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New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t care what the VCs say
- api 16y agoBoston is probably the closest runner up to the Valley, and it's not even close. Boston has the brains, but not the culture. It's like a Ferrari motor in a stuffy Mercedes driven by an old blue haired lawyer. Really the whole East Coast has this problem. If the East Coast had a motto, it would be "it's not what you know, it's who you know." It's anti-meritocratic and very different from the cowboy innovator mentality in the valley. Make Burning Man attendance compulsory for everyone at Harvard and MIT and maybe you'd get somewhere. Edit: Boston does have some plusses though. You do not have to own a car for one...
- iamwil 16y agoBut then again, even here in SF, angels and VCs won't take a meeting w/ you unless you get an intro. In that sense, it is who you know. (Though I've found people more than willing to help each other here in Bay Area). Is there a different sense of "who you know" that you're talking about in Boston? The only thing I can imagine is something like when people use to talk about your breeding.
- api 16y agoThe VC culture is probably closer to banker culture, so you're right about that. I've never gotten to meet with a VC without an intro. But I was talking more about the culture at large. You've kind of got it with your last sentence. The larger culture in Boston is a lot more "who you know" / "where did you go to school" than in California. Basically if you didn't go to an Ivy League school then you're kind of in a lower social caste. You get looked down on (in a very subtile and "polite" way) if you are not Ivy League or if you are from the "flyover country." The other (related) problem with Boston is that it's not extroverted. Boston is bookish and introverted and quiet. It's sort of impolite in Boston to have a fun personality, and it's very hard to make friends. Bostonians don't have friends, they have colleagues. (A bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.) Laughing, making jokes, and having any kind of personality sort of marks you as lower class. It reminds me of a more classist version of the famed "Seattle chill": http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h... Basically Boston is very classist, bookish, and introverted. Boston has tons and tons of brains, but they're <sniff sniff> intellectuals, not revolutionaries or innovators. Boston may actually have more raw IQ-power than the valley though. Put LSD in the drinking water here and you might rival the valley in a few years. But like I said there's a bright side too. The Bostonian politeness thing is a double edged sword. On one hand it's stuffy, but on the other hand it can be quite noble. Bostonians will help you out. They will quietly come to your aid. They will close ranks to defend you if you're wronged (provided you're "in" with them), and they will quietly and gradually mentor you. You can drop your wallet in downtown Boston (population almost 1 million) and someone will drive to your house to bring you your wallet with everything still in it. (This has happened to me, and to two people I know.) So the upside is that Boston is very civilized in a positive way, but the downside is that it's very "civilized" in a negative way. Oh, and you don't have to own a car. Having to sit in a dinosaur burner huffing fumes for three hours every day is one of my least favorite things about California.
- noname123 16y agoIronically in Boston, you only need a car if you work in the tech industry as most of the startup's are located on 128 which is in the outskirts of the Boston suburban sprawl. But if you work in finance or allied health, everything is conveniently located downtown. Also, I don't agree that Boston is a civilized city. IMO, Boston is a lot like Providence or Bridgeport, plus a few more ivory tower enclaves and lots more inebriated college kids.
- api 16y agoThere are a lot of startups in Cambridge and downtown and a few in Newton and other train-serviced places. But you're right about 128... but that's part of why 128 is a terrible place to locate a startup. I would pick Quincy over 128. Lots of good office space at affordable prices, good restaurants, and train serviced... but not very hip. :) I would even look at "Reveah" before 128. If it's off the train it's off the map.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoIn my wildest dreams I've never thought I'd hear Boston compared to Bridgeport (I assume you mean CT?). Never been to Boston, but B'port must have changed an awful lot since I lived there :-)
- noname123 16y agoNah. Bridgeport hasn't change one bit since you left (I assume the Bridgeport you know is one whose mayor is caught with a cocaine habit and restaurants in downtown are robbed in daylight). It's just your over-estimating perception of Boston; imagine a bigger New Haven with a couple of more Yale campuses and equal number of run-down neighborhoods next to them.
- aprrrr 16y agoCould you name some of the run-down neighborhoods next to campuses? I don't see it, unless there are some Yale campuses in Fields Corner that I don't know about.
- mlinsey 16y agoOn the plus side, it's easy to get an intro to those investors because ingeneral other entrepreneurs and hackers will gladly open their rolodex for you if you are building something they think is interesting.
- lallysingh 16y agoOuch, that hurts for those of us who're in NYC and have real reasons why we can't/won't leave.
- helmut_hed 16y agoI spoke recently to a friend of mine who had moved back from NYC to SF, and he told me that when you tell people in a bar you're a software engineer, they get this condescending look and say, "oh, IT..." (as in, the people who fix the computers). This article basically confirms what he was telling me.
