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It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town
- NN88 8y agomakes you wonder how the south is transitioning
- donedealomg 8y agoIt's behind a paywall.
- code4tee 8y agoThe NYC tech sector is indeed growing quite strong and is also quite grounded in the realities of business because of the diversity of NYC’s overall economy. Few cities in the world have the economic diversity that New York does. That drives the mindset to be noticeably different, mostly in a good way. At several meet ups recently the moderator wasn’t shy about warning Silicon Valley companies “I’d advise you to be clear about how you plan to make money and be profitable because if you don’t the audience here is just going to grill you on how you plan to make money and be profitable.”
- johnmarcus 8y agoWhich is why it will never really be Silicon Valley. No risk, no reward. NY is too expensive for anyone to sit around and take risks, likewise, it will never see the real reward.
- meddlepal 8y agoImplying Silicon Valley is affordable compared to NYC is silly. The Californian "Try It" attitude is basically the equivalent of throwing shit against the wall while using other people's money. It works sometimes, but it's a terrible strategy that only works because VCs hit a unicorn that wipes out all the mistakes every so often.
- adventured 8y ago> it's a terrible strategy that only works because VCs hit a unicorn that wipes out all the mistakes every so often The "only" part of that doesn't actually invalidate the fact that it works. What you said is: it's a terrible strategy that has worked extraordinarily well. It's a great strategy that has been shown to work across five decades of tech upheavel, precisely because it does pay for itself over time and keeps generating returns for institutional money. That it works so well is why it has all kept getting bigger as the positive results roll forward. It also produced the greatest concentration of tech dominance and invention the world is likely to ever see in one place.
- Apocryphon 8y agoMaybe it's time for some daring innovators to disrupt this rickety archaic model?
- code4tee 8y agoYour argument is that Silicon Valley is an economical place to do business relative to NYC and that New York, with its centuries long history of immigrants turning up with nothing and “making it,” don’t take risks? Tell me more. :-)
- keiferski 8y agoIt is dramatically easier to live on a budget in the NYC metro area than anywhere in the Bay Area...
- AznHisoka 8y agoWhat is this “real reward”? Housing is cheaper in NY (though certainly not inexpensive). Last I checked, we still have theaters, museums, clubs, etc too. Ok weather is a problem.
- wbl 8y agoNYC has far better museums then SF.
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoSimilar properties to those suburban bungalows where HP, Apple, and Google where founded are easily selling for $1.5 million now. My Brooklyn apartment is about the same cost per sqft. I don’t have a yard but my access/commute to the metro core is much better.
- amyjess 8y agoNew York doesn't want to be Silicon Valley, though. New York is an Alpha++ world city. When New York looks to compete with other cities, it competes with other Alpha++ and Alpha+ cities. New York doesn't even think about SV. It thinks about London, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, etc.
- pmart123 8y agoThe irony of this is that attitude has created pretty much zero startups that have transformed into sustainable, profitable, medium or large companies. While there have been a couple successful exits that later crashed and burned like Tumblr and Blue Apron, and a couple TBD like MongoDB and Jet (Wal-mart acquisition), many of the NYC startup IPOs and exits seem to be playing a game of hot potato by selling to the next sucker with completely veneer metrics. Having had an early stage startup in NYC, I would say there was way too much focus on "you need metric X to be Y right now" even if doing so was detrimental to getting something off the ground. That said, NYC is a good environment for established tech companies opening large satellite offices like Facebook, Google, etc.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rchaud 8y ago> that attitude has created pretty much zero startups that have transformed into sustainable, profitable, medium or large companies. You are looking at modern day Amazon and comparing its profitability to startups, when Amazon itself consistently lost money every year until around 2004.
- pmart123 8y agoI just mentally built this list, but I have: Here to Stay: Facebook, Twitter, Square, Netflix, Salesforce, Workday Likely Strong Businesses: Airbnb, Stripe, Slack, Palantir, Twilio, Trade Desk (profitable), Zendesk, Automattic, Squarespace, One Medical, Juul Profitable: Stitch Fix, Yelp, I'm sure there are others. Maybe: Cloudera, New Relic, Dropbox, 23andMe, Robinhood, Plaid, Opendoor, Instacart We will see, but big private valuations: Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Coinbase, Instacart Then for NYC I would have: ZocDoc, Warby Parker, Classpass, and probably also Harry's, 1stdibbs, Lemonade, Compass, and Betterment. I'm sure I missed a few interesting ones, but I still think the current crop of SV companies established after 2004ish are on a different scale or tackling a bigger addressable market than the ones in NYC. Wallstreet is probably an even worse critic when a company is in its own back yard. I was at a Bloomberg event where the founder of Blue Apron was absolutely annihilated by the interviewer, and you could tell it was taking a toll on him mentally. Meanwhile, Evan Spiegel is in a similar situation and doesn't appear to have a care in the world out in LA.
