[jwinter]

> And yet whatever argument you use to prove that startups don't need to move from London to Silicon Valley could equally well be used to prove startups don't need to move from smaller towns to London.

Well, what if it isn't the raw number that makes a city a startup hub, but having a certain minimum amount of startups? That argument would then account for small towns not being as startup-friendly as London, but London (or Boston or New York) being an equal to Silicon Valley. Maybe the startup friendliness of a town looks more like a logarithmic graph than a linear one.

[karzeem]

PG's point about non-Silicon Valley VCs not knowing their stuff as well is a good one, but your point helps bolster the other side of the argument.

New York may be underrated as a startup hub, for the reason you cite. According to Wikipedia, "though it is not often thought of as a 'College Town', there are about 594,000 university students in New York City, the highest number of any city in the United States." Similarly, there's a lot of startup activity in New York, but it's not considered a startup hub because there's so much else going on in the city. Silicon Valley doesn't have anything else going on, so startups and the tech industry dominate its image.

[tokipin]

not sure about that, but i can say that new york is an ugly city, and i'm happy it's not a technology hub

[karzeem]

There are definitely people out there who cannot stand New York for a minute. These are the people who associate it much more with the city of Taxi Driver and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than the one of Annie Hall.