However, today I read this article in the NYT about a new VC fund called NYC Seed which is great. That is, until you read this gem:
“The organizers have amassed a bankroll of $2 million and will invest up to $200,000 per homegrown start-up.”
What?! Fucking huh? 10 fucking startups? That’s what you’re planning to fund? 10 cookie cutter shit head douchebag run fucking social network mashups that’ll flame out in a month or just become a rails consultancy 'cause they can’t hack the video online “space”?
I mean seriously, who do these jerks think they are? There’s no way a founder in this city can furnish his sweet love nest to take his conquests from IgniteNYC. I mean, 200k in this city gets you a hand job at a glory hole, not groupies.
Alright, deep breaths. I promised I wouldn’t rant anymore but this really is just fucking retarded. Especially when you then read this article about the BofA CEO wanting to give back 20 BILLION dollars he just kind of didn’t need.
Let’s put this into perspective shall we: 20 BILLION dollars would fund one hundred thousand startups at the same price. It could give ten thousand startups 2 million dollars.
Honestly though, if this NYCSeed has 2 million to fund, what they should do is dual fund a coworking space and give 20k to each startup to start them off. If they did it right, the dual prong attack of reducing the startups’ costs and handing them a small amount of money would give the operation a better chance since it would remove the main cause of failure, and provide a limiter to the hubris of the founders.
There are several reasons why technology just doesn’t take off here the way it does in Silicon Valley. The primary reason in my mind is that California has laws that protect employees from their employers stealing off-hours work. In California, tech workers have no problem working on the next hot start-up in their spare time because they know Megalo Corp won’t own it when they’re done. I believe California is the only state in the US that has this law, and wow look, it’s the only state with a rampant churn of startups and innovation that now rivals the banking industry in capital.
However, at a more micro level, what screws up technology startups in the city are the high costs of doing business here, combined with the dominance of banking sucking away all the talent and money. The government has no problem handing BofA 20 BILLION dollars they didn’t really need, but when the .com bust happened in 2000 there wasn’t a single shred of assistance to technology companies.
Incidentally, the .com bust happened because the same banks that are screwing up our economy were making illegal pump-and-dump schemes using technology company stocks. That’s why 17 Citibank executives went to prison and we got a whole raft of regulations preventing analysts from talking to bankers.
This problem is easily solved, but it takes the same amount of money that the city and the country pours into banking. If they want technology to go somewhere, then why not state that the banks must make their first 1 billion dollars in funding go to technology startups. Shit, BofA CEO man wants to give back 20 billion, just lop a little chunk of that off and fund some real innovation instead of “financial innovation”.
Now, don’t get me wrong, New York is really the greatest city to live in, for everything except working as a programmer. While the douchebag banking frat boys control about 1/3 of the attention, the other 2/3rds of the pie is really owned by artistic and nerdy people. In this city, if you’re a geeky man, you can have a great time and people respect you for what you do. You can have a whole other alternative life outside of technology when you’re here.
Lately though, I’ve been thinking of moving to Silicon Valley just to have a few years of the experience. After reading articles like this for years about how little money technology gets compared with banking in NYC, and after seeing how much fun people on the other side of the country have, it’s very tempting.
Of course, then I’d have to put up with California and it’s nasty car fetish, horrible prison system, crime, actors, crap music scene, cilantro, avocados, and passive aggressive nit wits.