Excited to see this. I hope it leads to a trend to listing sooner and giving access to retail investors much earlier. Buying Uber at a few dollars instead of $42 for example. The markets will operate like they want to unless there are explicit rules to stop it. Right now it's wait to IPO as long as possible, and HFT only accessible to huge companies. Retail is left with the scraps.
Wait so all those people in the street with the protest signs were cheering FOR Amazon? Nope. Maybe the guy with veto power was put in place because he protects the city from BS like this? Possible. Our whole office is laughing at how Amazon approached this and couldn't get it done, so yeah maybe our bubbles don't overlap.
Austin's traffic is bad for sure. Dallas then perhaps, which at least has a rail going north (also bad traffic). That said, Queens absolutely values diversity. They mom and pop shops getting pushed out all over the city is creating a negative feedback loop. Some city officials and politicians may like the tax, but there are some that are also protective of the culture. It's a complex issue, but ultimately, New York is not an easy place to walk into. Lots of people to make happy on a deal this size.
They want to get a multibillion dollar deal done in a global economic center, and a few phone calls to one guy was enough for them to stop pursuing it? Pretty weak if that's the case. Nobody I've spoken with here has anything positive to say about Amazon being here, and there's no way it hinged on one person.
New York didn't lose anything by not having Amazon here. New York is a city built on diversity, and ensuring resources are available to maintain that diversity is important to the citizens. It's a matter of giving one huge handout to the most valuable company in the world that will destroy a community and drive up wages (bad for small businesses) and housing costs (bad for Queens), versus giving $5M to 100 small businesses who can create jobs and maintain diversity while keeping wages / housing in check. That not to mention, there are other infrastructural things in NYC that need attention / money. People here want money going back into the soul of the city, not to an outsider traipsing around to various cities looking for who will give the biggest handout. Amazon's big misstep here is that they acted like they were a gift to NYC, and didn't sell the dream of what value they'd bring to the city. New Yorkers will immediately tell people to fuck off with that approach.
Amazon's other missed opportunity is not intentionally choosing a smaller city like Austin or Denver, which would not only have amazing talent, schools, transportation, and culture, but would be far less costly. They would save more money in the long run and achieve the same results. But that's beside the point.
New York doesn't need Amazon, and I'm glad Amazon caved when the people pushed back. It shows that Amazon never cared about the people here and would bring nothing to the community.
edit: If you're going to downvote please comment why you disagree.
It seems like the bigger problem may be denial. I don't think depression is unique to entrepreneurs. Just living in NYC brings an exceptional set of challenges for someone to overcome (The article tells stories from NYC). For start-ups though, constantly having to put on a pretty face for everyone (employees, investors, clients, customers, friends and family) and deny the fact that you're a total mess on the inside technology-wise, business-wise and personally is the root of the problem. It creates incredible pressure, and if you can't live up to all the beauty you say you have, it makes you feel sad, angry, frustrated, and lost. Throw in not eating properly, not exercising, and not getting enough sleep and you have a recipe for depression. If we could just talk about how messed up everything is, we might find that we aren't the only ones and feel better about it. I'm a founder in NYC, so if anyone wants to talk, hit me up!
Totally agreed. I also lost a little respect for Hipmunk when I found out they are basically an exact copy of ITA's app: http://matrix.itasoftware.com/search.htm.
Ugh, another button. The check-in buttons are coming next. Soon, there will be an aggregate button that lets you Like, Follow, +1, Check-in, Tweet, Post to FB, and save the page for later. There will be no more corporate or personal websites to house the aggregate button either. They will live on an aggregate page which has all the feeds from all the social networks in one place. This aggregate page will itself live on a social network which will have many clones that need to be aggregated. Goodbye signal, hello noise.
F1 cars also cost a couple million dollars while a Nascar costs around 150k total. Another difference is that F1 cars are electronically limited to 18k RPM (they can easily go to 20k) and they have 7 gears. Nascar cars have 4 gears and top out at 9-10k RPM. There are so many other little details about F1 that make it technically marvelous. There are no vehicles in the world that can top the overall performance of an F1 car. (I'm also a fan, so I'm a little biased)
Maybe try using an RSS reader and over time build up the exact things you want to read. Eventually, you'll have a perfect feed of things that interest you (well, maybe not perfect, but close). Another option is Reddit, which has the ability to subscribe to specific groups that show up in your feed. It's community generated if you would prefer not to hassle with building an RSS feed library yourself. I find myself coming to HN for startup stuff and Reddit for more directed conversations about Python or Ubuntu since they are already filtered and show up when I'm logged in.
I'm surprised New York isn't in the launch cities. The sheer density of people, businesses, and overpriced things requiring deals makes it a no brainer. Two cities in TX? I'd understand Austin over Dallas though (I'm from Dallas living in NY).
Facebook is also continuing its tradition of copying other people. They are the 1000th entrant into deals, so the only hope they have of success is their huge captive audience. Even that isn't doing well for them in the location game.
FIOS is probably the best bet although it doesn't come to our building. You can still get 20-50Mbps residential if you pay enough. It's quite easy to live cheaply here, as long as you don't live in midtown Manhattan. You can cross the water any direction and knock $1000 off your rent, and if you cram a few people in the same apartment (everyone does), then your rent can be $500-$1000 per person. On incubator funds that leaves some runway. There is a pizza place one block over from me that is open 24hrs and has $.99 slices, so food can definitely be had on the cheap, and we don't have, need, or want a car since 20 instances of everything we need is within 10 blocks from us. Dentist, Doctor, Store, Parks, River/Ocean, Gym, Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Coffee shops.
I fully agree. The startup community is exploding here. We have serious companies coming out of the city, a seriously diverse culture (Tech, Business, Fashion, Art, Music), leaders and mentors speaking at meetups, co-working spaces, conferences and colleges daily, and tons of VCs and Angels. So glad I moved to NYC.
This is kind of bittersweet. While it's true entrepreneurial spirit that they pooled their resources and came together on something new, they could have done the same and helped NYC Startup Job Fair find new space to grow. It's not like the original organizer was rejecting them unfairly, they simply didn't have enough space. Now you have all that energy going in different directions instead of one, and the new group will likely make the same mistakes that have already been made. It's good for the NYC startup community regardless, just how good, we'll have to wait and see.
I just tried using this app and it crashes every time I try to take a pic on a fully updated iPhone 4, after a fresh restart. I'm not sure what they're doing with that $41 million (besides buying trademarks and unoriginal domain names), but there are some really talented people doing much more with much less. I'm sure they'll fix it, but seriously guys...
The idea is interesting, but not defensible enough for them to stop a couple of hackers with $15k from besting it.