Ask HN: SF vs. NYC?

This is from a guys perspective.

Pros

The Valley -

- Great tech thinkers

- Great engineers

- Great companies

- Great tech sector

- Great VC scene

- Great weather

- Great nature

- Great food

- Great wine

- Great tech startup culture

- Great interface design scene

New York -

- Great food

- Great intellectuals

- Great financial sector

- Great fashion scene

- Great media sector

- Great energy

- Great serendipity scene

- Great industry spread

- Great club scene

- Notoriously beautiful woman (i.e. great dating scene)

Cons

- The Valley -

- Decentralized tech scene

- Lots of driving needed

- Lots and lots of "me too" startups (surprisingly many)

- Horrible club scene

New York -

- No real tech scene

- Expensive

- Lot's of conservative business

- Extreme weather

In other words

Both The Valley and NYC are great places to be. In a perfect world you would spend half your time in The Valley and other half in NYC. How is it the saying go?

Live on the West Coast once but leave before it makes you too soft, live in New York one but leave before it makes you too hard.

Personally I think NYC is best for young people (<40) and the Valley is where I want to retire others might think the exact opposite.

I did the first half of my career in the Bay Area (>10 years) and am finishing it in NYC. Been in startups in both places. Here are the biggest differences I've noticed since moving to NY:

1. Old money. In California, the VCs and Angels I met were mostly self-made; they had cashed-out of the dotcom boom, or recently been apart of an IPO. They were all 20 - 40 somethings. NY is very different. I had never been exposed to the "country club" / "summer house in Nantucket" / "trust fund" scene before. It definitely feels like a different planet sometimes. So if you're raising money, be prepared to have conversations with the type of people you might have thought didn't exist anymore.

2. No echo-chamber. For the best and brightest in NYC, tech is often NOT the obvious choice. In many circles, going to the tech scene, (let alone the startup scene), is seen as odd. ("Why didn't you go into finance?" "Why didn't you go into law?" "Why aren't you a doctor yet?"). The greatest minds of the generation are becoming MOTUs (Masters of the Universe) at hedge funds and big banks. They're making a ridiculous amount of money, and really have no interest in this little tech thing we're doing. Talking about your startup in NYC feels odd sometimes. You're not praised or catered-to like you are in SF. Nobody really cares what you're doing, and nobody takes you that seriously until your run-rate is the hundreds of millions per year. It's a nice change in context actually. The SV echo chamber is gone.

Besides that (and NYC's insane weather), things are pretty much the same. Lots of talent, but it's expensive to hire. Lots of businesses, some good, some bad. Lots of VCs and Angels. Terrible rent, good food, etc.

Is it worth the move? Yes. Simply because when you move to NYC you may be seated at a cramped restaurant shoulder-to-shoulder with your next investor; and in SF you might see @sama walking down Market street. That kind of "right place at the right time" moments are more rare outside of those cities. Which coast you choose is entirely up to you; either way you're making a good move.