The size of the campuses in Silicon Valley literally cannot fit in NYC. No comparison.
Its fantastic that Google bought a block of Manhattan for 1 billion dollars, but Google's Mountain View campus is ALL of Mountain View. These are sprawling districts that cannot fit inside of a skyscraper.
The next fundamental difference is the variety of VCs. NYC cannot replicate this, and there is nothing eroding about it. NYC has one or two VCs looking at the same industry trends. Silicon Valley has many VCs interested in completely different things, different portfolio niches.
NYC has variety of industries and conveniences.
Silicon Valley doesn't even know how backwards its infrastructure is, while trying to change a world that functions better than it does already.
San Francisco masquerades as Silicon Valley and an international city but it is neither. New York, London and Hong Kong are international cities, SF struggles to keep up with the tech bubbles that it remains on the periphery of and only recently gained relevance for.
There is more tech focused stuff in SF and Silicon Valley, but New York has enough satellite offices to keep you occupied.
Is that a definite? I mean, most of Mountain View and its tech campuses are sprawling suburbia (e.g. vast fields of asphalt and grass with a building sprinkled here and there). It's amazing what can fit in a well-designed commercial district.
Google employs 19,000 people in Mountain View currently
The Twin Towers in NYC each held 25,000 people on a daily basis.
Two buildings in NYC could accommodate the populations of two tech giants that sprawl across entire south bay towns. So several of NYC's average sized and planned skyscrapers could do a fine job. And there is room every direction away from Midtown Manhattan to replicate new robust building clusters.
> The combined value of just Google, Apple, and Facebook is $1.3 trillion dollars.
Well, to the extent that those three companies have employees in other cities, I'd count their market caps proportionally towards those cities. I'm not sure offhand about Apple or FB but Google has a huge office in NYC. But that still leaves the vast majority in SV.
> Also, most successful hubs are often one industry towns. Think Detroit and Houston.
Ominous and timely comparisons. One-industry towns are also way more vulnerable in the long run. NYC is actually a counterexample -- it is the industry hub for at least three industries (finance, fashion, advertising) and leads or has a strong presence in many others, and it's been that way for a long time.
> But it is also a mistake to think SV is just a "tech" hub.
If being close to other members of the industry you are "disrupting" with tech is useful, then that is a huge advantage for a city like NYC with a wide variety of industry. But maybe that's not that necessary -- maybe Tesla would not get much advantage out of being in Detroit near other automakers. If that's the case then a city like NYC does not have any special advantage there.
Then you'd have to count Wall Street, which for a great part are big software companies as well.
I'd love to see NYC co-opt SV as the world capital of the tech industry, and I think it could totally happen. The only thing SV has going is historical inertia, and it's eroding. This housing problem in SV is going to make it erode faster.
Honestly I don't understand SV at all. They say NYC has a housing cost problem, and it sure does, but it's nothing compared to SV -- in SV you have people paying Manhattan prices so they can live in SF... yet somehow still commuting an hour to the suburbs where the offices are! At least here you can either pay Manhattan prices and get a 10 minute commute for it -- or take an hour-long commute and at least get a much cheaper and/or larger place in exchange. And your commute won't require you to drive, unless you want that.
NB: I've never lived in the SV area so maybe I have some misconceptions that need correcting? :-)