This week, NY Tech Meetup organizer and Meetup.com CEO Scott Heiferman outlined a vision  for the future of the group that included a board and community elected organizer.  He talked about the meetup becoming more than what it is.

The idea that the NY Tech Meetup could be more than just a monthly meeting with a few presentations is what led me to create nextNY in the first place.  Rather than go with more structure, we've gone with less.  nextNY has no official organizer and everyone is free to run an event and add to our site--which is in itself a combo of a wiki, blog, job board and other stuff that members just put up themselves.  I think it has become the goto place for a real sense of community in NYC tech.

So that leaves open the question of where the NY Tech Meetup fits.  Should it become more like a professional society?  I don't think so.  We've seen two industry professional organizations develop here--the New York New Media Association (NYNMA) and the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) and neither proved to be the community unifier that's needed here.  Organic groups have flourished--a testiment to Meetup.com's own philosophy--which makes it somewhat ironic that Scott should look to build more structure on grass roots.

In a city of lots of structure and money, at least on the outside, it seems to me that structure and money isn't often what gets communities moving together--and often times, it can be an impediment.  Not only that, there's no shortage of structure and resources already in place and our biggest challenge is tapping that and making what we have better.

One thing that Scott is right about is that more could be done for the NY tech community.  I'm just not sure that the NY Tech Meetup is the right vehicle for it, but I'm also not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.  You see, a couple of weeks ago, David Rose and I, at a NYC Council hearing, seperately called for the creation of a single position whose role would be to bring together all of the disparate pieces of the NYC innovation community--a community manager if you will.  More than space or money, if NYC is to take avantage of what it already has, it needs a focal point and a conduit for communication.  In a sea of offices, committees, groups, task forces, meetups, unconferences, and incubators, a single human with an email address, phone number, blog, and a Twitter account could accomplish a ton. 

Such a person would go university to university, community group to community group, to all the government offices, VC funds, angels, etc...  and start off with an assessment.  What do we have?  In the process, that person would become a connector.  A person who could put like minded people together two at a time as often as they put 500 people in the same room.

So, its rather fortuitous that one of the largest groups of tech professionals in the city is in the market for a mission statement and an organizer to carry it out.  I think this is the perfect opportunity to put forward a single person whose job it will be to reach out to the various parts of the NYC tech community and inspire them to work together for a common purpose. 

In my opinion, Nate Westheimer is the most appropriate person for that position.

Keep in mind I said appropriate.  He's not the most experienced--there are other folks who have managed larger communities before or who have been involved in the NY scene for 10, 15, or 20 years.  And, he's not a 5 time repeat entrepreneur or successful VC.  

However, I don't think experience is really what's critical here.  Experience, in this case, presents two problems. 

First, experience gives you a view--you form an opinion and perspective as to what the problems and solutions are related to this community.  That's a problem because the person who can bring the community together can't be someone putting forward their own agenda.  Their agenda must be a synthesis of the community's agenda.  They must be an agnostic aggregator. 

The other thing a lot of experience gives you is the perception, and maybe reality, that you already know most of the people you need to know.  The person who would make the best Community Organizer is not the person that everyone already knows--its the person who will strive to expand and diversify their network.  While Nate knows a lot of the up and comer crowd, there are lots of people in "industry" and the academic world as well that don't know him, and I think he knows that.  

What also makes Nate qualified is that his current job as an EIR at RoseTech Ventures should be 100% synergystic with being the NY Tech Meetup Organizer.  The more that Nate reaches out to the tech community, the more he'll learn about different opportunities and the more people will reach out to him for advice, and perhaps financing.  It's also great that he's not working for a VC, so you can be assured that if he does discover investment opportunities in his job, RoseTech and David will likely seek to syndicate the deal like you'd expect an angel to do.  You wouldn't have to worry about RoseTech getting an unfair "first look" at everything because angels don't hoard their deals--they need other angels or funds to get deals done.

The other thing that makes Nate naturally qualified for this job is that it is inherently social and Nate's a very social guy.  To leverage the NY Tech Meetup as a platform for bringing the community together, he'd really have to reach out and participate in the community the way more experienced people who have kids and families generally won't.  I say that having been the junior guy at a VC firm where the partners, at the end of the day, weren't realistically going to spend three or for nights out at various tech events--but that's where community happens--so it was part of my job to participate in that scene.  That means going to the nextNY events, the Media Meshings, hanging out with the NYC Resistor crew, and even travelling--representing NYC out at Web 2.0 Expo in SF and in other places.  Is it possible for someone else with more life responsibilities to take this on?  Sure...  but more often than not, life just puts on you certain logistical limitations that Nate has proven he can work around when he's passionate about something--he just spent nearly a month campaigning for the Obama campaign in Ohio.  It's this kind of on the ground, door to door effort that the NY Tech Meetup needs--more of a servant of the community than a lead. 

