I was born in Manhattan, grew up in Brooklyn, and except for a stint in Boston and a much shorter stint in Acapulco, I’ve always lived and worked in New York. So I’ll be the first person to admit, I’m totally biased about my love for NYC. I have traveled all over the world, and while I’ve visited some amazing cities, there’s just no place like New York City. It’s hard to dispute that New York’s the theater capital of the world, the media, publishing and advertising capital of the world, or even the financial capital of the world. But for decades, when it came to technology, NYC lived in the shadow of Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and even Boston.
But just as quickly as technology changes, so can a city’s technology footprint. Here are five reasons New York is now the technology capital of the world:
1) Startups
Over the last ten years, technology startups have increasingly built their homes in New York. Notable ones include Etsy, Kickstarter, Foursquare, Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce), Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, (acquired by AOL), Mashable, Livestream, Fab, Timehop, Rebel Mouse, The Fancy, AppNexus, Local Response, GetGlue, and of course our startup, Likeable Local, to name a few. Plus, the amazing nonprofit Girls Who Code is here. Every successful startup reminds the world as well as thousands of budding entrepreneurs, technologists and engineers, that NYC brings great opportunity.
2) Tech Companies
Major technology companies based in other cities have realized how important it is to have a New York presence, and in the last few years have built sizable offices in NYC. The household names building out their teams in New York include Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. By the way, LinkedIn, through its LinkedIn Today product and Influencers program, (for which I write here), has quietly built a publishing business-within-a-business that will be extremely disruptive. Linkedin has editors all over the world, but where is that business-within-a-business based? That’s right, New York.
3) VC’s & Angels
The venture capital community was once confined to Silicon Valley and Boston, but today, there are dozens of prominent VC’s and angel investors based in New York, including Founder Collective, IA Ventures, Venrock, Lerer Ventures, Union Square, FirstRound, and First Mark. Major VC firms based in Northern California have also set up shop in NYC. Finally, Gust, the game-changing platform for entrepreneurs to set up their pitches and investor information for potential investors, is based in New York. As my friend Jeffrey Finkle, of angel group Arc Angel Fund and VC firm Odeon Capital Partners said, "New York City offers the ideal environment for innovative tech companies to begin and grow their businesses - and the capital to help make it happen."
4) Government Support
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made technology entrepreneurs a strategic priority in his final term in office. First, he hired the city’s first Chief Digital Officer in Rachel Sterne Haot. Now, the city has put its resources behind a major We are Made in New York campaign, highlighting hundreds of tech startups via an interactive map and assisting technology startups with recruitment, mentoring, networking and other support. The Mayor and city agencies appear determined to support the city’s thriving startup community in any ways they can.
5) Location
I’m reminded of the old real estate adage about the three most important aspects of a property: Location, location, location. New York has a whopping eight million residents and is situated right in the middle of a megalopolis that includes over 40 million people, between Boston and Washington D.C. And, NYC is a 5 hour plane away from both the US west coast and Europe, giving tech companies easy physical access to the world, when they’re not accessing the world through the internet.
One 6th bonus is the NYC attitude. If you’ve ever lived in New York, you know that people here are decidedly tough but decidedly ambitious as well – the perfect attitude to build a game-changing technology company. For this reason as well as the five above, I’m proud to call New York City both the new technology capital of the world, and my home.
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Now it’s your turn. Do you live in NYC, or have you ever? What do you think of New York? Does any other city today compare in terms of technology companies and a startup environment? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!
Dave Kerpen is the founder and CEO of Likeable Local. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of Likeable Media, and the New York Times-bestselling author of Likeable Social Media and Likeable Business, and the new collection, Likeable Leadership. To read more from Dave on LinkedIn, please click the FOLLOW button above or below.
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