30 years after the founding of ‘Silicon Alley,’ New York’s tech scene is too big to have a center

GOOD morning. It seems strangely fitting that a New York fire marshal essentially shuts down a huge party to celebrate”30+ years in Silicon Alley” on Friday night, and my son, 20, responded to the news by asking, “What is Silicon Alley?”

The term emerged in the neighborhoods of Flatiron and Soho in the 1990s where companies such as DoubleClick, Razorfish and About.com were born. It was a time when the media-minded startup community in downtown Manhattan competed for mindshare, if not money, with the tech scene emerging around Stanford and Sand Hill Road in northern California. Like the battle between East Coast and West Coast rap, however, this is a relic of another era. While Silicon Valley will get about 46.3% of all US venture funding in 2024, with New York got 13.3%, VC funding is a small part of startup funding and a smaller part of overall investment in innovation.

“Nobody talks about Silicon Alley anymore; it’s just technology,” said attendee Stephen Messer, who founded LinkShare with his sister Heidi in New York in 1996, sold it to Rakuken for $425 million in 2005, and later founded Collective(i), an AI company that operates on both coasts. “The tech scene in New York is so big right now that there’s no center.”

In fact, the city’s tech ecosystem now includes fintech, biotech, e-commerce, climate tech, and more, spawning brands such as EtsyBilt, MongoDB, Ramp, Warby Parker, DatadogKickstarter, Tumblr, Foursquare and OpenSea. Some local tech darlings have had high-profile stumbles—hello WeWork!—while others like Bloomberg thrived long before a bunch of young entrepreneurs set up shop downtown as the internet took off. Add to that the fact that tech hubs have since appeared in many other cities and countries around the world.

Still, nostalgia can be fun. Friday’s party felt more like a throwback to the raves of my youth than a reflection of what technology has become. Instead of an alcohol-fueled revelry with young singles in some dingy warehouse, it’s a gathering of middle-aged professionals clutching water cans and Whoop bands in an office building overlooking Wall Street. But I enjoy hanging out with people like Karin Klein of Bloomberg Beta, Slava Rubin of Indiegogo, ‘sextech’ guru Cindy Gallop, entrepreneur Josh Weinstein and cohost Kevin Ryan, the so-called “Godfather of NYC tech” behind DoubleClick and now Alley Corp. Before heading out the exit as fire department officials entered, I picked up a souvenir magazine full of sepia-toned photos and articles like “Ten Reasons to Be Happy After the Dot-Com Crash.”

As I wandered around, hearing conversations about AI, pilates, private equity, Mamdani and the new Melania documentary, I was struck that what the 1,000 or so attendees wanted was a reason to meet creative people on a cold Friday night. I suspect that instinct, as much as funding, is what really fuels New York’s tech scene.

Contact CEO Daily by Diane Brady at [email protected]

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