A lot has changed since the lockdowns and the Submit or Flight response that ensued, when the migration from the Draconian rules of the tech hubs – Silicon Valley and New York in particular – began.
Working conditions shift with each new industrial revolution and despite the fact that the Information/Internet Era has been somewhat established for close to 20 years, we haven’t really seen a change. Until now.
It’s right about mid-summer, the halfway mark, and we hear more and more about how two of the tech capitals – New York and Silicon Valley – are ‘back.’ We also hear a lot of debate online about when events should be scheduled again where people will meet in person, at an actual venue. September? October? Some have already started, although in many cases, we see that the number of attendees is somewhat, if not greatly diminished, which was not necessarily true when the events were being held online.
We also wonder how many startups – and how much new funding – was a result of the new borderless ecosystem. Do these new friendships/affiliations simply go away when the world goes back to in-person events and meetings? We regularly attend a now-online, formerly in-person event whose attendees span multiple states and several continents due to the lockdowns. As venues reopen and some people return to the tech hubs – not all will – and in-person events, will the online participants be cut off? So long and thanks for all the fish?
And thank you, Slim Shady…
There’s no doubt that the technology sector has become less tethered to the big cities and major tech hubs – Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston spring to mind – as a result of now long-standing Draconian lockdowns. The exodus from the Bay Area in particular has been well documented. According to The New York Times, They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough. After all, The Times noted, “Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you. If you lived in San Francisco, you might have commuted an hour south to your job at Apple or Google or Facebook. Or if your office was in the city, maybe it was in a neighborhood with too much street crime, open drug use and $5 coffees…But it was worth it. Living in the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world was what mattered. The city gave its workers a choice of interesting jobs and a chance at the brass ring.”
That was then. This is now and precisely to where has the sector gravitated? “They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida,” said The Times.
The New York Post recently reported that Amazon is eyeing a return to New York City. This came on the heels of the Amazon/NYC as second headquarters debacle when Amazon abruptly pulled out of the deal thanks to protests orchestrated by a certain Queens member of Congress.
But that’s not what this is about. As we’ve been hard at work on our StartupOneStop app, which will not be limited to NYC information, West Coast readers, et al, two things occur to us: