And I would do some soul searching and look even outside tech to see what the last market leading or top 3 corporation of any industry that was founded in NY? The publishing houses and financial firms are often more than 100 years old at this point. What new company has NYC produced that grew to dominate its market in the last 30 years? SV has about 100 of them. Los Angeles has more than NYC -- across all industries.
Think about why NYC is more suited for established corporations to hire staff rather than entrepreneurs starting new corporations that can take over a market or create a market.
SV is the giant sucking sound of the tech industry. More often than not a startup will be founded in a place like New York, Chicago or Boston and then move to SV to try to get VC funding. I think it has very little to do with the ‘culture of innovation’ and more to do with rich white guys willing to splash around money in seemingly longshot businesses. I guess maybe that is what innovation is all about.
I wouldn't call Etsy market dominant, but perhaps Blue Apron would qualify -- I think it's the largest in its space. They have what, ~900 million in revenue? There are about 70 SV founded companies that earn that much or more in revenue, starting from AAPL on down to Splunk/Infinera/EFI, which are all hovering around that revenue range.
NYC may have fewer "unicorns" but NYC tech generally solves actual problems with shorter term realities of profitability sans VC slush funding.
Your opinion is really baffling. The impact on real world problems made by SV tech companies vs NY tech companies -- they're not even in the same universe of relevance. Look NYC dominates in publishing, in art, in finance. It's a great city. But it's a pimple on the butt of SV when it comes to tech.
Kickstarter is around what, 40-50M in revenue? Vimeo is maybe 100M? DigitalOcean is 200M? Shutterstock is 500M? Trello, I have no idea. I like Trello (and Shutterstock).
I think Shutterstock would crack the top 100 in SV, but none of these would crack the top 80 or so. SV comparables to Shutterstock in revenue would be some obscure companies like Rocket Fuel ($465M), Quantum Sales ($520M), Oclaro ($516M) that are ranked in the high 80s on the SV150 (https://www.siliconvalley.com/2017/05/01/sv150-2017-ranking-...)
It’s true that none of the FAANG are headquartered in NY (although Google’s second biggest engineering office is here). Replied above with a much longer list.
Outside of SV, "startup" is a pejorative term for a business that doesn't know how to make money. So you're right, New York doesn't have any startups that grew to be successful. They do, however, have thousands of success businesses, including some extremely large businesses that were once as market dominant as the tech companies are today.