7 ms·

What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

55 points by joshuacc 15y ago

warfangle 15y ago
Doubleclick was a New York startup. In reference to point #1..
spodek 15y ago
My biggest challenge in NYC has been the availability of dependable salaries for coders and designers from non-startups, especially from banking and finance. Start-up equity isn't as valuable here to people who can get great pay from a bank or hedge fund. I see saying NYC needs some extremely successful startups, more engineers, or more product designers as well intentioned, but it's like saying mice need more bells on cats. Everybody agrees, but no one knows how to make it happen. Also, Parsons has a design and technology program like NYU's ITP. I've taught at both and they're both excellent. There may be other programs. I've worked with two Cooper Union alumni (one artist-turned-graphic-designer and one engineer) and both were among the best people I've worked with.
- jamesteow 15y ago
  'My biggest challenge in NYC has been the availability of dependable salaries for coders and designers from non-startups.' I can't speak to programming/engineering jobs, but there's plenty of design jobs from non-startups. Almost every agency (including tiny ones) are based or have an office in NY. DUMBO has a ton of digital agencies. Motion graphics firms are centralized in Manhattan or in LA. Small ones can be found south of 14th or in Brooklyn. Easily the best city in the U.S. for design jobs.
  - uberc 15y ago
    Indeed, I think spodek's point is that the many non-startup design jobs (with "dependable salaries") in New York makes it harder to attract good designers to startups.
    - jamesteow 15y ago
      Ah okay. Whoosh, right over my head...
barce 15y ago
Replace 'NYC' with 'LA' and it's equally true.
- andycroll 15y ago
  Also, replace with 'Singapore' and it's equally true.
dmix 15y ago
Which NYC startups are looking for product designers?
jcampbell1 15y ago
I think Chris is confused about the magnitude of $100M to bring a top university. $100 million in infrastructure upgrades to under-used land to attract a university is a bargin. The income and sales taxes would earn back the $100M in no time. It is pretty hard to find $100M investment, that will bring $1B+ follow on investment, and a few thousand people on a payroll who use very few government services.
- raldi 15y ago
  Seriously. The city government almost spent twelve times as much on two baseball stadiums: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-for-baseball.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-for-b... The final amount that was actually spent is subject to a lot of interpretation, but it's clearly in the nine-figure range.
old-gregg 15y ago
Great post, as usual. And agree with almost everything except this: > You can rent a decent place in a cool part of town on a typical startup salary. "Decent" and "typical" are open for interpretation, but I can tell that for most interpreters I know the expression above evaluates to False. :)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  This... I'm originally from New York, and I know lots of good engineers who grew up there, but quickly realized that you don't make anything more for working in New York versus San Francisco, Austin, or Denver. Yes, you can afford a place in Manhattan on an engineer's salary. But it's going to be too small for a family, and if you want a bigger place you're going to need to do a long commute. Compare that with other cities where a well-paid software engineer is at the top end of the income ladder and can rent out a full house for what they'd pay for a 2-bedroom in NY. (And yes, it's even a lot more expensive than SF. I've looked at apartments in both cities - while rents in SF are comparable to New York, you're still generally getting a much larger place for the same price. That matters if you have kids.) Brooklyn and Queens are nice (if not that much cheaper for the areas near Manhattan.) But if working in New York means you have to live 40 mins outside of Manhattan, or in Hoboken / NJ, what's the point of being in NY? Might as well be in Denver with a 4000 sq ft house. It's unlikely that NY rents are going to drop a lot. If startups in NY want to attract more top talent, they're going to have to pay significantly more than startups in cheaper locales.
  - jamesteow 15y ago
    Once you live in Brooklyn, it's possible to go days without having to enter the city. Plenty of awesome neighbourhoods in the BK (Greenpoint, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, South Slope, DUMBO). I saw a LOT of young professionals with families in DUMBO/Park Slope/Brooklyn Heights. Certainly, if you're intent on living in the city, you'll pay a premium.
datums 15y ago
they need diversity
- warfangle 15y ago
  A few off the top of my head: Square (payments), Tumblr (blogging), Blip.tv (web series destination & distribution platform - disclosure, I work here), Admeld (remnant ad inventory yield optimization for high volume sites), Doubleclick (bought by GOOG a couple years ago), Indaba (music remix platform), a range of creative services (rga and mrm and the like eat souls, though). There's a lot more here than finance, if you know where to look.
achompas 15y ago
Isn't there a question about whether PayPal's employees were great entrepreneurs or if they benefitted from network effects? Anyway, my impression is that the NY startup scene consists of a lot of high-profile startups. Could someone explain to me why these (or any other) startups should aspire to be PayPal-esque, aside from being absurdly successful?
- jeremymims 15y ago
  He means that New York needs a PayPal mafia. I think we already got one with DoubleClick which spawned off an incubator that did Gilt Groupe, 10gen, and Business insider so far. The Lerers are doing their part as well to reinvest in New York. But Chris is right that it won't hurt to have a few more. If Gilt Groupe sells or goes public, I expect we'll see this effect.
callmeed 15y ago
#4 really surprised me. what's the underlying issue with Internet in NYC?
- hswolff 15y ago
  I'd like to know as well but I can attest (from working in NYC) that internet instability is an issue that must be solved.
- daveambrose 15y ago
  A few lesons we learned in the last three years: we operated in Dogpatch Labs in union square for the first half of 2010 and the wireless was painfully slow. Some other teams actually brought in their MiFis and we used this to connect to webmail and calendars. Mabe this changed since then. We then moved to our own office in Chelsea and the Internet is bad here, as we use Verizon's second best connection. Depending upon the location of your office or where you work in manhattan, you may have time warner, verizon, optimum, etc. and high speed Internet is usually a crapshoot.
  - warfangle 15y ago
    Fios isn't that much of a crap shoot. And it's available in much of lower Manhattan. I also know for a fact that many unassuming buildings have gigabit ethernet drops that connect directly or semi-directly to 60 Hudson or 111 8th Ave. Probably wouldn't be able to get access without some serious contacts, though. Most of the co-working spaces I've worked out of have horribly inept people in charge of their network allocation. They use older WiFi routers that have trouble with packet collisions. They provision a 768k DSL line to serve 20 coworking spots. As recently as two weeks ago, about 16 people overloaded the internet at a coworking space I was visiting. Someone else (not affiliated with the space; the space employee didn't know how to do this) mentioned that they'd initiated a dhcp reset and a couple minutes later everything was back. When I asked him how he knew the router password, he said: "Oh.. they were just using the factory defaults." TBH, I wouldn't want to conduct business over a wifi network whose router was using the default admin password.
    - 15y ago
iposbeforehoes 15y ago
I currently live in Manhattan, and work for a start up in Manhattan, and I can assure you that it is very possible to live in NYC on a "typical" start up salary. While I don't know what the true "typical" start up salary in NYC, I'll give you my experience: I interviewed with 7 start ups, and 6 of the 7 were offering a nice chunk of equity and salaries over $100,000. If you can't live in NYC on 100k, you're doing something very wrong. And, great article!