- mattzito 8y agoI remember raising money in mid-2004 and having VCs lose interest when they heard we were based in NYC. One offered to invest on the condition that we move to the Bay Area or Boston. Around the same time, post-9/11, a lot of the big banks were moving their engineering operations (at least, as much as they could), offshore or to cheaper parts of the US. It was difficult at the time to envision NYC becoming a real tech city.
- CPLX 8y agoNew York is the most important city in the history of world civilization, this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Everything genuinely important in this country ends up run from New York City eventually. People forget the Rockefellers made their money in Cleveland. But that aside NYC has always had a serious tech community since the electric grid was invented in lower Manhattan, or the transistor in suburban New Jersey.
- Taniwha 8y agoThat's a very US-centric world view, not shared by much of the rest of the world
- johnmarcus 8y agoI wouldn't even go that far. It's a NY centric world view. The rest of us outside NY (especially those whom moved from there) regard it as an outdated and overhyped.
- PunchTornado 8y agoNY is like 400 years old.
- PLenz 8y agoAnd even before that, the steamboat was invented here, the Manhattan project was called that because it was originally in Manhattan. Edison was over in Jersey and Tesla on Long Island. Republic had it's plant out on the island too where they built the LEM. IBM's Watson lab is just north of the city and Bell labs a bit west. New York has always been a tech hub but it wasn't as obvious since there was - and is - so much else going on.t
- lapnitnelav 8y agoAnd lest we forget, it is where Jesus made its most infamous miracle, waltzing over the Hudson.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
- TuringNYC 8y agoI realize the anti-Amazon movement was a limited (but loud) group of individuals, but if their level of influence has lasting power, NYC tech is in trouble. Consider NYTimes' own article on the amazon exit. Half the people angry at Amazon were commenting that Amazon wasn't going to pay living wages (thinking that corporate HQ2 jobs are fulfillment jobs.) The other half were angry that Amazon was going to pay too much and would drive up rents. Which one is it? I don't know, but both sides banded together. One major issue AOC had with Amazon was the fear that Amazon couldn't guarantee they would only be hiring local NYers -- since when did NYC become a country? Where could/couldnt workers come from -- would it be only from Queens? Would Brooklyn be OK? What if someone commuted from NJ? What if someone commuted down from the suburb? At what point does someone who moves to NYC become a NYer? This type of in-city protectionism was shocking and completely ignores how local economies work.
- nkozyra 8y ago> NYC tech is in trouble. I don't see much support for your argument here. As I see it, the stance is NYC is a strong enough tech city to be able to say no to Amazon; to not need to bend to their every whim to bring them here.
- TuringNYC 8y agoI would agree that we didn't need to bend to their every whim. We could probably have given them no incentives or token incentives and still won the HQ2 deal. There was a time to do that -- when we were making the proposal, not after it was already agreed to by both sides. But that isn't the my argument -- my argument is that the entire rhetoric is nonsensical. My shock is the dual narrative on "tech pays too much -- down with tech" "tech pays too little -- down with tech." This reeks of false excuses and clinging to some mythical perfect that doesn't exist and isn't driven by tech. Inter-city import of workers is also non-sensical. Finally, that the exit of 25,000 high paying jobs could be seen as some sort of victory is also alarming. NYC has really never recovered from the 2008 crash when ~500,000 well paying finance jobs were compressed/reduced/automated. NYC needs those jobs and the ecosystem they would create. EDIT: In response to the citation request, i'll look for it. But rough numbers are: several broker dealers disappeared all together - Lehman, Bears, Merrill. UBS' building in Stamford is practically empty now. Legions of contractors, not on employee payroll but still working there, were also let go. Their books of business were absorbed but the staff were mostly redundant. Secondly, 2008 was used (wisely) to compress unnecessary workers -- tons of stuff that used to be done by teams got automated by software. As an example, i saw our own market data teams go from ~20 in 2006 --> 7 in 2010--> 2 in 2014 as more and more APIs and standardized software took over rote tasks like pulling market data, creating curves, etc. Other examples include Fax --> DTCC econfirm for operational work. Tear-ups for redundant contracts (e.g., TriOptima and other platforms.) Custom trade platforms per-firm cant compete in most cases to straight out of box Bloomberg POMS/AIM and again, technology made things more efficient.
