On Jan 4, 2021, I will be celebrating 10 years of being in NYC, so I guess that makes me a real New Yorker finally. Here is a post on why I moved to this great city. I still vividly remember the day (Jan 4 2011) we landed here on a very cold and windy afternoon. We arrived at JFK with a ton of luggage, two yorkies and there was snow all over the ground and it was in the 30s. Given we were coming from California, we didn’t have the proper attire but we quickly fixed that we a much needed trip to the North Face store in UES.

Thinking back about the past decade for me , family and the startup community, it has been an epic journey. Moving here was the best professional and financial decision that I have made. Both of our children were born in Manhattan, how cool is that for them to say when they get older. We spent seven years in Manhattan and Queens, then moved to the suburbs in New Jersey, have been here for three years now. When we decided to move to NYC, it was a calculated decision as I knew something exciting was brewing in the startup community and I wanted to not only be a part of it but also make a contribution. The growth of the community has been much larger than I anticipated though, I knew it would be big but not this big, what a wonderful surprise. There is a lot of chatter now about what the startup scene will be in NYC and other major tech hubs, given that the pandemic has forced everyone to recognize that we can in fact work remotely and be productive. I remain very bullish on the NYC startup scene, this great city will continue to be magnet for people who thrive in a high pace, high energy environment and are risk takers. The contrarian move right now would be to come here, those are individuals that I would bet on.

Here is some data via NYC HQ’d CB Insights that clearly shows the rapid increase in activity the past 10 years. The first image is amazing, a clear rapid acceleration of deals and dollars. The second image shows an acceleration of median and mean deal sizes. The third image shows which investors were the most active during the stated time periods, it a high quality list of VCs, so of which aren’t based here but are heavily investing in this community (YC, SV Angel, Founder Fund). NEA didn’t have an office here at the time but now have an established team on the ground. General Catalyst had maybe one person on the ground ten years ago if I recall correctly and have since built a team locally.