55 points by joshuacc 15y ago

Doubleclick was a New York startup. In reference to point #1..

My biggest challenge in NYC has been the availability of dependable salaries for coders and designers from non-startups, especially from banking and finance. Start-up equity isn't as valuable here to people who can get great pay from a bank or hedge fund. I see saying NYC needs some extremely successful startups, more engineers, or more product designers as well intentioned, but it's like saying mice need more bells on cats. Everybody agrees, but no one knows how to make it happen. Also, Parsons has a design and technology program like NYU's ITP. I've taught at both and they're both excellent. There may be other programs. I've worked with two Cooper Union alumni (one artist-turned-graphic-designer and one engineer) and both were among the best people I've worked with.

jamesteow 15y ago
'My biggest challenge in NYC has been the availability of dependable salaries for coders and designers from non-startups.' I can't speak to programming/engineering jobs, but there's plenty of design jobs from non-startups. Almost every agency (including tiny ones) are based or have an office in NY. DUMBO has a ton of digital agencies. Motion graphics firms are centralized in Manhattan or in LA. Small ones can be found south of 14th or in Brooklyn. Easily the best city in the U.S. for design jobs.
- uberc 15y ago
  Indeed, I think spodek's point is that the many non-startup design jobs (with "dependable salaries") in New York makes it harder to attract good designers to startups.
  - jamesteow 15y ago
    Ah okay. Whoosh, right over my head...

barce 15y ago

Replace 'NYC' with 'LA' and it's equally true.

andycroll 15y ago
Also, replace with 'Singapore' and it's equally true.

dmix 15y ago

Which NYC startups are looking for product designers?

jcampbell1 15y ago

I think Chris is confused about the magnitude of $100M to bring a top university. $100 million in infrastructure upgrades to under-used land to attract a university is a bargin. The income and sales taxes would earn back the $100M in no time. It is pretty hard to find $100M investment, that will bring $1B+ follow on investment, and a few thousand people on a payroll who use very few government services.

raldi 15y ago
Seriously. The city government almost spent twelve times as much on two baseball stadiums: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-for-baseball.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/bonus-season-for-b... The final amount that was actually spent is subject to a lot of interpretation, but it's clearly in the nine-figure range.

