After decades living in the shadow of the West Coast’s more numerous and wealthier geeks, 2013 was the year New York City’s tech start-up community really found its swagger.
Backing from City Hall and the metropolis’s first billion-dollar deal – Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr – built on several years of momentum to create a start-up community that is hoping to make up for what it lacks in deep technical capability with cultural and industrial diversity.
Some Silicon Valley luminaries are already starting to see New York as a better place to build tech start-ups – among other local perks. Sean Parker, the Napster founder and first president of Facebook, railed against Silicon Valley’s “echo chamber” when he hosted the Founders Forum event for entrepreneurs in New York this October.