Is New York's Tech Boom Sustainable? (PG asks)

When you think long-term, to me you can't escape the fact that SC is a small suburban community when compared to a mega-city like NYC. SC started out with a big advantage due to Stanford, and NYC has had large disadvantages to overcome in the past 4 decades due to crime, the collapse of the manufacturing sector, etc. (I read somewhere that until the early 70's NYC had more manufacturing jobs than Detroit due to textiles, etc., which really puts the speed of the shift in NYC's economy in perspective.) NYC has largely solved these disadvantages - it is now a very safe place to live and has an economy based on services, which means it is stocked full of smart ambitious people.

When people are what's important, whether they are customers, engineers, or whatever else, how can a suburb compete? To me it seems analgous to the fact that the tiny island of England could never sustain dominance over the world in the face of competition with a much larger and more diverse America.

This is the perfect example of a false dichotomy. Why can't both cities thrive as tech centers with different approaches? Why does NYC have to supersede SV (or why does SV have to stomp NYC)?

I'll posit an alternative: NYC ends up being an amazing hub for startups focusing on social (Foursquare, Tumblr, Etsy), fashion (Gilt Groupe), finance (HFT boutiques and small hedge funds), and education. SV, meanwhile, continues kicking ass.

PG always talks about margins, so consider: would the marginal company that barely succeeds in SV fail in NYC? Does anyone really believe that NYC lacks the financial or technological serendipity Graham mentioned last night? After living here for a month and hustling like crazy to talk to people, I'd argue NYC is full of opportunity.

I'd also argue PG's talk yesterday aimed to generate media buzz (see today's NYT article, TC, etc.) and publicity for YC. That's a conversation for another thread.

PG. I was at the NYCYC meetup last night and I don't understand all the attention of the valley vs. New York. The startup economy is not zero sum game. It doesn't matter which location is #1, There are plenty of dollars to go around and other then competing for dev and other resources (which while difficult is not the biggest hurdle a start up is going to face) what's the point of the discussion? Cities aren't threats to each other, it's not like the port of Philly competing with the port of NY/NJ. Shipping is a zero sum game, startups aren't.

YC has expanded, but in a centralized fashion.

When it comes to expanding to NYC (which amounts to doubling the number of offices), here are some considerations off the top of my head:

* To have double the # of locations, you would need to hire a bunch more partners in order to double the sum talent/experience in your pool for Office Hours (lest the talent/experience density be diminished, harming YC and all its companies). But it's not just about sum talent/experience, because there's a big chunk of experience that no startup vet out there has: experience being a YC partner.

* YC dinners are about connections. To maintain the same quality of connections in a second location, the new partners would of course have to be as connected and as trusted in NYC as are the SV partners in SV.

* Launch emails (AKA the YC "press release") are typically written by PG. There is only one PG, and perhaps he can't or doesn't want to write twice as many launch emails every year. For all we know, going from ~8 potential launches to ~40 may have pushed him to the limit. If PG were made to write twice as many, he would only be half as intimate with each company.

* One of YC's most valuable assets is the reputation of its selection filter. If YC were to accept twice as many startups (assuming twice the # of applicants, of course), the partners and advisors running its current selection process would need to be either mirrored in NYC or overworked remotely. Again, this is a finely-tuned machine, and it's not as simple as "hire 5-10 smart startup vets and stick them in NYC to start interviewing candidates".

TL;DR: While I'm sure YC has considered (and are perhaps still considering) expanding to NYC, for you to claim that you understand their business better than they do is presumptuous. To suggest that "elitism" is YC's rationale for staying in SV is insulting, and to suggest that it is the sole potential rationale is woefully lacking in vision.