old-gregg 15y ago

Great post, as usual. And agree with almost everything except this: > You can rent a decent place in a cool part of town on a typical startup salary. "Decent" and "typical" are open for interpretation, but I can tell that for most interpreters I know the expression above evaluates to False. :)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tomkarlo 15y ago
This... I'm originally from New York, and I know lots of good engineers who grew up there, but quickly realized that you don't make anything more for working in New York versus San Francisco, Austin, or Denver. Yes, you can afford a place in Manhattan on an engineer's salary. But it's going to be too small for a family, and if you want a bigger place you're going to need to do a long commute. Compare that with other cities where a well-paid software engineer is at the top end of the income ladder and can rent out a full house for what they'd pay for a 2-bedroom in NY. (And yes, it's even a lot more expensive than SF. I've looked at apartments in both cities - while rents in SF are comparable to New York, you're still generally getting a much larger place for the same price. That matters if you have kids.) Brooklyn and Queens are nice (if not that much cheaper for the areas near Manhattan.) But if working in New York means you have to live 40 mins outside of Manhattan, or in Hoboken / NJ, what's the point of being in NY? Might as well be in Denver with a 4000 sq ft house. It's unlikely that NY rents are going to drop a lot. If startups in NY want to attract more top talent, they're going to have to pay significantly more than startups in cheaper locales.
- jamesteow 15y ago
  Once you live in Brooklyn, it's possible to go days without having to enter the city. Plenty of awesome neighbourhoods in the BK (Greenpoint, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, South Slope, DUMBO). I saw a LOT of young professionals with families in DUMBO/Park Slope/Brooklyn Heights. Certainly, if you're intent on living in the city, you'll pay a premium.

datums 15y ago

they need diversity

warfangle 15y ago
A few off the top of my head: Square (payments), Tumblr (blogging), Blip.tv (web series destination & distribution platform - disclosure, I work here), Admeld (remnant ad inventory yield optimization for high volume sites), Doubleclick (bought by GOOG a couple years ago), Indaba (music remix platform), a range of creative services (rga and mrm and the like eat souls, though). There's a lot more here than finance, if you know where to look.

achompas 15y ago

Isn't there a question about whether PayPal's employees were great entrepreneurs or if they benefitted from network effects? Anyway, my impression is that the NY startup scene consists of a lot of high-profile startups. Could someone explain to me why these (or any other) startups should aspire to be PayPal-esque, aside from being absurdly successful?

jeremymims 15y ago
He means that New York needs a PayPal mafia. I think we already got one with DoubleClick which spawned off an incubator that did Gilt Groupe, 10gen, and Business insider so far. The Lerers are doing their part as well to reinvest in New York. But Chris is right that it won't hurt to have a few more. If Gilt Groupe sells or goes public, I expect we'll see this effect.

callmeed 15y ago

#4 really surprised me. what's the underlying issue with Internet in NYC?

hswolff 15y ago
I'd like to know as well but I can attest (from working in NYC) that internet instability is an issue that must be solved.
daveambrose 15y ago
A few lesons we learned in the last three years: we operated in Dogpatch Labs in union square for the first half of 2010 and the wireless was painfully slow. Some other teams actually brought in their MiFis and we used this to connect to webmail and calendars. Mabe this changed since then. We then moved to our own office in Chelsea and the Internet is bad here, as we use Verizon's second best connection. Depending upon the location of your office or where you work in manhattan, you may have time warner, verizon, optimum, etc. and high speed Internet is usually a crapshoot.
- warfangle 15y ago
  Fios isn't that much of a crap shoot. And it's available in much of lower Manhattan. I also know for a fact that many unassuming buildings have gigabit ethernet drops that connect directly or semi-directly to 60 Hudson or 111 8th Ave. Probably wouldn't be able to get access without some serious contacts, though. Most of the co-working spaces I've worked out of have horribly inept people in charge of their network allocation. They use older WiFi routers that have trouble with packet collisions. They provision a 768k DSL line to serve 20 coworking spots. As recently as two weeks ago, about 16 people overloaded the internet at a coworking space I was visiting. Someone else (not affiliated with the space; the space employee didn't know how to do this) mentioned that they'd initiated a dhcp reset and a couple minutes later everything was back. When I asked him how he knew the router password, he said: "Oh.. they were just using the factory defaults." TBH, I wouldn't want to conduct business over a wifi network whose router was using the default admin password.
  - 15y ago

iposbeforehoes 15y ago

I currently live in Manhattan, and work for a start up in Manhattan, and I can assure you that it is very possible to live in NYC on a "typical" start up salary. While I don't know what the true "typical" start up salary in NYC, I'll give you my experience: I interviewed with 7 start ups, and 6 of the 7 were offering a nice chunk of equity and salaries over $100,000. If you can't live in NYC on 100k, you're doing something very wrong. And, great article!