- antongm 16y agoYeah, how 'bout them apples? And that sort of attitude doesn't change on less-than-geological time scales.
- iamwil 16y agoyour comment is confusing. Where's the bar? I thought at first, SF, but the last sentence implies it's in NYC.
- ryoshu 16y agoIt depends on the bar and the crowd; hanging out around NYU or Columbia is much different than hanging out around Wall Street or the Upper East Side. NYC doesn't have the same kind of start up culture that the Valley has, but there are plenty of start ups here. I've consulted with two start ups that are pretty successful in their respective niches. I've never lived in Silicon Valley, but I lived in SoCal and I've been to SF a number of times. There is certainly a different vibe on the West Coast. NYC will never be the next Silicon Valley. We have our own culture here and the diversity it provides is a good thing.
- kscaldef 16y agoUh.. that's not just New York. Basically, anyone who's not in the industry views everyone who does "computer stuff" as one homogeneous group.
- mtalantikite 16y agoSounds like the author never explored the outer boroughs. Come to Brooklyn, it's nicer here.
- antongm 16y agoYou are completely correct. One criticism I'd level at myself is that I use the terms 'New York' and 'Manhattan' synonymously, when they're really not. I should note, Manhattanites commit that same sin all the time. I like Brooklyn. If I were a Brooklynite though, I'd resent all the Manhattanites who've been invading it recently. Oh, sweet joys of tribalism....
- acid_bath 16y agoBrooklyn reminds me a lot of Boston, tech-scene wise. There's a plenty of computer programmers around and a fair number of of young entrepreneurs, not to mention a startups located there. I know a few bars frequented by coders and there are coffeeshops galore. Not having spent time in SF I'd still say it's probably a more arts/entertainment oriented than tech oriented crowd, but the recently gentrified areas of Brooklyn are lightyears away from old-money Manhattan.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoDon't you think leaving out all the other boroughs (BK in particular), as well as all the parts of Manhattan that don't fit the banker narrative you've described, makes the comparison a bit unfair?
- asnyder 16y agoYou have to be more specific of your definition of Brooklyn. It sounds like you're implying Williamsburg, and Carroll Gardens, which frankly isn't representative of Brooklyn. Williamsburg in particular is essentially an extension of Manhattan, due to the transportation options and cost of living.
- mtalantikite 16y agoI live in Park Slope, on Union Street. When I say Brooklyn I really do mean Brooklyn, all the neighborhoods have something interesting going on.
- aplusbi 16y ago"Three years in New York, and I went north of 14th St maybe three times. Trips to the Met excepted, of course" I'm supposed to believe this guy knows anything about New York when his definition of New York is "Manhattan south of 14th st."? Believe it or not there are people who manage to live in NYC without hemorrhaging money, who know where and how to eat and don't hang out in the financial industry social scene. I don't doubt that NY's tech scene is no where near Silicon Valley but he has a pretty skewed view of this city.
- antongm 16y agoTo be totally honest, given the crappy Wall Street life, I spent 80% of my time south of Maiden Lane, in fact. I don't think my experience is terribly different than many New Yorkers though. The trendy neighborhoods of the moment....Soho, the Villages, LES, Tribeca, are all down south. I felt almost like a tourist on the UWS.
- aplusbi 16y agoMaybe you're right. I grew up in NYC (the Bronx, and I currently live in Brooklyn) so my experience is far from typical.
- noname123 16y agoAs someone who works in finance, even a lower grunt than the quants, I basically do programming to build/maintain a high frequency trading platform, I was more interested in your other post on why you didn't like the Wall Street culture and decided to quit. http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-zero-revenue-is-better-than-working-for-goldman-sachs#identifier_3_195 http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-z... Is it the perceived lower status accorded to the geeks as opposed to the traders/sales-guys? Also likewise for compensation? Or is it the monotonous and/or political nature of the work? What do you hope to gain by moving to the startup scene? To hopefully make it big and make more money than your former position at GS? Or is it simply to move to an environment where geeks are respected by peers and women? Plenty of guys in bulge-bracket firms decide to quit their hectic lifestyle but choose the "middle-way." That is, take a job at a 2nd-tier prop shop for less (relative) pay but more reasonable hours and stress. Or some software-dev's go work for a startup for awhile and then transition back and forth to consulting/finance when things don't work out. What made you decide on a "all-or-nothing" kind of move? These questions aren't meant to be personal interrogations, but rather reflects my feelings about working in finance; and I'm just curious to hear your takes on these issues as well.
- starkfist 16y agoHe's right about a lot of things. The cafe scene in NYC isn't as good as the west coast. Apartments are very expensive. Debutantes from Bryn Mawr want to date successful traders. And the startup scene in SF/SV is slowly but surely turning into a bunch of ex-banker foodie cocks from NYC.
