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New York
New York startups jokingly call their city “Silicon Alley.” Over the past decade, thanks in large part to Mayor Bloomberg, New York has become the No. 2 startup hub in the U.S., surpassing Boston in terms of investment.
Foursquare, Kickstarter – this is the new face of the New York scene. Creating a startup (as opposed to becoming a financier, banker or lawyer) has become fashionable in this city. Most startups have settled in the Flatron, Chelsea and Gotham areas of Manhattan, where rent is not as high as in other areas. A typical startup office (and often the home of its founders) is a small, lighted studio with a high ceiling. The city administration actively supports the emergence of affordable office space, and Internet companies are also participating. Google, for example, rents out most of its 110,000 square meter office building in Chelsea to tech and media startups. The city authorities are actively promoting the new industry, organizing festivals and competitions, issuing grants and organizing nursing homes email database projects to modernize the city's infrastructure and education.

The rise of New York is directly related to the success of the Valley. While the West Coast was creating tech platforms, the East Coast was capitalizing on its advantages. New York is a city of art, design, fashion, music, clubs and restaurants; startups here focus on social, media and design. In a sense, the East Coast tech scene grew on the shoulders of the Valley: without the existing platforms, it would never have emerged. But New York also remains the financial capital of the United States – access to capital is even easier here than in San Francisco. Moreover, Wall Street has had a bad karma since the crisis, so funding startups (as well as working in them) is now, among other things, fashionable and cool. Another interesting feature of local startups is that they are much more female. The same Gilt Groupe, a startup that has become an icon for fashionistas, was founded by Alexandra Wilson and Alexis Baybank, two Harvard graduates.

Coastal competition is good for the US startup industry: the West has more technical talent, the East – creative. The New York startup community is very ambitious and will not stop at second place: more and more large companies and venture funds of the Valley open their large offices in the city. However, not all. Paul Graham, for example, said at the YC NYC startup show that he would never open Y Combinator in New York. “Startups are prone to failure. The antidote to this is to meet Sean Parker,” he joked, recalling the Facebook story. But only in the Valley can you be guaranteed to meet Parker on the street. So many people from the industry live in the San Francisco Bay Area that social norms are built around the startup culture, and not the other way around. “Our entrepreneurs value the quality of what they create above all else. Even above money. New York is obsessed with money, and you can’t fix that so easily with startup hangouts. The Valley is a magnet for visionaries, New York for predatory dealers." That's why Y Combinator selects promising companies in New York, but takes them to the Valley. There is some truth in his words; among the city's entrepreneurs, there are too many who try to raise a lot of funding for an idea and then somehow create a product. But either way, the competition between the West and the East will be very interesting to watch.

The U.S. startup scene is not limited to these regions. There is Seattle, with its aerospace sector (and Microsoft), Chicago, with its financial IT (and Groupon), Washington, with its government contracts, Miami, Nashville, San Diego. Of course, not all of them will be able to maintain a thriving industry forever, just as Detroit and other industrial centers of the last century did not. But there is one thing to learn from them: each American startup hub has its own unique qualities that allow it to stand out from the backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area. There is no point in copying Silicon Valley - it is unique.

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