What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need) • Hacker News Board

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#31

Post by tomkarlo » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 3:38 AM UTC

dougws wrote: post #14

old-gregg wrote: post #8

Great post, as usual. And agree with almost everything except this: > You can rent a decent place in a cool part of town on a typical startup salary. "Decent" and "typical" are open for interpretation, but I can tell that for most interpreters I know the expression above evaluates to False. :)

I'm about to start work at a New Yrk startup, and I have had no trouble finding a place to live on my probably average salary. Granted, I am single and don't have children, but I imagine that's not uncommon for startup employees.

It's not uncommon, but there are also lots of potential employees that have wives and kids (70% or more, I'd guess)... they're basically locked out unless they either want to do a long commute, or live in a tiny place.

I've done a lot of hiring to companies both in NY and in other cities, and the "where will my kids play and where will they go to school" is a standard issue for anyone you're hiring over 30. The answer in New York is generally "somewhere a lot less nice than they would if you lived elsewhere."

There's little denying that NY rents / housing prices are way out of line with average income at this point. I've heard bankers making $500K complain that they have to move to upstate to get a decent sized house.

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#32

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 3:58 AM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #30

jamesteow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Brooklyn is awesome. Great parties, concert venues, cafes, restaurants, parks, bars, and lots and lots of super talented people ranging from musicians in Williamsburg to artists in Bushwick. NYC is more than just Manhattan. It's also easier to bike around. It's like thinking that the Bay Area is just San Francisco and that there is no reason to live in the BA if you don't go to SF.

I love Brooklyn, but the rents aren't _that_ different from Manhattan if you're in the "hot" areas. Maybe 30% cheaper, but not 70%. Yeah, there are 'low' rents if you're willing to live an hour outside the city, but if you're in Williamsburg or Park Slope, it's not really appreciably cheaper. And at least for software engineers, you probably _do_ make more in SF than NY, since it's a much more competitive job market…

[deleted]

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#33

Post by andycroll » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:56 AM UTC

barce wrote: post #4

Replace 'NYC' with 'LA' and it's equally true.

Also, replace with 'Singapore' and it's equally true.

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#34

Post by look_lookatme » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #30

jamesteow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Brooklyn is awesome. Great parties, concert venues, cafes, restaurants, parks, bars, and lots and lots of super talented people ranging from musicians in Williamsburg to artists in Bushwick. NYC is more than just Manhattan. It's also easier to bike around. It's like thinking that the Bay Area is just San Francisco and that there is no reason to live in the BA if you don't go to SF.

I love Brooklyn, but the rents aren't _that_ different from Manhattan if you're in the "hot" areas. Maybe 30% cheaper, but not 70%. Yeah, there are 'low' rents if you're willing to live an hour outside the city, but if you're in Williamsburg or Park Slope, it's not really appreciably cheaper. And at least for software engineers, you probably _do_ make more in SF than NY, since it's a much more competitive job market…

I came to New York for work, but stayed for the people. Most of my friends live in nearby neighborhoods or clos-ish areas of Brooklyn. Certainly if I worked in the city I'd socialize a bit more there, but I'm not going out of my way to go in on a regular basis.

My rent is probably about 30% cheaper than the equivalent place in Manhattan, and that's savings of about $475 a month, which is nothing to scoff at.

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#35

Post by warfangle » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 10:58 AM UTC

daveambrose wrote: post #25

callmeed wrote: post #16

#4 really surprised me. what's the underlying issue with Internet in NYC?

A few lesons we learned in the last three years: we operated in Dogpatch Labs in union square for the first half of 2010 and the wireless was painfully slow. Some other teams actually brought in their MiFis and we used this to connect to webmail and calendars. Mabe this changed since then. We then moved to our own office in Chelsea and the Internet is bad here, as we use Verizon's second best connection. Depending up…

Fios isn't that much of a crap shoot. And it's available in much of lower Manhattan.

I also know for a fact that many unassuming buildings have gigabit ethernet drops that connect directly or semi-directly to 60 Hudson or 111 8th Ave. Probably wouldn't be able to get access without some serious contacts, though.

Most of the co-working spaces I've worked out of have horribly inept people in charge of their network allocation. They use older WiFi routers that have trouble with packet collisions. They provision a 768k DSL line to serve 20 coworking spots.

As recently as two weeks ago, about 16 people overloaded the internet at a coworking space I was visiting. Someone else (not affiliated with the space; the space employee didn't know how to do this) mentioned that they'd initiated a dhcp reset and a couple minutes later everything was back. When I asked him how he knew the router password, he said: "Oh.. they were just using the factory defaults." TBH, I wouldn't want to conduct business over a wifi network whose router was using the default admin password.

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#36

Post by warfangle » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 11:02 AM UTC

datums wrote: post #13

they need diversity

A few off the top of my head: Square (payments), Tumblr (blogging), Blip.tv (web series destination & distribution platform - disclosure, I work here), Admeld (remnant ad inventory yield optimization for high volume sites), Doubleclick (bought by GOOG a couple years ago), Indaba (music remix platform), a range of creative services (rga and mrm and the like eat souls, though).

There's a lot more here than finance, if you know where to look.

Re: What the NYC startup world needs (and doesn’t need)

#37

Post by nissimk » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 1:56 PM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #35

daveambrose wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few lesons we learned in the last three years: we operated in Dogpatch Labs in union square for the first half of 2010 and the wireless was painfully slow. Some other teams actually brought in their MiFis and we used this to connect to webmail and calendars. Mabe this changed since then. We then moved to our own office in Chelsea and the Internet is bad here, as we use Verizon's second best connection. Depending up…

Fios isn't that much of a crap shoot. And it's available in much of lower Manhattan. I also know for a fact that many unassuming buildings have gigabit ethernet drops that connect directly or semi-directly to 60 Hudson or 111 8th Ave. Probably wouldn't be able to get access without some serious contacts, though. Most of the co-working spaces I've worked out of have horribly inept people in charge of their network all…

Exceptional bandwidth is available in offices in NYC for reasonable prices. Cogent offers 100 Mbps service on their city-wide fiber backbone for 700 - 1000 / month. There are a number of other fiber / ethernet providers with similar service around 2X that price. Cogent is lit in many buildings in Manhattan and the list is available on their site. If you are in a lit building they can have you up and running within 3 weeks:

http://www.cogentco.com/index.php?continent=North+America&#3...