Plus, I'm sure he'll have help.  I don't know what the board will look like, but ultimately, I'm sure that folks like myself, Scott, Dawn Barber, etc. will support his efforts along the way.

As to who else might run?

Well, first off, I'm definitely not running.  I have more than enough to do and my priority is Path 101.

The subject of conflicts is important here, and I want to take a second to address that.  There are people here in the city who are making very successful businesses out of creating communities around them.  That includes Mashable, the Hatchery, SobelMedia, BDI and others.  Those are great business models and their efforts are an integral part of the ecology of the tech community.   However, their mission conflicts with the idea of having the NY Tech Meetup be the center of the NY tech community in a way that just running another non for profit meetup doesn't.  They have a direct business incentive to build community around them and so I wouldn't support the candidacy of any owner of those businesses, despite the fact that they are a group of very savvy and sophisticated people who contribute a lot to the community.  I would not support their candidacy or participation on the board.  The board should, however, make room for NYC government folks and venture capital firms.

And, I'll say it, and I'm not trying to be mean...   but Richie Hecker isn't the guy either.  Richie, you mean well, but I think you have a lot to learn about how to contribute to the community rather than distract it by promoting your own efforts.  I don't want to be negative, but I know Richie will probably run and get a bunch of friends to vote for him, so I just want to cut that off before it gets out of hand.  Again, not a bad guy, but not the right guy for the job.

Thanks for reading this whole post.  I know it was long.

A short time ago, I got invited to testify in front of the NYC Council. The hearing is supposed to:

"...focus on improving the city’s technology small business sector. The hearing will examine the state of a business sector that NY has traditionally lagged behind in, specifically the recently created NYC Seed program, which will provide up to $200,000 (per company) of investment into New York-based technology start-ups. The hearing will also examine what steps can be taken to better fund (i.e. venture capitalism) the growth of startup technological companies in order to make NYC more competitive with other cities when it comes to the technology sector."

Here's the testimony that I'll give today:

Charlie O'Donnell (charlie@path101.com)

Co-founder & CEO of Path 101 (www.path101.com), Founder, nextNY (www.nextNY.org),  Blogger (www.thisisgoingtobebig.com), #71 on 2007 Silicon Alley Insider Influentials list, Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship - Fordham University, Instructor - ITAC FastTrac

First, I'd like to say thank you to the Council members who continue to have a strong interest in the NYC technology community.   Having a critical mass of influential people committed to maintaining and improving New York City as a place for innovation is half the battle.

Unfortunately for an organization as large as the New York City government, the other half of this battle is a ground war.  The ideas that will have the most impact on the local technology community are those that go house to house, school to school, wifi node to wifi node.  The stumbling blocks to improving our area's ability to promote innovation aren't simple--they're nounced. 

Take, for example, the NYC Seed program.  There has never ever been a lack of capital in New York City--for any kind of investment.  Many startups have been funded by people in the financial or real estate industries, when they're not funded by traditional venture capital firms.   No, money is not the issue, as I have written about before.  The issue is that there are not enough dedicated institutions who are economically incentivized to build community and business infrastructure here.  Owen Davis, at the end of the day, is one guy with $2 million who will get the chance to help 10 companies over the next year.  That's fantastic, but what if policy changes lead to the abandoning of this program.  Other than those 10 companies, which early stage statistics assume that at least half probably won't make it anyway, what will be the permanent impact of his work? 

If he had, let's say, a four year window, as most venture capital firms do, he'd have the time to build the necessarily relationships with all of the places where innovation comes from here in the city.  If he had a staff member or two, he'd be able to spend time not just investing, but working to create permanent channels to schools, businesses, professional groups, and technology centers--and he'd have the time horizon to accept longer term return on investment from building these relationships.  Institutional investors give their VCs a four year mandate to make investments across economic cycles--there's no reason why NYC Seed shouldn't have the same runway.  

