New Tech City

In just a few short years, New York’s tech sector has emerged as an increasingly powerful economic driver for the city. At a time when few other industries were growing in New York, more than a thousand new tech start-ups were formed in the city. This burst of tech company formation has created thousands of good paying jobs in the five boroughs, attracted large amounts of capital from outside the city, pumped new life in the city’s entrepreneurial economy, and lured some of the world’s smartest and most innovative people to New York at a time when the most competitive cities are the ones with the best human capital and greatest capacity for innovation. The flood of digital start-ups in recent years has also transformed the city from a second-rate tech center to literally the nation’s second leading hub for technology companies. And as this report shows, there is ample evidence that what’s happening in New York’s tech scene today is no flash in the pan. Though a number of the recent Internet start-ups will ultimately fail, New York appears to be building a sustainable tech sector—one that is benefiting from a much stronger local tech ecosystem than existed in the city’s first wave of tech growth in the 1990s and taking advantage of several big technology trends that play to New York’s natural strengths.