What sets New York apart from the rest of the world? New York attracts the most creative, ambitious, and hard-working people into one extremely diverse city. There’s an energy here that can’t be replicated anywhere else in the world. Mix that with a great nightlife, culture, and a city that never sleeps — you can see why the New York startup movement has been picking up momentum. I believe that NYC tech startups have a better eye for design, user experience, business models, and creating companies that solve real problems (and not launching more “me-too” companies). And the icing on the cake? The companies coming out of NYC right now are just… sexy. There’s no other way to explain it.
UPDATE (December 22, 2009): Just to clarify, I did not write this article as a “NYC versus the world” thought-piece. I wrote this piece to give a 50,000 feet view of what’s happening in New York City. There are many other cities with a thriving startup culture such as Boston, Silicon Valley, Seattle, New Orleans, Boulder, Los Angeles, etc. Each city is unique in its own way, and each city will continue to pick up momentum and be successful. For example, Post-Katrina New Orleans is starting to become the hub for social entrepreneurs. That’s very powerful. They’ll uniquely define themselves for the history books. If we take what works in each city, this is something that can be replicated in every community around the world. Entrepreneurship is vital for innovation, and can work everywhere from New York to Africa. (Endeavor.org is a great example of a non-profit organization building entrepreneurial hubs around the world to lift communities out of poverty).
Awesome writeup of the NYC startup scene. Good links and ideas on how to setup shared spaces and the like.
