Friday, December 30, 2011

Hey Stanford, We'll Take Ya!

Dear Stanford,

I hope in recent days you have realized the err of your ways in backing out of your opportunity to enter the East Coast start-up market. Silicon Alley has become a tremendous incubator for tech talent and start-ups. Bi-coastal tech revolutions are an inevitable future. So, what better place to build a new campus than Northern New Jersey--- the 6th borough? Seriously, Jersey has all the elements necessary to add heat to this innovation engine.
The trifecta:

1) Knowledge workers. As someone who works in technology, albeit finance technology, I travel along with many of my workmates into Manhattan from New Jersey every morning. The shear amount of technical brainpower that crosses the Hudson every day is mind blowing.

Instead of letting NYC "steal" all of these people and take their pound of flesh in commuting costs and taxes, why not build scalable companies at home, in these bedroom communities. Downtown Jersey City and Hoboken have already spawned a few startups as many of the larger companies have seen the shift and moved headquarters to the banks of the Palisades. Harvesting this local brain power would be infinitely smart for the state, smart for the residents, and profitable for any institutional body (read: you) who could create the new environment.

2) Clustering. The success of Silicon Valley was not because of you solely. It was a culture of solving big problems and collaboration among some of the top universities that allowed the primordial ooze of startups to spawn. With Cornell and the Technion setting up shop on Roosevelt Island, Columbia in Washington Heights and if Charlie O'Donnell has his way, an NYU-Poly consortium in Brooklyn, we've created a hot bed, a triangulation of brainiacs. Add to that Rutgers and Stevens within spitting distance and we've got a cluster. Like antique shops and bookstores, like minded individuals and institutions do better in packs, attracting the best talent, start-ups, and ideas en masse.

You could be the seasoned veteran and linchpin that pulls the whole thing together from your experience breeding the next great startups. Frankly, NYC is sick of being a farm team for Silicon Valley and the minute a startup has some marginal success they pack their bags and move to the West Coast. Investors, talent and savvy are all here, NYC just needs better clustering and branding to anchor local start-ups and attract foreign ones.
3) Infrastructure. We need to realize that the innovation revolution isn't just about the web or mobile applications, it's also about agriculture and green tech. Despite the smear campaign, Jersey has lots of pristine land and lush greenery in spades.
New Jersey has more modes of transportation than probably any other state in the entire US, second only to NY. We have the PATH, a light rail, tons of buses and trains courtesy of NJT or a multitude of other carriers, access to bridges, tunnels, major airports. Anyone who's ever come into any one of the three major airports in the area, will always choose Newark above JFK and LGA, hands down.
Houses in the more urban areas can be rented for a fraction of a tiny apartment or office in Manhattan (or the Boroughs) where you can have three founders and their code monkeys living and working-- just like the homes near Sand Hill Road, but vastly cheaper. Additionally, in Hudson county there is the UEZ zone that provides small businesses with incentives and low start-up costs.
Jersey is built for the modern granola academic, the green space start-up junkie, the fast talking venture backed hustler. The classic Jerseyite understands and exploits economies of scale. He puts the idea ahead of his own ego. He is able to commune a team of straight-talking, quick thinking, self-deprecating engineers. She has the heart of a visionary, but the mind of a pragmatist, and many have been 'New Yorkers', in the deepest sense of the term, for three or four generations.

So how 'bout it Stanford? Call us the 'Silicon Swamp' if you like--- just make sure to call us.

-From Jersey, With Love.

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