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago"The company’s leaders didn’t have high hopes, assuming all the best software engineers were in Silicon Valley. But they told him he could go ahead if he could find “Google-worthy” talent in New York" - Major city of couple million won't have "google worthy" talent.
- peruvian 8y agoOne of the reasons for this is that NYC is very livable with a tech salary. I’ve never been in the Bay Area, but here you can make just above $100k and live comfortably with a <60 mins commute to work. I know that because that’s what I do. You won’t be able to buy a house and having a kid without a spouse with a similar salary may be tough, but for a single person it lets you enjoy the city and actually be able to save money.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- aetherson 8y agoYou can do the same in the bay area. People who are complaining about how unaffordable the bay area is on six figure salaries are either wanting to be much closer than one hour from hot spots, owning a house, having a kid, or some combination thereof.
- forrestthewoods 8y agoPeople wanting to raise a family? How preposterous!
- tivert 8y ago> People wanting to raise a family? How preposterous! I know! People should be satisfied with the opportunity to change the world (and make me rich) at my startup. Asking for more is kinda greedy. /s.
- electricslpnsld 8y agoI think the point is that in NYC, you don’t have to be over an hour from the hot spots if you aren’t making lots of money. It is totally possible to live in Manhattan on 30 grand a year (hell, I’ve done it). To do so in San Francisco or the Penninsula would be much harder.
- aetherson 8y ago
- johnmarcus 8y agowhaa whaa whaa. This is nothing more than a hype article because NY is butthurt that it lost Amazon. "Silicon Alley", that's a joke. Your going to compare a single street to an entire state sized area of the Bay? LOL. NY has tech jobs rooted in old fashioned ways of making money - nothing interesting and very little actual innovation. It's just basic automation of number crunching, primarily to keep up with the guy next door whom automated the number crunching. That's not innovation or inspiration.
- madengr 8y agoNY is not a tech town. Google is not tech, it’s advertising. Amazon is a mail-order company. Uber is a taxi company. Stop calling “tech” technology. The revenue generated by those companies is not the technology itself. A semiconductor fab, a satellite construction facility, a defense contractor; those are “tech”. /rant
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gipp 8y agoLanguage is forged by consensus, and consensus won that battle a long time ago. Besides, that's an extremely narrow view of what those giant companies do. Cloud? Hardware? AI? Car/drone autonomy? Natural science research, even?
- count 8y agoThey're all software companies. Software is "tech".
- Itaxpica 8y agoSemiconductor fab isn’t tech, it’s manufacturing. Satellite construction isn’t tech, it’s manufacturing. A defense contract isn’t tech, it’s an arm of the military. If you define words however you want you can say whatever you want, but it doesn’t mean it’s worth saying.
- nickelcitymario 8y agoOne of the biggest lessons I've taken from New York's approach is not to try and be the next Silicon Valley (as every community is trying to be). You can't beat the Valley at its own game. That's foolish. Instead, look to what industries your community has long been successful in, and develop the tech to disrupt those industries before the Valley does. NYC's example was to focus tech on advertising, finance, and media -- the industries it has long dominated. I'm from a small mining city in Canada (Sudbury, Ontario). I see the same desperate hope to become a tech center. But the best startups are the ones focused on areas where our community has traditionally held a significant leadership position: mining. One such startup, and arguable our most successful one, is Minalytix. They develop software for analyzing mining and exploration data. Another is Symboticware, which creates hardware and software to gather real-time data from machines on the ground and analyzing it back at the office. Jannatec is focused on solving the challenges of getting quality wireless data in and out of complex underground mines (those many kilometers of hardrock don't exactly make it easy). TesMan is focused on mine safety. Dura21 works on better pipes. Hard-Line is tackling robotics. ClickMox does lidar. There are many others. These are small but thriving startups. They're not sexy. They're not likely to be the next Facebook or Google. But they're solving problems our community has long established itself as being experts at solving. It's also transforming our economy from one being tied to a dwindling resource (easily accessible ore), to one that leads in mining operations around the world. A lot of towns want to be the next SV. It's not going to happen. Trying to be SV is to live in denial about what made SV successful in the first place. But tackling a smaller niche in the wider tech space? Building on the resources, expertise, and reputation you already have? That's a very doable approach and the field is wide open.
