Made in NY - Why Your Startup Should Be, Too

The Mayor's Office asked me for a quote about the New York tech scene and here's what I gave them:

I did my time on the west coast, but coming back to New York two years ago was one of the best personal and professional decisions I've ever made. I'm proud to be Made In NY (Fort Greene to be precise!) and thrilled be part of a vibrant industry that is not only hiring New Yorkers, but hiring them to help change the world. This effort reinforces the Bloomberg administration's commitment to NY tech, which is already one of the pillars of our economy and yet still has much more room to grow.

This city spawned me in 1983, but a few years after that, my parents moved out of Fort Greene, Brooklyn to Ridgewood, Queens. They weren't too excited about the prospects of raising me there with their limited financial resources, so we ended up moving to suburban Maryland. I spent the rest of my childhood idolizing New York City from afar.

I lived in San Francisco for two years while working on reddit post-acquisition. The burritos were fabulous and while Dos Toros is close, I'm going to give the edge on all Mexican food to the west-side. Ultimately though, the burritos weren't enough to keep me there. I could have picked anywhere in the world to live and continue my tech career, but I chose New York. And it wasn't a hard decision.

• Diversity. Over 8MM people live in New York City, from all over, doing everything, which means you're building a company with more than the tech elite in mind. This current wave of tech innovation is happening because we've hit a critical mass of online users; etsy and kickstarter technologically could've been built ten years ago, but the market wasn't ready for them to thrive like they are today. There are plenty more markets to be made more efficient through technology, and my bet is you're going to find them here in New York.
  
  
• Quality of life. Food, entertainment, everything, twenty-four-seven. Convincing a recent CS graduate is a lot easier when you can offer her more than just burritos. The myth that it costs more to live in New York has been pretty well refuted. And we've got Baohaus. Your move, San Francisco.
  
  
• Tech Community. Underdog, chip-on-the-shoulder, hustle. I love how the New York tech scene feels hungrier to prove itself. I hate when the New York tech scene calls itself "Silicon Alley." We are not derivative. Before Wu-Tang, hip hop in the nineties was dominated by the West Coast, then people realized they couldn't sleep on New York, and that the artists here were going to do it their own way.
  
  
• New Yorkers. Sure, we can be jerks sometimes, like when you're walking too damn slow on the sidewalk, but there's something awesome about knowing the guy sitting next to you on the subway doesn't give a fuck about your startup. It's a regular reminder that you've got to convince everyone that what you're doing is worth their time as well as the fact that tech startups aren't the only thing in the world that matters. My team and I rent desks from tutorspree down in Tribeca and for the last year I've been watching the World Trade Center rebuild before my eyes. It makes it really easy to go to work pushing pixels around when you watch something like that being constructed into the heavens.

Convinced? Let me know what I missed, New Yorkers!

See other Made in NY posts from LinkedIn Influencers:

• Michael Bloomberg: Making New York a World Class Tech Community
• Arianna Huffington: Capturing the Energy of New York for Our Audience
• Pete Cashmore: Why Mashable ?s New York
• Scott Belsky: For the Love of Start-Up Tech in NYC
• Hilary Mason: New York Needs More Crazy