That used to be the refrain of New York City. However, when it comes to internet startups, New York is much like any other place. Last year Chris Dixon, NY-based cofounder of Hunch, wrote that New York needs its own TechCrunch. A blog to build up the awareness of the local scene. Much like we’re planning to here for the Øresund-region, shortly. A few months later, here’s Dixon’s Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake with another familiar message:
And Matt is absolutely right that what New York really needs right now is a Billion Dollar Company — an eBay or a Google or a PayPal or a Facebook — and an exit that releases all the people working there from their obligations and frees them to go forth and start new companies.
If you were at TechCrunch Nordic week before last, you would have heard something very similar about Copenhagen.
Fake wrote in response to this post, which basically gives in to Valley-envy, enumerating all the reasons not to be in New York, if you’re doing a startup.
The point from a Copenhagen perspective is obvious: If even a vibrant place like New York has Valley-envy, any place can suffer from Valley-envy, which makes our local edition of Valley-envy (“the investors/business plans/techies are not ambitious enough”) seem laughably irrelevant.