- gammateam 8y agoYour whole post missed the important part about what can get funded and where. NYC is coming up, but the graveyard of quirky disruptors would still only be pursued in Silicon Valley. These non revenue generating companies acting as developer daycare need to be flipped from one portfolio to the next until you have a deal size big enough to matter, swap out the board and executive team and shop it to the public markets, ka-ching. New York VCs and other markets cant and wont chase developer daycare companies on a broad enough scale to grow these into deals.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoGoogle? DoubleClick? Perhaps the more accurate headline would be: New York Became a Tech Town (Because SV Ran Out of Space and People)? Not a criticism, simply an honest observation. But what industry doesn't have outposts in NYC? Why would we expect tech to be any different? Where is the story here? Where is the news?
- Ologn 8y agoDoubleClick was founded in New York.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoI sit corrected. Thanks. None the less, don't cha think we need more than on such entity to declare "victory"?
- EnderMB 8y agoI've been wanting to move to NYC for years. I love big cities, and since I was a kid I loved NYC. I went on holiday there a few years ago, and it only reinforced the idea of living there. In practice, finding tech jobs as a Brit has been horrendous. I've applied for countless roles, including roles at all FAANG companies, startups crying out for people with my experience, and established medium-sized companies hiring (and offering sponsorship of work permits)...and nothing. Either immediate rejection, or emails saying "actually, we don't sponsor visas". I don't know if this is an America thing, but I've had other companies more than happy to fly me over in other parts of the US California and Washington). Given how mixed the culture is in NYC, with so many immigrants throughout the city, I have been very surprised that it's so hard to get a job there. This is purely from my experiences, and maybe it's just that all these companies hate me for some reason, but IMO you can't be a tech town if you're not willing to bring talent in, at least in the same ways other worldwide tech hubs will.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- phonon 8y agoWhat kind of Visa sponsorship are you expecting? An L1 visa for transferring from an international company location to the US? That would rule out startups. An H-1B? That takes months, and has less than a 30% success rate. An O-1? Do you have documentation that would support "extra-ordinary" abilities? An E-2 visa is kinda neat though--have you thought of taking matters into your own hands? https://workpermit.com/immigration/usa/e2-visa-investors-and-employees https://workpermit.com/immigration/usa/e2-visa-investors-and...
- EnderMB 8y agoIsn't the low success rate for H1B down to how it is used for consultancy roles, whereas large companies looking for full-time employees tend to have a very high success rate for "straightforward" applications? If not, then why do the likes of Google and other FAANG companies even bother interviewing people?
- ErikAugust 8y agohttp://beta.trimread.com/articles/113 http://beta.trimread.com/articles/113
- pge 8y agoWatching from afar, it seemed to me that the catalyzing event for NY's startup scene was the collapse of the banks. The big banks had a lot of very strong tech talent, for whom it was a huge financial risk to leave and join a startup (because the salaries were so high at the banks). It wasn't until the banks collapsed that that talent was released. Prior to that, NY had tech companies, like any major city does, but was not one of the leading centers on the east coast at all.
- mountainofdeath 8y agoPeople forget that Bloomberg himself owns a major financial technology company.
- ChrisArchitect 8y agoI really expected this to be about a hacker movement and JOLT cola
- Fnoord 8y agoSame. Jolt, apparently actually from New York [1], was the first hacker drink I learned about. The best one though, is the German Club Mate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolt_Cola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolt_Cola
- forgotmysn 8y agoNew York is not a tech town. It is a finance town. It is a marketing town. It is a fashion town. It has so many things that dwarf it's tech industry. It's not a tech town, and I honestly don't expect it to become one.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rongenre 8y agoYeah, my sense is that tech in NYC is tech as an enabler of finance.
- denart2203 8y agoWhen a city is dominated by one industry, particularly finance, that can spell ruin for its inhabitants. Good for the wealthy and the people in the industry, mediocre for many others. Tech might smooth things out a bit, but there is no reason we need to give anything to a behemoth for coming here. Many are already make NYC home. Although not the only one, NYC has some of the best universities, many top-tier companies, pools of talented people, and the best cultural amenities. There was no reason to kowtow to a behemoth to come here. NYC is big and innovative, and it will stay big and innovative for the foreseeable future. Tech was here before and will it be here after, without being dominated by a single company.
- auntienomen 8y agoPart of the story with the rise of tech in NYC is that finance has become a large consumer of technology, data, and statistics. This helped create a talent pool that other tech companies could draw on.
- ishikawa 8y agoOne point, not mentioning if big companies like Amazon are a problem or not, is that this is a market with higher income, coming to a city with a very high living cost. So in my view these companies are moving to NY because they can afford paying employees that want to live in NYC.
- jzylstra 8y agoI too am concerned that this point is often missed. The choice of where to live, for those who will find well-regarded (and paying) positions in any case, is one given as much weight as the organization for which one will work.