- gcv 16y agoSpeaking as a New Yorker contemplating a move to California, I'd say the article is somewhat accurate about the prestige of working in finance, but staggeringly wrong on a few other points. First of all, cafes are plentiful. All he could come up with is the Tea Lounge in Park Slope? There are dozens of small, non-corporate coffee shops in the Village, dozens more in Williamsburg. And that's just the two neighborhoods where I usually spend time. Second, New Yorkers don't cook? I think the author spent too much time with the wrong crowd. Plenty of people shop at green markets, including the huge one at Union Square precisely because they like local produce and like to use it.
- antongm 16y agoHm. I should note, my information was as of 2008. If there are more cafes now, than I'm pleased. Have you seen a California cafe'? I can't really recall seeing anything comparable in Manhattan. Sure, there are cafes....but one where a guy is writing a Rails app on his laptop right there by the barista? Have trouble believing it...be glad to be proven wrong though. I'm actually not so down on NYC. Just the tech part of it. Part of me is scheming about how to get back there...
- aplusbi 16y agoI've seen several programmers working in cafes in Brooklyn. I don't really hang out in cafes in Manhattan that much (occasionally Subtletea back when I worked in the area) so I can't comment on the state of Manhattan cafes.
- nir 16y agoNYC cafes where I've personally witnessed coders at work include: Housing Works & McNally's at SoHo, Amrita in Harlem, Gorilla Cafe in Park Slope, Esperanto on McDougal.. I definitely agree the NYC startup scene is overhyped - this is the city of hype and startups are now cool by New York Magazine standards. But man, your view of NYC in general seems much shaped by a very specific social circle and long hours at GS ;)
- antongm 16y ago
- openfly 16y agoNYC is an Art and Design capital. Probably the best in our hemisphere. In hardware design we could easily compete with most other cities, and do so regularly. Also, many start ups have come out of NYC. Personally I think the guy just has a bit of bitter old man syndrome.
- spot 16y agoThis is a very narrow perspective about NYC, but he's certainly right the tech scene is smaller and always will be.
- portman 16y agoI'm confused. If your city doesn't "equal Silicon Valley" then it is a "tech backwater"? As far as I know, nobody has claimed that NYC will eclipse the Bay Area - they're just saying that the tech scene in NYC is growing and maybe that NYC is poaching the "#2" spot from Boston. Or am I missing something?
- SandB0x 16y ago"Every yuppie I knew in New York worked as either a Wall Street guy, a lawyer, or an agent of some sort. Basically, there were all subtly screwing someone else for a living." This is exactly how I feel about London. It feels like the city takes much more from the world than it produces.
- MartinCron 16y agoIt's easy to characterize lawyers as "subtly screwing someone", but it's an unfair generalization. A lawyer's job is to advise and speak for their client. Basically, they would say what their client would say, if they had the appropriate legal knowledge. I know that if I were wrongfully accused of a crime, I wouldn't consider my defense attorney to be subtly screwing me.
- eru 16y agoYes. It's only when you get principal-agent problems --- like the legal department of a company advising litigation when settling or ignoring would be best, for reasons of their job-security.
- MartinCron 16y agoBut that's just exploitative unprofessionalism. You can get from any profession; from the mechanic who says you really need the new transmission right now to the programmer who writes code that looks like it has been put through an obfuscator.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- api 16y agoI have a little bit of experience with London, and I can second this. London actually gives me the willies after meeting the business culture there. If you ever want to make an argument for the actual existence of shape shifting reptiles (ala nutjob David Icke) then just hang around London's business scene for a while. America is superficially conservative and deeply liberal. Europe is superficially liberal and deeply conservative.
- ergo98 16y agoExpected to be offended and confrontational, but ended up really enjoying it. Spot on.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jgv 16y agoAs a Brooklynite, I am obviously biased here but a lot of these points are downright silly and the author seems astonishingly uninformed. The first thing that struck me was how much this guy was paying in rent. I do agree that certain things about NYC get expensive but paying ~$2500 for a one bedroom is downright dumb if you're concerned about money. I have two roommates and pay $700 for a great place. Part of being a New Yorker is being savvy. Many people leave because they are not. They can't make rent, they can't save money, etc. Maybe they all move to California? The sweeping generalizations here also make it very difficult to take this article seriously: "New York has no comparable sources of intellectual firepower" - ITP, Courant, Columbia "...most New Yorkers couldn’t fry an egg if their lives depended on it..." - http://brooklyngrangefarm.com/ http://brooklyngrangefarm.com/ "Manhattan didn’t get a Home Depot, or any sort of proper hardware store, until 2004" - ACE hardware
- antongm 16y agoYeah, ACE hardware isn't a proper hardware store, dude. $2500 was about par for the course for a doorman building in the Financial District in 2005. Was the lowest price among the ones I looked at. The whole point is that you have to savvy (i.e. have some inside connection) to the local real estate scene to not get fleeced. A tool like Craigslist democratizes the market, and makes inside information less valuable (which is why I suspect it's never caught on in New York....cause New Yorkers like feeling like they got the 'deal'). As for the foodie scene: I'm aware there is a thriving one in New York. The point is that it's totally orthogonal from the sort of ambitious creative class that would create a startup. The guys I knew from Wall Street most certainly did not know how to fry an egg...they knew how to order stuff on SeamlessWeb, and that's about it. In the Bay Area, those worlds intersect, if not directly overlap. Paul Graham of Y Combinator used to cook for his startups at the weekly dinners. I can't even begin to imagine a Goldman partner cooking for his desk.
- starkfist 16y agoEveryone in NYC besides bankers have been getting their apartments from craigslist since 1998. And, you can get a 500sq foot 1bdrm in battery park city for $1800.
- haseman 16y agoThere's more to New York than old money on the Upper West Side. I just moved to Brooklyn from the Mission (in SF) and I must say they are very similar. The art isn't as burning man oriented but the hipsters still carry iPhones and I get dragged into just as many conversations about making 'apps'.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agoYou're kidding me, right? If your goal is to perceive a tech hub as trying to beat Silicon Valley you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. No other city will beat Silicon Valley. We know this. The point is this: to build a good ecosystem of education, talent, and investment that lets a city flourish on its own without having to flock to somewhere better. Take the foundations of what makes Silicon Valley what it is and have it provide a sustainable community. Some posts are legitimate link bait with a well baked argument, this is just downright rotten. Disclosure: I've lived in Silicon Valley, so I'm not taking sides of NYC or city x here.
- tmugavero 16y agoThank you for saying this. I wanted to post the exact same thing but you said it all. Let's be honest, the Valley has been important in one aspect (tech) for about the last 30 years. New York has been a global focal point in all aspects for 200 years. Let's all just get along and use our collective diversity to make something better, not trash each other's cities to get readers.
- cageface 16y agoThat's exactly the appeal of NYC to me. I've been working in tech in the S.F. area for over ten years now and it's starting to feel very one-dimensional. Living somewhere where art and literature and culture matter as much as technology sounds extremely refreshing at this point.
- starkfist 16y agoI felt the same way and I moved (back) to NYC after 10 years in SF. The city has changed a bit. There are a lot of things to do outside the tech sector. However, I'm not sure I would say "art and literature and culture matter" as much as they seemed to in the past. Manhattan is nearly 100% yuppified now. this is good and bad. It's good in that the whole left coast of Manhattan is now a giant urban park. There are bike lanes everywhere. There are parks everywhere. There's a farmer's market in Union Square every (other?) day. There are free things like movies on the pier, concerts in the park, etc. I saw Dinosaur Jr. for free in central park last summer (?!). It's probably easier to eat healthy food in NYC than anywhere else in the world. The bad things (IMHO) is that there aren't as many interestingly weird music or arts things as there were even 10, 15 years ago. There are no nightclubs. There are no weird music venues in Manhattan. The most avante-garde you are going to get is a band like Grizzly Bear... which is kind of avante-garde but is also a huge national act at the same time. Artists have to live way out in Bushwick, or even further away. I don't really know where interesting art shows go up. I honestly think the number of actual practicing artists and musicians is probably the smallest it has ever been. The indie gallery scene isn't a lot better than SF. There are probably more bookstores in either Seattle or Portland than there are in all of the NYC area, which says something... I'm not sure what. So I won't lie... I was disappointed in the state of artsy-fartsy music and culture when I returned to NYC. But I do like all this other urban parkland paradise stuff. So it's a tradeoff. I don't really know where people are doing interesting art and music stuff... maybe berlin or beijing? I know a lot of artists who moved to LA simply because it's easier to get a lot of space. Even Jeff Dietch moved there. If you're looking for something like Andy Warhol's factory scene, I don't think it's happening here. If you're looking for a girlfriend who is a graphic designer for Kate Spade's website - it's your best bet.
- btilly 16y agoThe point I consider most important is only alluded to. In NY people try to maintain monopolies of information. One place that applies to is a very restrictive work for hire doctrine. If you have a job in NYC, by default everything you create belongs to your employer. Even if it was done at home on your equipment. In California that particular right is one that remains yours and cannot be lost (unless what you do relates to your employer's business). The result is that in California it is common for people to have a day job and work on the side on a startup. You almost never see the side startup in NY. Furthermore if you do see it, those startups can be squashed in an instant when the employer finds out about it. I've seen it happen. Not pretty. (The same thing can happen, and does from time to time, with open source projects. However it happens less often because there are fewer cases where someone wants to leave their day job for their open source project than cases where they want to leave their day job for their startup.) That nasty little dynamic is a constant hidden drag on NY. Nobody knows how many good ideas got squashed and never saw the light of day...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- api 16y agoIf I'm not mistaken, Massachusetts is more like California in that respect. That might be one reason Boston is better than NYC for tech.
- francoisdevlin 16y agoWell, MIT & Harvard don't hurt...
- api 16y agoThey gather the brains, yes. But a feudal business culture would make that irrelevant. Feudal social contracts in general kill all forms of innovation.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoIf you have a job in NYC, by default everything you create belongs to your employer. Only work you've done in the course of your employment is owned by your employer, by default. This can be modified by contract, however. CA does not enforce some contracts while NY does, but the default is that you own all your after-hours work.
- ardit33 16y agoHey, that's my apt building on the pic! These guys are actually my neighbors. I saw them few months ago, move in on an empty apt and coding their way the last two-three months. I hope they make it.
- mceachen 16y agoSo do we!
- moxiemk1 16y agoI come to Hacker News looking for intelligent discourse. There wasn't a _shred_ of nuance in this article. Nuanced thought is why this is a great place to be. Please don't post articles where the author is openly admitting that they are sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "lalala I can't hear you." Is New York's tech scene as big as San Francisco's? No. However, this is akin to writing an article titled that "Africa will always be an industrial backwater, I don't care what the economists say."
- hyperbovine 16y agoI come to Hacker News looking for intelligent discourse. There wasn't a _shred_ of nuance in this article. That, I presume, is why it is hosted elsewhere. The comments here are illuminating, as always.
- apu 16y agoEh, my thought about the article was, "obvious troll is obvious."
- ibejoeb 16y agoI was entertained. If we measure success by getting a round, I guess the case is closed. But just because NYC startups don't solicit as much capital doesn't mean that they don't exist; they just develop viable business models a generate revenue. I know that unfashionable, but it's the way it goes... There are a ton of tech startups, and, not surprisingly, a lot of them are in the finance space. You know what's hot, too? Mobile. And it's going to continue to be, because New York is the walking city. The other thing about it is that New York startups tend to keep things a bit closer to the chest. You don't tend to see a writeup in TechCrunch about an embryonic startup in NYC. Better or worse, most NYC startups start making money before the press hits and the rounds start coming in. It's a very different philosophy. New York's not for everyone. You're among the wealthiest and most powerful, so yes, you might get a little squeamish if you're sensitive. You won't be mollycoddled. And what's the food got to do with startup culture? I don't think the food scene is the right platform to attack New York. SF is only a food town if you want a burrito. I like Argentinian beef, other people like some hippie's broccoli. I'll give up the wine: California has some good stuff, if you're in to alcohol levels. 15%? Damn, Napa. As others have pointed out, there are welcoming cafes literally river-to-river through the villages, and on the LES you can set up shop practically anywhere. Now is a terrific time to be involved in NYC startups. It might not be quite as prestigious as being in the the valley, but it comes with a salary, and options aren't coastal.
- smwhreyebelong 16y agoI am new to the whole NYC startup scene. Which, according to you, are some of the cool startups in NYC ? Also, are there any NYC-startup specific news sources ?
- glenra 16y agoCool startup: http://makerbot.com http://makerbot.com News source: http://www.nycresistor.com/ http://www.nycresistor.com/
- carterac 16y agoThis is a very entertaining and well-written rant. But if you're considering starting a company or joining a startup in NYC, don't take this too seriously. I came from a similar background -- did finance in NYC, hung out with an ivy league crowd etc.. then I started a company in Silicon Valley, and am now continuing it here in NYC. I don't have time to respond to every point, but I think my background means something when I say this post is ridiculously far off base. It makes NYC sound like a scene from Gossip Girl meets American Psycho. In 2010, working at a startup in NYC is awesome. There is an amazing community here and I've found that people are always very excited to find out that you are doing a startup. In 2010, NYC knows that startups are the future. The culture here has changed significantly in the last couple of years. And that is the most exciting thing about NYC. Don't let the OP's bad experiences from 2008 convince you otherwise.
- starkfist 16y agoIt makes NYC sound like a scene from Gossip Girl meets American Psycho. Wow, that comment really nailed it.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- antongm 16y agoHey, glad to hear the scene has changed. I'm sure my info is quite dated in a fast-moving city like NYC. I've often joked that SF would be the perfect city if all the hippies left and you repopulated it with New Yorkers instead. Maybe the solution is to repopulated NYC with people with a more SF attitude. I'm there, if that's where NYC is at right now.
- smwhreyebelong 16y agoCan you provide more detail on where the NYC-startup scene is ? (Where could one meet people working in these startups ?)
- api 16y agoAnother thing that came to mind that this article alludes to: on the East Coast (and most other places) salesmen and MBA types always outrank geeks. It's deeply ingrained in the culture. Those who can do. Those who can't lead. Being a doer makes your social rank lower. Ok, I'm way exaggerating. It's not that bad. But that mentality is present, and the best way for me to explain it was to describe it in its purest form. You rarely actually encounter it that bad, but I have at least once.
- antongm 16y agoWe're back! Sorry for the interruption in service. We got hosed when TechMeme carried the piece.
- elblanco 16y agoI've never lived in NYC, but I go there once or twice a year since the mid-90s and I have to say, the city he's describing, and the city I visit are apparently in different, alternate realities. I don't go there for the startup scene, so I can't comment on that but I can comment on lots of the other absurd nonsense: 1) $2495 for a 500 sq. ft. one bedroom apartment. He's obviously in the wrong part of town and can't figure out how to use the real estate section of the NYT. Extend your commute on the subway by 15-20 minutes a day, or live in Queens or something and you'll shave 70% off of that for a place twice as large. In 10 minutes I found a dozen 2 bedroom apartments for $1600 in Queens. You want to live in an expensive area, then that's what you get. When you model a place like NYC, it's better to think of it as a much larger area. A few blocks is like a few miles of price differentiation elsewhere. Don't like what's right here? Go walk 10 minutes in any direction and you'll be someplace completely different. 2) ‘Ramen’ money in New York is enough to support three families, and then some, elsewhere. I have no idea what he's spending money on. Even if he was pulling down only $60k a year (unlikely as a quant), your apartment is only 1/2 of your gross income. Even after taxes you have like a thousand a month to live on at that rate and no car expenses. Being a quant @ GS, I'd figure you're pulling down another 30-40k/yr gross anyways so you can still have a nice night out once a month. NYC is really not an expensive place to eat. I don't think I've ever paid more than $7 for a stuff me to the gills breakfast. And a decent date-meal for two ran <$120 with drinks. Apparently the author never figured out how to operate a Deli or a Diner. 3) can't fit in socially with the wrong social group that I'm just dying to be part of blah blah Cry me a river, go to different bars and stop hanging around with people who won't let you into their clique/you already have a girlfriend (at the time) what are you doing picking up chicks? Color me confused. 4) In San Francisco, people don’t pay two months’ rent to a real estate pimp: they create Craigslist and make the pimp obsolete. I wasn't aware that San Francisco had managed to abolish Real Estate agents. It's funny because craigslist serves other parts of the country and we still have Real Estate agents.... 5) The intellectual candle-power isn’t there And the elsewhere goes on to pine that everybody he wants to hang with is ivy-league. The only thing that he said that makes any kind of sense is that the educational makeup of the in-city schools is all wrong for tech startups. I mean there's NYU-Poly I guess, but that's small fry, Princeton is not really that far away (an hour more than Stanford is from downtown SF by car). But there's a ton of schools with great engineering programs within a day's drive from the city (MIT for example). Am I supposed to understand that the entire educational system of the North East and mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. can't out-compete Stanford? Again, color me confused? 6) One of the biggest shocks upon moving to New York was realizing it had no cafés What? At this point I'm not even sure the author has even been to NYC. Which is besides the point, the point he's making is, "you can’t have startups or revolutionary political movements without cozy cafés to dawdle, work, and plot in." Because as I noticed before, the author failed to figure out how to operate a Deli or a Diner. He also failed to figure out how to operate a public park, a bookstore, a coffee shop, a donut shop, a bench, a stoop and numerous other public places other than an office where you can sit and meet for long hours in the city. Protip, there's this fantastic huge public place you can use in NYC called "Central Park" absolutely free. If that's not "cozy" enough, there's a bunch of smaller parks like Madison Square all dotted throughout the city. If you want to eat while you forment revolution, there's like a Starbuck's on every single block in the city. http://kottke.org/05/01/maximum-starbucks-density http://kottke.org/05/01/maximum-starbucks-density Even in 2005. 7) The reality is, the food culture in New York mostly sucks. I know food can be subjective, but seriously? I'm definitely sure that tales of living in the city are grossly exaggerated and/or he was confused with living in Tampa, FL or something. No wait, I'm sure I've seen a cafe there. 7b) blah blah blah, people in SF really all want to be farmers Wonderful, if you live in a place with some dirt you can till without getting a fine, you can farm it. NYC is not such a place. Deal with it. 7c) Even the skeeziest convenience store in Daly City or Oakland has a drinkable collection of California wines on offer. Like I said, I don't live in NYC, but last I remember was being able to pick up some Sonoma Valley vino at every 7-11 along the East Coast for <$10. 7d) In three years of living in New York, I never ate someone else’s home-cooked food even once. See #3. You.hang.out.with.the.wrong.people. I'm not sure I can put it more plainly than that. No wonder you couldn't afford anything. One thing NYC is famous for is locally grown produced trucked in in the wee hours of the morning to sell in small stalls. The NYC butcher was the model of meat procurement until the grocery store and strip malls ended that across the country. For goodness sakes, the whole city is basically a farmer's market. You know what's doing gangbusters business? Whole Foods. I barely know people in the city, and I've never lived there, and I've had more home-cooked meals than this poor sap. 8) blah blah home depot in NYC only sells nail clippers and 10 cent nails. This is really just a jab and the relative masculinity of New Yorkers compared to San Franciscoers. Whatever, the author got eaten up and spit out by the city and simply couldn't handle it, now he wants to spend the rest of his days cultivating asparagus in a plot behind his house. It's really amazing how so many of the tallest buildings in the U.S. can be in one city with no hardware stores in site. He's then absolutely enamored by a real Home Depot, no doubt anchoring a strip mall someplace, and a big box electronics store as proof that SF is a hacker's paradise. yawn, I live in the suburbs and have half a dozen of each within 20 minutes of my house. By this standard, Anytown, US is twice the hacker's paradise than SF since most places have a Home Depot, a Lowes, a local lumber yard, a garden nursery, a stone quarry, a Fry's, a Best Buy and two Radio Shacks. 9) Three years in New York, and I went north of 14th St maybe three times. Trips to the Met excepted, of course Facepalm. No wonder nobody would talk to you in a bar, it's not because you were a quant.
- isamuel 16y agoThis article makes the common mistake of confusing Manhattan for New York. It's true: the Upper East Side is a bad place to start a startup. Fort Greene isn't.
- qq66 16y agoRelatively cheap living in the Bay Area? Only compared to New York (unless you live in East Palo Alto)
- isamuel 16y agoSeriously. What a laugh. The author parks himself in a doorman building in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and then declares that you can't get by without paying $2500 a month in rent.
- qq66 16y agoSounds like someone who got dumped hard by a girlfriend, got mugged in the street, or came down with a terrible disease in New York and has formed a bad association with the city.
- api 16y agoI LOLed at that as well. Remember too that to use the bathroom in California you have to get in your car and drive four exits down the expressway. So add another $400/month to your cost of living on top of rent/mortgage. Not having to own a car in places like NYC, Boston, DC, etc. means you can subtract about $400/month/person from your cost of living.
- chaostheory 16y agoI disagree about the cost of living tidbits, since it's not too hard to be able to live and eat cheaply; you just may not be living in the greatest or safest areas. However the way he describes the social scene is pretty accurate.
- jamesbritt 16y agoAny NYMPHS or Port0 people here?
- brown9-2 16y agoFor those readers that are actually familiar with NYC and/or Manhattan, this one quote pretty accurately sums up the weight of the author's arguments and experiences: Columbia is not a top-notch engineering school, and anyhow, it’s way the hell up and gone in Harlem, and no one who isn’t a student or faculty ever goes up there.
- nerme 16y agoWhen I lived in NYC, I built recording studios and did noise abatement in a number of bars in Brooklyn and Manhattan. There are plenty of places to pick up supplies Also, there are TONS of specialty shops. Canal Rubber is my favorite, as I used a lot of mass-loaded vinyl. In fact, in most places in the US, you would have to order in specialty construction materials. As for general purpose, I got a good discount at Dyke's Lumber. They have locations all over the city. Metropolitan Lumber is nice also. They've got lots of cheap "used tools", if you know what I mean. I used them when I was working in Hell's Kitchen. You can haggle prices down quite a bit at all these places. Normally you just say "well, Dyke's gives me %10 off orders of this size" or whatever. However, when the Home Depot opened up in Bed-Stuy, their prices were so low that pretty much every handyman in Brooklyn shopped there. Oh, and all of these places deliver. I rarely went in to the location. You just call them up, say you need 20 2x4x8' studs, 10 1/2" pieces of sheetrock, and they'll roll up with a big truck with your stuff. Don't forget to tip! For the random little things there are hardware stores all over the city. I can't think of a time I had to walk more than 5 minutes to pick up a box of screws or buy some new work gloves.