At the end of the day, longer committments and more people on the ground are needed because innovation comes not from technology, but from people--and New York City technology has a people problem.  Local schools, with few exceptions, are not consistantly developing students focused on creating value through entrepreneurship and technological innovation.  You can build all the incubators you want--unless you're seeding students as early as high school or junior high with the idea that they could build the next Google here in New York, and giving them the learning tools to accomplish that, it's never going to happen.  

Here are two suggestions I'd make for New York City to make a bigger people impact:

First, I'd create the position of a technology community manager.  Large websites have community managers to make sure that they're aware what's going on in their communities, and that their communities are aware of all of the site's resources.  I'm as involved in the local community as any entrepreneur, and I still can't tell you the difference between what the NYC Council's mandate is related to technology and how that differs from the EDC, the Department of Small Business Services, how they relate to NYSTAR, etc.   A community manager would be a single point of contact whose mandate would be to familiarize themselves with all city services, local university programs, community groups, large businesses interested in working with the local tech community and other initiatives.  For example, nextNY is looking to run an event on business development best practices for startup companies.  We're looking for some space to run the event for between 50-100 people.  We have no budget.  I know there's probably some big company with a sizable conference room who'd love to have a bunch of startups come in and talk about business development one night.   I just don't know who that is and how to contact them.   A tech community manager could do that--and significantly help with these types of issues that involved local entrepreneurs try to solve on their own all the time in addition to their dayjobs.  

The second thing I would do would be to refocus on technology education in not only the public school system but also work with private schools and universities as well.  It needs to start early, too.  We can't have all our creative and talented youth thinking that their only opportunity for success in NYC is to work for a Fortune 500 company, because small business and entrepreneurship is what drives the growth in our economy.  How about a charter school built around information technology entrepreneurship--one that works with the best local computer science programs to provide scholarships to students trying to create their own businesses?   We need better answers to the question, "Where do world class developers come from in NYC?"   Right now, the school system isn't the answer to that question.

More than anything else, though, I think it's important that our local government--the individuals--lead by example and participate in the local technology community.  The local community is hyper connected through blogging, social networking sites, and a quirky but rapidly growing service called Twitter that ties people together one 160 character short form message at a time.  There are currently almost 2000 up and coming technology and digital media professionals on the nextNY listserv--are any of you on it?   Sure, it's kind of geeky in it's content, but you can set it to provide a daily digest.   If you're not on it, and can't spare the time to read the one daily digest e-mail of the group's activities, I'm not exactly sure how you're really going to be able to be supportive of the local tech community.  Communities are growing organically on these sites--like the 500+ people who have attached themselves to the Shake Shack Twitter account, mostly local tech folks, in order to navigate the long lines at our favorite local food establishment.   These communities are growing largely without the participation of local government leaders.  How many of you have a blog on your own websites that gets at least one posting a week, or a social networking profile that you yourself actually login to with similar frequency?   If you're not doing this, you're really not going to be in the flow of the needs of the local community.

I just wanted to write a quick note of thanks to everyone who was involved in Tuesday's nextNY @shakeshack event.  I'm sure I'll leave folks out:

First off, Fred Wilson made the intro to Danny Meyer.  That's what got us in the door.  Danny, who apparently came by but who I didn't get to meet, put us in touch with his staff and the folks at the Madison Square Park Conservancy.  They've worked together on many previous events and they made it happen logistically.

The actual event could not have possibly run any smoother, so I owe much thanks to Vernon Patterson from the Shake Shack and his staff, as well as Debbie Landau and her staff from the Conservancy: Lizzie Honan, Leah Milton, and Maggi Landau.  I expect that SOMETHING would go wrong, but it didn't... not at all.  Not even a blip--especially considering we did the whole plan in less than four weeks--a testament to their organizational skills.

Of course, someone had to pay for all those burgers, the shakes, and the beer (and purple cows, too!).  In two weeks, we covered all our costs with great sponsors that were able to move fast--the first, fastest, largest and most fun were the folks from chi.mp.  They were extremely visable, from their banners to their t-shirts, and worked hard to get all of the attendees beta invites to their service.

Also coming up big for us were the NY Angels, who not only contributed financially, but also made a big splash with their turnout.  I don't think I've ever seen so many of the angels out at an event. 

Recruiting firm Winter Wyman was also a major supporter.  After my recent call for tech recruiting firms to participate more in the community, they've been getting their feet wet in social media.  You can find partner Mike Fitzgerald on Twitter and on his new blog at Alley Hunting .

