@Bruce, I agree. This is one big reason I've moved to Bay Ridge, and there are definitely other areas ripe and still not too expensive. The downside, of course, is that all transportation is based around coming in and out of Manhattan. Jersey City, Long Island City, and Bay Ridge all provide easy access into various parts of Manhattan, but it's not necessarily quick and easy to get from JC to Bay Ridge - which effectively excludes some of the talent who might live there. There are many CT and Long Island people leaving my company after being moved to Jersey City.

I think perhaps (and I had this in my original post but I guess I edited out) many in NY haven't quite caught on to the idea of deferred compensation. Despite similar costs (and Silicon Valley is certainly not "cheap"), workers there seem to be more content to take on the risk. As we discussed on Wed, maybe that's a cultural thing - they're exposed to it from a young age and maybe don't have the same lure from the overflowing financial industry here.

No, cost is not a dealbreaker as we've seen with Silicon Valley, but it doesn't make it any easier. It is, in my mind, one of the major hurdles we're going to have to overcome. Having successful entrepreneurs like Darren who are involved in and help feed the economy are a big start. The mere presence of early stage funding takes some of the perceived (financial) risk out doing a startup, which is what Silicon Valley has.

I also think it's important for the universities to become more involved, particularly NYU given its location. Silicon Valley has those institutions at its core, and Austin (who is probably on most people's radars) and Pittsburgh (which is probably not but is on its way up) have their anchors with UT and CMU respectively. Schools feed the ecosystem with talent and enthusiasm and are a resource that must be tapped. The challenge there for the aforementioned cities is keeping graduates - but certainly both have a significant advantage when it comes to cost.

@Darren - I hadn't had a chance to write this up, but I generally agree with the sentiments you and Nate wrote about. Personally, I think it was very successful because the goal shouldn't be "quick fixes" to make this Silicon Valley. I don't think you can force community and ecosystems to happen or they will inevitably fail. It needs to be an organic thing, and events like last night (both in terms of networking and the confidence in knowing that there are others out there in a similar situation) goes a long way towards that goal.

And to your other point, we do have other strengths and ties into other industries and we'd be foolish not to leverage them. There are cross-sections with media, fashion, and financial industries which we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of, and we shouldn't (and don't, I'd say) ignore those opportunities.

And besides defines a "technology" company today anyway? Is Google a technology company? Some might say that it's really a media/advertising company. The key - as you made the point on Wed - is applying technology and moving up the food chain. This is perhaps the key difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 - in Web 1.0, it was often technology for technology's sake, whereas Web 2.0 is about applying technology to solve real problems, with the advantage that we don't have to build the infrastructure from the ground up anymore.