4 ms·

NYC finance vs. Silicon Valley startup scene

12 points by TriinT 18y ago

Rod 18y ago
"While I, too, fell under the spell of Paul Graham, I refuse to drink any more of his kool aide until he comes out with his magic language he's been promising us for the last half decade or more. Yes, interpreted languages with compilers and fancy debuggers are great. That doesn't mean it has to have a bunch of parenthesis, or that you should waste your life with horrible crap like Common Lisp. " I have the impression that this kind of comment will make some people's blood boil...
- TriinT 18y ago
  And I am certain this comment will make some people's blood boil even faster: "If you want to start your own company, you don't even really need an idea, as long as you can do stuff. I have done so myself (and am pretty happy doing it). YC is, of course, almost completely retarded; anyone with a job and a bit of ingenuity can provide a deeper pool of funding than that, and the "connections" are worth zilch, based on their track record. Just save some money."
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 18y ago
The funny thing is that I'm a math guy - actually doing more math programming finally - but I also realize that "quants" are utterly bankrupt. Paul Krugman is right - Obama has made serious error in trying to restart the finance machine. That doesn't mean we won't go up that hill again - just that if we do, the end after that will make even the present circumstances look cheery.
- Rod 18y ago
  "I also realize that "quants" are utterly bankrupt. Paul Krugman is right - Obama has made serious error in trying to restart the finance machine." I think you're painting things with a very broad brush. While it's certainly true that there's a financial crisis of global proportions, it's also true that there's a whole world out there outside of the U.S., and that world is not under Obama's influence. Are quants bankrupt? Well, maybe in NYC. But NYC has not been the world's financial capital for a few years now. London has. And Shanghai is emerging pretty fast... A friend of mine who's a grad student at a top 5 math department in the U.S. was invited to join D.E. Shaw recently. Another friend just finished her MSc at MIT and will take a quant position in an investment fund... in East Asia ;-) Circumstances don't look cheery for sure, but just because the U.S. is depressed, it doesn't mean other parts of the world are equally depressed.
  - noaharc 18y ago
    I think you are factually wrong on a few points. 1) Though Obama is the legal president of the United States only, it is trivial to see that his actions influence people in other countries. 2) It's hard to define "world's financial capital", but, by most accounts, New York is still the front-runner. See http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22financial+capital%22+world%27s http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=... 3) The concept of decoupled economies is false. The US is actually doing better than a lot of countries that proponents of the theory had expected to fare well. See http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/no-shelter-in-this-storm/ http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/no-shelter-in-thi...
    - Rod 18y ago
      My replies: 1) Obviously. But whatever laws are passed in the U.S. are not going to be enforced outside the U.S. (of course). The president of the U.S. can exercize his influence abroad but he can't exactly force other countries to do what he wants, unless he threatens with penalties (not limited to military action), which would help denigrate the image of the U.S. abroad even more. Obama's administration can pass whatever laws it wants. Financial institutions will always find a loophole to be exploited. Regulatory arbitrage works wonders... 2) Defining "world's capital" is admittedly a childish game. One possible definition of world's financial capital would be to count the number of hedge funds in London and the number of hedge funds in NYC. 3) Of course the concept of decoupled economies is false. What I was trying to argue is that the correlation between the American economy and other countries' economies is not 100%. America is still a great country, obviously. Just don't expect the post-WW2 status to last forever. Things change.
      - noaharc 18y ago
        Okay, I think I understand what you're saying. It certainly is easy to project the geopolitical status quo infinitely into the future, and just as certainly that is wrong. But I think financial centers shift slowly -- we've only really seen three (London, New York, and Amsterdam) in as many centuries. Moreover, the traditions and rules of the predecessors are often carried over to the successors, and we can probably expect this continuity to be even stronger in the future, given the greater degree of global interconnectedness. So I guess what I'm saying is that it will be some time before we seen a financial industry like that of the turn of the 21st century, no matter where you look.
joe_the_user 18y ago
Wow, It makes me think of someone who once said "I used to feel sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet" but in an opposite kind of way. Actually working half-time at an average programmers' salary sounds great - assuming my current gig goes through. But it also sounds so much better than what these boobs were doing, during the "good times". Awesome.
rbitar 18y ago
This is an old thread from around Nov 2007
- TriinT 18y ago
  Back in Nov 2007 things were already looking quite gloomy. For instance, Bear Stearns started to implode in June 2007.
ardit33 18y ago
"Finance is safe in that it provides the certainty of getting rich within ten years (unless the industry changes in some on a fundamental level in some unlikely way)" --Hmmm.. . I wonder how is it working for him now, if he is 'rich' yet. Remember, this post was done in 2007.

