle 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.
- mathattack 10y agoI'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?
- pnathan 10y agoI 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.
- mathattack 10y agoCould 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.
- edoceo 10y agoMany 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
- theseatoms 10y agoSounds like a lot of people in Seattle took the right lessons away from the 90s.
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- wcummings 10y agoAnecdotally, their list is nonsense, it's obvious to me how much more employable I am in Cambridge compared to NYC.
- curun1r 10y agoMy 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.
- yellowstuff 10y ago> 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?
- Tiksi 10y agoI'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)
- rrdharan 10y agoI'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): https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*Uva0USM-qa8W_TByjLyljA.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*Uva0USM-qa8W_TByj... For a second I thought it was only showing pre-IPO companies, but then I saw that Twitter and Facebook are on there. It's even more entertaining because Spotify is shown at their old address, which is actually the Google NYC building. Dropbox is also missing but I'm guessing that's because its NYC office was too new for this map (Kickstarter has also recently moved to Greenpoint).
- buckhx 10y agoPalantir 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.
- magni- 10y agoYeah, that's an old map, since it still has Fab (instead of Venmo/PayPal, which took over their old office and then some).
- brown9-2 10y agoThe map also shows Fab, which I think shows it's age.
- spyspy 10y agoI expect to see Philadelphia continue to rise on the list given it's access to university students and super cheap cost of living.
- Apocryphon 10y agoWhat'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.
- spyspy 10y agoYou're not wrong. Philly really does fly under the radar, but they're there. The only "startup" I know with an office in Pittsburgh is Uber.
- hedgehog 10y agoI 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.
- hugh4 10y agoWouldn't it be nice if someone could set up a "next Silicon Valley" somewhere that doesn't already have an outrageous cost of living?
- dmode 10y agoWouldn't that only be a temporary thing, before tech salaries drive up cost of living ? Surely, Seattle was not very expensive a few years back
- radicality 10y agoEven 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.
- rconti 10y agoAnd sell it for a huge fortune to people you decry as "ruining the place"
- Apocryphon 10y agoIdeally, 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.
- eva1984 10y agoCatching up meaning as ridiculous and as insane?
- dmode 10y agoThere 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
- lacker 10y agoNone of those startups are >$50bn in value, except Uber.
- rdl 10y agoWould have been valid if he'd said >$5b.
- falcolas 10y agoDo 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.
- rdl 10y agoWho? 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")
- rdl 10y agoOh, WeWork. But I think that's the only one.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoMeanwhile everyone in SV is fleeing $5000 rents to move to Seattle.
- dmode 10y agoIf everyone flees $5000 rent, wouldn't the rent then come down ?
- throwaway_exer 10y agoIn a normal market, yes it would. But there is literally no residential construction in most parts of the Bay Area.
- nandemo 10y agoNobody lives there anymore, it's too crowded.
- anamoulous 10y agoOr Portland.
- rconti 10y agoYeah, 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.
- sebular 10y agoThis 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".
- kps 10y agoVCs are still parochial; film at 11.
- cavisne 10y agoIt'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?
- whyenot 10y ago> I guess that lingering smell of urine keeps people coming back to SF? That's true. Seattle has the frequent rain to wash smells like that away.
- Bahamut 10y agoInterestingly, 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.
- fffernan 10y agoYeah 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.
- mrdrozdov 10y agoUber 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...
- bogomipz 10y ago"NYC hasn't produced a blockbuster startup, nor is there one in the pipeline." Digital Ocean, Foursquare, Tumblr, Gilt Group, Genius(nee Rap Genius), SquareSpace, Etsy, Mongodb, WeWork, Kickstarter? I would say those are all pretty high profile successful startups. Oh but they aren't worth > $50 billion dollars in funny money so they don't count? Nice arbitrary number too by the way. Also Canary.is computers vision/alarm system - doing really well on Amazon and also available in the Apple store - a real physical product made in NYC. Cockroachdb, InfluxDb, are also doing interesting things in datastores. As for the established players, Google's second largest campus behind Mountain View is in NYC, as is Spotify, Twitter, DropBox, Soundcloud and Facebook. Cornell University Tech is partnering with Google to open a campus on Roosevelt Island. There is no hype in NYC tech just a lot of people getting on with the business of work. You are either willfully ignorant or just a real dope.
- dang 10y ago> You are either willfully ignorant or just a real dope Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. We've warned you repeatedly not to do this; if you do it again, we will ban you. Please (re-)read the rules, and post civilly and substantively or not at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11538397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11538397 and marked it off-topic.
- bcbrown 10y ago> You are either willfully ignorant or just a real dope. It's possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Why the personal insults?
- DenisM 10y ago> You are either willfully ignorant or just a real dope. Was that really neccesary?
- stevewilhelm 10y agoWhy isn't Portland on this list?
- cleandreams 10y agoI 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.
- Tiksi 10y agoYes, what has Bell Labs ever brought us?
- mrdrozdov 10y agoI'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.
- cddotdotslash 10y agoI 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.
- vonmoltke 10y ago> 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.
- droopybuns 10y agoSV 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.
- brooklyndude 10y agoGreat 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)