Video chat service Paltalk, law firm Cooley Godward Kronish, NYC venture capital firm RRE, Square 1 Bank (see the article on the nextNY blog), and the Incubator at RoseTech Ventures were also big supporters.

Still, with 300 people and the prime location, we needed every bit of help we could get, and when we put out the call, several others helped as well.  Startup MyJambi, law firm Pillsbury Winthrop, funding software Angelsoft, reputation service BeenVerified, PR firms Bite PR and the Horn Group, Path 101, and social network CafeMom all pitched in as well.   In fact, I wasn't really familar with some of these services and sites, and so I'll be profiling them on my blog over the next week, because I'm curious.

I also want to thank everyone who pitched in and helped at the front desk--too many to mention and lots who just jumped in to help.

But most of all, I want to thank everyone who came!  You made the event.  I get a lot of credit for stuff because I'm the initiator, but this was a community event.  Without the community, it would have been just a bald dude in the park with way too much to eat and a lot of extra booze.  So, to everyone who enjoyed the event, you should pat yourselves on the back for participating.  The New York City tech community is strong and vibrant--much stronger than before.  Financial crisis?  Bring it.  We'll weather this storm and be better for it.

As many of you know, we have a very special event going on here in NYC next Tuesday night called @shakeshack.  The name comes from the Twitter bot us Big Apple geeks use to organize our midday jaunts to the famous Madison Square Park Venue.

The event is going to be huge: 300 key people in the NYC community:  VCs, Angels, developers, designers, business people.  You can check out the attendee list here.  Sorry, but it's totally full!

We couldn't do the event, however, without sponsors, and a number of startup and tech friendly folks stepped up to make it happen.  We'll be spotlighting those folks leading up to the event as part of their sponsorship, but more than anything else out of our appreciation for their support.

Our first is Square 1 Bank.  I asked Brad Steele about what the bank does and here's is response:

"In a nutshell, we specialize exclusively in providing commercial banking services and senior debt financing to venture capital-backed companies and venture capital firms.  That's all we do.

We are keenly aware of the ups and downs, life cycle stages and challenges early stage, emerging growth companies face as they drive to become a large, dominant player in its space.  The traditional, mid-market regional and larger money center banks like the ones you mentioned below, are no very little about the venture capital world, entrepreneurs and start-up companies. It's important for an emerging growth, venture-backed company to surround itself with professionals who specialize in their world. 

That's us. 

You wouldn't go to a mortgage company for a car loan.  Why would you go to a bank who doesn't cater to venture-backed companies when you have an option which does?

"Innovation. Risk. Potential." High-tech shorthand like this describes the very essence of hundreds of young technology companies in the New York area.

For traditional business banks, terms like "conservative" and "risk-averse" are more appropriate descriptors--a profile that contrasts sharply... ...with hard-charging technology companies and their equally aggressive professional investor partners.

Square 1 specializes in meeting the requirements of emerging growth, venture-backed technology and life sciences companies.  We tailor our service offerings and lending styles specifically to the needs to these companies and their more mature counterparts.

Venture bankers like those found at Square 1, on the other hand, understand that traditional attributes may not capture the true value of an enterprise and they are willing to consider additional factors.

For instance, the expertise and track record of a high-tech company's top management carries a great deal of weight. Another critical factor (particularly for start-up firms) is whether the company has gained the backing of a financial firm. Professional investor backing is a key consideration for venture banks, and the larger and more experienced the venture capital firm is, the better chance the company will have to obtain a bank loan. Venture bankers will also evaluate the company's intangible assets. For example, intellectual property--including patents, copyrights and trademarks--may be considered acceptable collateral."

You can learn a lot more about Square 1 Bank at @shakeshack, where Brad and several members of the Square 1 Bank team will be in attendence, or you can contact him directly at bsteele (at) square1bank (dot)com.

Don't be shy.  We know you're out there reading, even though you just lurk.

Almost everyday, a recruiter calls our office number, even though we ask people not to on our site.  I'll let you all in on a secret--that number is not a real phone that rings.  It goes straight to PhoneTag and dumps into my e-mail in a transcription, so you're actually better off just e-mailing me.

The truth of the matter is, you all just kind of seem the same to us startup folk. 

You're selling us people...and we're a pretty hyperconnected group.  You'd be hard pressed to convince me that you can find anyone that I couldn't find on my own by just putting in some hours on LinkedIn or e-mailing various usergroups.  When I look up a recruiters name and they have 123 LinkedIn connections and I have 982, I think "What are the chances of them finding someone in NYC before I will?"