12 points by TriinT 18y ago

Rod 18y ago

"While I, too, fell under the spell of Paul Graham, I refuse to drink any more of his kool aide until he comes out with his magic language he's been promising us for the last half decade or more. Yes, interpreted languages with compilers and fancy debuggers are great. That doesn't mean it has to have a bunch of parenthesis, or that you should waste your life with horrible crap like Common Lisp. " I have the impression that this kind of comment will make some people's blood boil...

TriinT 18y ago
And I am certain this comment will make some people's blood boil even faster: "If you want to start your own company, you don't even really need an idea, as long as you can do stuff. I have done so myself (and am pretty happy doing it). YC is, of course, almost completely retarded; anyone with a job and a bit of ingenuity can provide a deeper pool of funding than that, and the "connections" are worth zilch, based on their track record. Just save some money."

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 18y ago

The funny thing is that I'm a math guy - actually doing more math programming finally - but I also realize that "quants" are utterly bankrupt. Paul Krugman is right - Obama has made serious error in trying to restart the finance machine. That doesn't mean we won't go up that hill again - just that if we do, the end after that will make even the present circumstances look cheery.

Rod 18y ago
"I also realize that "quants" are utterly bankrupt. Paul Krugman is right - Obama has made serious error in trying to restart the finance machine." I think you're painting things with a very broad brush. While it's certainly true that there's a financial crisis of global proportions, it's also true that there's a whole world out there outside of the U.S., and that world is not under Obama's influence. Are quants bankrupt? Well, maybe in NYC. But NYC has not been the world's financial capital for a few years now. London has. And Shanghai is emerging pretty fast... A friend of mine who's a grad student at a top 5 math department in the U.S. was invited to join D.E. Shaw recently. Another friend just finished her MSc at MIT and will take a quant position in an investment fund... in East Asia ;-) Circumstances don't look cheery for sure, but just because the U.S. is depressed, it doesn't mean other parts of the world are equally depressed.
- noaharc 18y ago
  I think you are factually wrong on a few points. 1) Though Obama is the legal president of the United States only, it is trivial to see that his actions influence people in other countries. 2) It's hard to define "world's financial capital", but, by most accounts, New York is still the front-runner. See http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22financial+capital%22+world%27s http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=... 3) The concept of decoupled economies is false. The US is actually doing better than a lot of countries that proponents of the theory had expected to fare well. See http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/no-shelter-in-this-storm/ http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/no-shelter-in-thi...
  - Rod 18y ago
    My replies: 1) Obviously. But whatever laws are passed in the U.S. are not going to be enforced outside the U.S. (of course). The president of the U.S. can exercize his influence abroad but he can't exactly force other countries to do what he wants, unless he threatens with penalties (not limited to military action), which would help denigrate the image of the U.S. abroad even more. Obama's administration can pass whatever laws it wants. Financial institutions will always find a loophole to be exploited. Regulatory arbitrage works wonders... 2) Defining "world's capital" is admittedly a childish game. One possible definition of world's financial capital would be to count the number of hedge funds in London and the number of hedge funds in NYC. 3) Of course the concept of decoupled economies is false. What I was trying to argue is that the correlation between the American economy and other countries' economies is not 100%. America is still a great country, obviously. Just don't expect the post-WW2 status to last forever. Things change.
    - noaharc 18y ago
      Okay, I think I understand what you're saying. It certainly is easy to project the geopolitical status quo infinitely into the future, and just as certainly that is wrong. But I think financial centers shift slowly -- we've only really seen three (London, New York, and Amsterdam) in as many centuries. Moreover, the traditions and rules of the predecessors are often carried over to the successors, and we can probably expect this continuity to be even stronger in the future, given the greater degree of global interconnectedness. So I guess what I'm saying is that it will be some time before we seen a financial industry like that of the turn of the 21st century, no matter where you look.

joe_the_user 18y ago

Wow, It makes me think of someone who once said "I used to feel sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet" but in an opposite kind of way. Actually working half-time at an average programmers' salary sounds great - assuming my current gig goes through. But it also sounds so much better than what these boobs were doing, during the "good times". Awesome.

rbitar 18y ago

This is an old thread from around Nov 2007

TriinT 18y ago
Back in Nov 2007 things were already looking quite gloomy. For instance, Bear Stearns started to implode in June 2007.

ardit33 18y ago

"Finance is safe in that it provides the certainty of getting rich within ten years (unless the industry changes in some on a fundamental level in some unlikely way)" --Hmmm.. . I wonder how is it working for him now, if he is 'rich' yet. Remember, this post was done in 2007.