- char 16y agoAs someone who is currently doing a startup in the Bay Area, lived in NYC for 6 years (and loved it) and went to Columbia, I don't even know where to start ripping apart this article. I'm hoping someone else already did it. And for the record, Columbia is in Morningside Heights, not Harlem.
- loewenskind 16y ago>‘Ramen’ money in New York is enough to support three families, and then some, elsewhere. Low cost of living fallacy. "Ramen money" in new york might be a higher number then "Ramen money" somewhere else, but the pay will (obviously) be higher as well which is what you want. If you double your pay and double your expenses you're still better off unless you were spending every penny. There are a lot of things you want/need to have that aren't going to be cheaper when you live in a low cost of living area (e.g. computer, luxury car, smart phone), so living in a higher pay/cost area makes these items relatively cheaper (e.g. $1k seems like a lot when you make that in a month, but not when you make $20k a month).
- ryoshu 16y agoThinking about this a bit more, I realize that in the decade I've been in NYC, the majority of the time I've been working with or for startups. On the tech side there are companies like Morningside Analytics, who do incredible data visualizations of the blogosphere. MA was bootstrapped by three guys from Columbia University. Perceptive Pixel was founded by Jeff Han, based on his work at NYU (you might have seen his TED talk). Fog Creek was founded here. Peter Shankman founded AirTroductions and HARO. UrbanDaddy is a block away from where I'm sitting. Foursquare is here and so is Boxee. On the creative/advertising side of things, where do I start? The company I'm currently at was bootstrapped by three guys back in 2006. Now we have 25 employees in our NYC office and satellite offices in Amsterdam, Stockholm and Sao Paolo. There are a ton of creative start ups in NYC. WDDG (MochiMedia, while based out of San Fran, was founded by Jameson Hsu and Bob Ippolito, both former DDGers (hi Jameson and Bob)), Big Spaceship, Barbarian Group, Enjoy User Experience (whose founder was co-founder of Kioken)... This stuff is off of the top of my head; I don't even hang out in the NYC startup scene. There's plenty of stuff going once you get away from Wall Street.
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- HilbertSpace 16y agoPART I The responses in this thread are off on 'style', 'scene', 'culture', parties, hook ups, buying wine at 2 AM, housing, commuting, employment contracts, etc. and, thus, avoiding the main issue of the actual post and much more: Look, guys, the main issue is information technology (IT) startups in NYC. Just what is it about that focus that is difficult to keep in mind? Keeping this focus in mind, I continue: A big deal in the article was the difficulty of hiring programmers. Total BS. If you are doing an IT startup, an early prerequisite is that you BE a programmer. What you don't already know about programming, LEARN. Got some problem with learning how to program? Go back to CA and pick lettuce. I taught myself to program and taught computer science in college and graduate school. Teach YOURSELF to program. If you don't, IT entrepreneurship is not one of your more promising career directions. Uh, the current programming tools are so powerful they are quite complicated and fairly new, and a consequence is that you will spend more time learning the tools than using them the first time. Indeed, the big pattern is that the tools change so fast over the decades you may spend more time learning tools than using them. In particular, as a programmer, most of your work is JUST learning tools. Right: In the research universities, the professors don't know these tools. So, as has been the case for decades in the US computer industry, to program, you have to teach yourself, over and over, continually. Uh, PL/I is actually a terrific language, and for some years OS/2 was actually by a wide margin the best PC operating system; so, I've got a nice OS/2 PL/I compiler if you want! The idea of hiring a Wall Street programmer? They have to learn the new stuff, too. Likely they concentrated on one of user interface and graphics, relational data base, computational algorithms, or Web site development. Well, in that case, for an IT startup, they still have more to learn and spend more time learning than doing. Okay, if you are the CEO of an IT startup, then it is your solemn obligation to understand ALL the software. For this you MUST have learned the software tools. Then, once you have learned those tools, for you, by yourself, to use these tools to write the software you need for your startup should be doable, e.g., less work than just the learning and, generally, less work than just communicating with a 'programmer'. So, then you won't need a programmer. So, the supply of 'programmers' in NYC or Silicon Valley is irrelevant. Sorry 'bout that. Or the solution to the 'shortage' is just one more programmer, YOU, so start learning. So, venture partners with minimal current software knowledge (is there any other kind?), this is the day of the IT startup with just one person, the founding CEO who wrote all the software. We know you couldn't do it, but they did, and there are some big advantages. Get used to it. Uh, just because you cook your own breakfast does not make you a Denny's short order cook; just because you drive your own car does not make you a chauffeur; just because you wrote your own software does not make you 'just a programmer'. Uh, now, Visual Basic .NET is an excellent programming language and no longer very 'basic'; .NET already has essentially every subroutine or function of any general usefulness you can think of; ASP.NET is cute and more fun than throwing peanuts in the zoo.