You're not selling screening--well, at least most of you seem like you're not, because the profiles I've been sent from recruiters so far are never really that good of a fit--and my CTO will still have to screen them thoroughly anyway.  Plus, so much of screening is about personality and fit, especially for an early stage company, and since the recruiters I talk to don't seem to have much interest in getting to know me as a person, I'm not sure how they could match me with a co-worker personality-wise.

But you know what... I could be totally wrong... and some of you are, in fact, really good at what you do.  The trouble is, I hear from all of you in the same way, leaving random messages on voicemail, or responding to my job posts, so you seem like a dime a dozen.  Where are you actively differentiating yourselves through branding?  Marketing?  Perhaps a little transparency in the process so that I could actually see why I could never accomplish what you could would go a long way--because this Web 2.0 world is all about transparency and we don't trust black boxes.

Good startups try and differentiate themselves by blogging--getting their name attached to good thoughtwork and getting into conversations around ideas.  Where are the really good NYC technical recruiting blogs?  Heck, if a NYC-area recruiter started a blog about hiring in this market, I think we'd all flock to it--and if you were really that good, we'd realize that recruiting is a helluva lot harder than we thought.  You could even post candidate profiles.  Give us your best tips on finding people, because, at the end of the day, most of your clients simply don't have the time or savvy to do what you do anyway, so you wouldn't be losing business by blogging, you'd be gaining it.

Not only that, why aren't you participating more in the community? 

I've met lots of random folks from the nextNY list and the range of people that actively participate here is pretty wide--from venture people to developers, business people, marketers, lawyers, etc...  but I can't think of a tech recruiter actively contributing here.   I don't mean self-marketing... I mean participating in the dialog.  That's partly why entrepreneurs really don't think highly of a lot of recruiters.  You act more like outsiders and salespeople, and less like one of us.

Are their NYC area tech recruiters on Twitter?  (And not just twittering their open positions or people for hire...)  Feel free to follow me at @ceonyc and send me a note!

This community needs strong recruiters, though...   not just recruiting people out of banks, but from out of state. 

Recruiters can be great evangelists for the NYC tech scene--I just don't really see them participating much in it.  
If you're a recruiter, and you're really interested in participating more in the tech community here, maybe this could help elevate your name from the noise in my voicemail.  nextNY will have a special event which I'll announce as soon as I sign the paperwork on it that needs some sponsorship.  E-mail me at charlie dot odonnell at gmail for details.

Given that you could probably cover the cost of sponsorship a couple of times over with just a single hire, and that there will be 200-300 tech folks at this event, I'd think the math would work out for you to take part, no?   I think it would be a really great opportunity to differentiate yourself and to open up a discussion about what you can do for startups, live and in person, not on phonemail.

You all really need to clear your calendars for 9/16 from 6-8PM.  Trust me.  :)  Details soon.

Paul Graham recently wrote a piece about cities.  He puts forth Cambridge as a city of ideas, New York as a city that is all about money (where people doing startups are second class citizens) and the Valley as a place for startups. 

I’m not about to start comparing the Valley to New York City.  That’s just silly, because the Valley has a multi-generational head start on creating tech startup companies.  However, given that, it does make me wonder why Cambridge and the Boston Area is so far behind the Valley, because Route 128 has been a tech center since the late 1950’s.  I mean, “Harvard and MIT are practically adjacent by West Coast standards, and they're surrounded by about 20 other colleges and universities,” as Paul puts it.  Perhaps he should be explaining why his City of Ideas gets less than a third of the venture capital investment that the Valley does.

I think the fact that Cambridge is a city of ideas is exactly why you could say it’s questionable how great a place it is to do a startup.  In an environment dominated by academia—where you lack time pressure, a sense of immediacy—you’ve probably got just as much of a chance of creating an interesting intellectual exercise in burning cash as you do building anything that resembles a real company.  I mean, have you ever tried collaborating with an academic institution if you’re a business?  Your startup would run out of cash before they figured out the right academic chair to lead the effort and which pool of research money to allocate for you.  It’s no accident that startups need to be spun out of these institutions to be successful.  Plus, seen any hugely successful companies come out of university incubators lately?  (And no, Zuckerberg’s dorm room does not qualify as an incubator.)

