Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin

What makes Silicon Valley so special - it welcomes people from all over the world to come and build their dream. There is less racism, classism, sexism, or general prejudice here than anywhere else I’ve been. Part of it is the unique history of the bay area and part of it is that hyper-competition has no place for prejudice, it simply gets weeded out.

Nevertheless, New York, New York–of if you can make it here you can make it anywhere fame–is a mighty Big Apple tech entrepreneurship destination of choice and the capital of the world has always been the chosen immigrant home for hard working innovators from all over the planet seeking to “build their dreams,” as the NYC world renownded beacon for non-discrimination, the Statue of Liberty, attests to.

Arrington started up the West Coast TechCrunch three years ago. I am a native New Yorker and have been championing Silicon Alley tech entrepreneurship for the past eleven years, from the heart of Manhattan.

I created the first Internet for Entrepreneurs workshop in New York City in 1997, on behalf of the SCORE service of the Small Business Administration and instructed metro area Fortune 500 execs on Internet strategy as Adjunct Professor of Information Systems for the NYU Stern MBA program, my alma matter.

I am also a Silicon Alley Internet entrepreneur for my own account, the Founder & CEO of UrbanSavings.com, one of the first Web-based directional media plays providing local merchants a cost-effective, trackable online way to drive new and repeat business to their offline operations.

I am now fueling New York technology entrepreneurship via my new Silicon Alley startup for Silicon Alley startups.

(StartupAlpha.com: LAUNCH PARTY MAY 13, 2008!)

TechCrunch may hail that Uncle Sam wants all foreign born technologists to get the West Coast fever, but New York City “is a thriving market for technology companies,” just ask New York City:

NYC Economic Development Corporation: With unparalleled infrastructure and funding, a world-class labor pool and a vast business community that relies upon extensive technology support, New York metro area technology businesses have access to venture funding and enterprise investments. The City’s financial service firms alone estimated more than $86 billion on IT spending in 2007.

The City is extensively wired, with Atlantic undersea fiber networks from Europe coming ashore almost exclusively in New York City. We are the nation’s leading hub for domestic and international broadband networks. More than twice as much internet capacity terminates in the City as in Baltimore/ Washington, the second largest U.S. hub. Our fiber optic infrastructure is the best in the U.S. More than 3,700 buildings in New York are fiber-lit, representing more fiber-lit leasable space than any other city.

New York City salaries for technology employees are nationally competitive. NYC’s technology salaries are more affordable than Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Boston. Google has established their second largest office outside California, with over 250,000 sf . Microsoft and Yahoo! have made similarly large investments in the City to be close to Madison Avenue and all of the Big Media companies, that are voracious users of technology and services.

With a Web economy fueled by advertising dollars and a financial services industry needing ever more sophisticated IT solutions, Silicon Alley will shine ever brighter as the tech startup destination of choice: New York, NewYork, the MEDIA and FINANCIAL Capital of the World!

Silicon Alley: Tech Capital of the World? WHY NOT!

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