Venture capitalist Matt Turck has a post up on his blog that is packed full of information about the New York City tech ecosystem. (He has also written similar posts about Berlin and Paris.)
His overall thesis is that New York – as a startup/tech hub – is only now starting to catch up to the hype of 4 or 5 years ago. He now refers to NYC as the de facto Number 2 after the Bay Area.
If you’re interested in all of this, you can go read his full post. But I would like to pull out 2 points. The first is about the “rinse and repeat” cycle that happens over time that allows cities to become substantive startup hubs:
As any student of emerging tech ecosystems knows, the key dynamic to success is the “rinse and repeat” cycle. You need several waves of successful tech companies to go through the whole cycle of founding, financing, scaling and significant exit. Post-exit, the hope is that successful founders, employees and investors then contribute back both money and expertise to the next generation of tech startups, a few of which eventually become highly successful themselves and then provide money and expertise to the following generation.