Also, think about it another way.  What are the last 10 or 20 really novel "ideas" in the startup world?  Things that required a leap of thought...   We can debate it and certainly I'm up for creating a list, but when I think of good ideas, I think of del.icio.us, Skype, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bug Labs, Slingbox, Google (b/c of the biz model)...   Hardly seems like Cambridge has a lock on the idea generation market in the startup world.

Ideas today are a commodity.  Anyone can have an idea, so being the Capital of Ideas is pretty much equivelent to building your city of out of straw.  If I were a co-founder of 3PigsTech.com, I’d think about building somewhere whose choice of building material was more formidable. 

Which brings me back to New York City.  By saying that “New York tells you, above all: you should make more money,” Paul Graham is basically admitting that he’s never been north of Central Park, on the Lower East Side, or out into the Boroughs.  I grew up as a finance major in NYC and I made the same mistake that Paul makes.  It wasn’t until I finished school and got about three years into my career that I soon realized that there was a lot more going on in NYC than just Wall Street. 

When I think of ideas, I think of creativity, not just scholarly research and publication in academic journals.  An idea has no value unless it’s either a) new or b) executed.  If execution is a business phenomenon, I can’t imagine a better place to execute than NYC (or the Valley, if you’re a tech startup), but in terms of new ideas being generated from creative people, I wouldn’t exactly hold the ivory towers of Ivy League schools up against the creative culture of NYC.  New York City is a mecca for design, fashion, dance, art, film, theater, international relations—it’s not difficult to imagine that this stew of creativity rubs off on other industries. 

Hedge funds, for example, are a great example of creativity leaking into another industry.  The most forward thinking, creative investors break out of old institutions to play markets in out of the box ways at hedge funds.

We even solve creative engineering problems here.  Peter Semmehack from Bug Labs, an open source hardware company pushing the limits of creativity in the consumer electronics space, has always said that he has found the best and most creative engineering talent here in NYC.  Need to explore a completely unfamiliar environment millions of miles away?  That was the challenge for the Mars Rover, and it’s no accident that much of it was built here, by HoneyBee Robotics. 

Paul also makes the point that someone creating a startup in NYC would feel like a second class citizen.  I have to be honest—I’ve felt that way several times, but mostly from people outside NYC.  Within the city, I’ve actually felt really supported.  Most of my 21 angel investors are not only in NYC, but they’re either NYC natives or have lived most of their lives here.  Among my large diverse group of friends (I grew up here, went to school here, never lived anywhere else, and know tons of people doing very different professions), I’ve received fantastic support.  No one ever asks me why I don’t just go into investment banking or trading. 

In fact, most of my friends aren’t even in finance at all.  Some of my closest friends are a magazine publisher, a lawyer, and a producer for televised mixed martial arts.  I play on a softball team with two PR folks, a clinical psychologist, a chocolate retailer, two IT guys, another lawyer, a teacher, a media buyer, and oh yeah, one guy in finance.  Most of the volunteers at the kayaking program I participate in don’t even have regular 9–5 jobs.  The other day, I was out on the dock with a guy that resells guitars and plays in a band, a former non-profit exec, a public health researcher, and another IT guy.   And these people don’t all live in big luxury apartment buildings in midtown.  They live with roommates in Astoria, in studios on the Lower East Side…  just scraping by but still loving every minute of it.  And we haven’t even mentioned all the actors and actresses.  Surely they’re not in it for the money, right?

So, the idea that NYC is just all about the money is just ridiculous…. just as ridiculous as this:

“One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.”

How about we make the list “number of restaurants that don’t require jackets for men”?  I have a feeling NYC would lead that list, seeing as the total number of restaurants in NYC minus 13 is probably more than SF and Boston combined.  Is this really how Paul thinks his YCombinator startups should make decisions on where to build their business?  By restaurants with jacket requirements?

But rather than argue about whose city is better, which is similar to the arugument about what language to code in, go with what you know.  Generalizations will get you nowhere.  It would have made no sense for me to build Path 101 anywhere else but NYC, because my network is here.  I found a great technical co-founder, two amazing developers whose experience could not be any more well-suited to their tasks, and a slew of supportive angels.  That doesn’t mean all this stuff comes in a box if you move your startup here, but if you can say the same thing about your neck of the woods, be it Louisville, Miami, the Valley or Cambridge, stay put, keep your head down, and build like the dickens.  Your city is what you make of it and how you build your network, not what the pundits tell you it is.