After decades living in the shadow of the West Coast’s more numerous and wealthier geeks, 2013 was the year New York City’s tech start-up community really found its swagger.
几十年来一直笼罩在数量更庞大、财力也更雄厚的西海岸“极客”们的阴影下，2013年纽约市科技创业群体才真正扬眉吐气了一把。Backing from City Hall and the metropolis’s first billion-dollar deal – Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr – built on several years of momentum to create a start-up community that is hoping to make up for what it lacks in deep technical capability with cultural and industrial diversity.
近些年来，纽约初创企业领域渐成气候，这个领域希望凭借文化和产业多样性，弥补自身在尖端技术能力方面的缺陷。正是在这股发展势头的基础上，初创企业得到了纽约市政厅的支持，而纽约市也成就了首笔规模在十亿美元以上的科技企业收购交易，也就是雅虎(Yahoo)收购Tumblr。Some Silicon Valley luminaries are already starting to see New York as a better place to build tech start-ups – among other local perks. Sean Parker, the Napster founder and first president of Facebook, railed against Silicon Valley’s “echo chamber” when he hosted the Founders Forum event for entrepreneurs in New York this October.
纽约除了原有的许多优势之外，一些硅谷名流已开始将纽约视为创建科技企业的更佳场所。Napster创始人、Facebook首任总裁肖恩•帕克(Sean Parker)去年10月在纽约主持“创始人论坛”(Founders Forum)活动时，向与会企业家们抱怨起了硅谷的“回音室”现象。
“New York feels more normal to me. Silicon Valley feels totally in the clouds,” he said. “There is something so all-consuming about the tech world in San Francisco and it’s inescapable . . . If you are building a consumer internet company in particular, you need to have a people-centric perspective.”
“我觉得纽约更正常一点。硅谷让人感觉完全是在云端，”他表示，“旧金山科技界有一种让人耗尽心神的东西，而且无法逃避……特别是，如果你要创建一家消费互联网公司，你需要具备以人为中心的视角。”Technical capabilities are not Mr Parker’s only concern.
技术能力并非帕克唯一在意的因素。“Your engineers here have less sexual frustration [in New York]. It’s a major point – they are happier people,” he said to nervous laughs from the assembled entrepreneurs. “In New York engineers go out and get laid and have fun.”
“你们这里（指纽约）的工程师会少一些性压抑。这很重要，他们更快乐。”与会企业家们爆发出了不太自然的笑声，他接着说道，“在纽约，工程师们会出门、上床、找乐子。”While Silicon Valley retains a dominant share of US tech deals, New York’s has been growing steadily (see chart), even though most of that funding was for early stage companies, suggesting the community will take some time to build real scale.
尽管硅谷在美国科技领域的交易中仍占领先份额，但纽约的占比一直在稳步上升（见图表），不过多数融资都针对初创企业，这意味着，纽约科技企业群体要真正具备规模还需要一段时间。“While still smaller than Silicon Valley, New York looks to be the only market with enough momentum to eventually (in the medium to long term) overtake Silicon Valley as a venture capital hub,” say analysts at CB Insights, a research consultancy.
研究咨询机构CB Insights的分析师们表示：“尽管规模仍不及硅谷，但纽约看起来是唯一一个具备足够动能，最终（在中长期内）成为超越硅谷的风险资本中心的市场。”Rather than trying to out-geek Silicon Valley, New York entrepreneurs and investors say it can succeed as a tech hub because it sits alongside so many other sizeable industries, from finance and real estate to fashion and media, rather than just tech.
纽约企业家和投资者表示，纽约不是要在技术上超越硅谷，而是有望成功发展为一个科技中心，因为它坐拥众多其他规模可观的产业，从金融和房地产到时装和媒体，而非仅仅是科技。After completing the Y Combinator accelerator programme in Silicon Valley in 2011, the founders of Codecademy, a site that teaches computer programming, moved back to New York.
2011年在硅谷参加完Y Combinator创业孵化器项目后，Codecademy网站的创始人们回到了纽约，该网站教授电脑编程技能。“One of the primary considerations was that we aren’t designing a product for people in San Francisco,” says Zach Sims, chief executive of Codecademy, which now has 22 staff in New York. “As we try to build a product for a mainstream audience, it helps to be around mainstream people. Being surrounded with people from other industries allowed us to test our product.”
“我们主要考虑的一个问题是，我们不是为旧金山人设计产品的，”Codecademy首席执行官扎克•西姆斯(Zach Sims)表示，“我们正努力为主流用户设计产品，因此生活在主流人群中是有帮助的。周围其他行业的人们让我们可以测试我们的产品。”该公司目前在纽约有22名员工。However, more of the traffic still goes the other way. The creators of photo app Frontback, backed by prominent New York investor Betaworks, moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco this autumn, for example, because its founders felt it was more likely to have longer-term success there.
然而，目前仍然以反方向的迁移为多。例如，去年秋季，图片应用Frontback的创建者们从纽约的布鲁克林迁往旧金山，因为该公司的创始人们认为，在旧金山他们更有可能取得长远的成功。该公司得到了纽约知名投资者Betaworks的支持。While Tumblr has remained in New York after its takeover, Yahoo’s buyout of the blogging site suggests that, like many up-and-coming start-up communities, the biggest “successes” are acquired by Silicon Valley giants rather than breaking out on their own.
尽管博客网站Tumblr在被雅虎收购后仍留在纽约，但这一收购表明，与很多积极进取的初创企业群体一样，最大的成功由硅谷巨擘斩获，而不是依靠自己突破。Some say that could change next year, with some online retailers such as Etsy, a marketplace for craft or handmade goods, and Rent the Runway, a members’ site that rents out designer dresses, tipped as potential IPO candidates.
一些人表示，今年情况可能会出现变化，出售手工艺品的Etsy和出租设计师服装的会员网站Rent the Runway等一些在线零售商被认为有可能启动IPO。But other one-time darlings of New York’s online retail market have struggled to maintain momentum. , which sells designer homewares, and Gilt Groupe, a luxury goods vendor, both suffered from consumer fatigue of Groupon-style flash sales sites, leading to staff cuts and management changes in the past six months.
然而，纽约在线零售市场上其他曾经的宠儿却难以保持增长势头。销售设计师家居用品的和奢侈品销售商Gilt Groupe都遭遇了消费者对Groupon风格的限时特惠网站的厌倦，这导致两家公司在过去6个月均出现裁员和管理层变动。New York may have more sex appeal than the “monoculture” of Silicon Valley, but despite the recent progress of its tech community, Silicon Valley’s focus still seems to trump New York’s diversity when it comes to creating a sustained stream of local successes.
相对于硅谷的“单一文化”，纽约可能洋溢着更多性吸引力，然而，尽管纽约科技界近年来取得了一些进步，但在打造源源不断的本地成功案例方面，硅谷的专注似乎仍胜过纽约的多样性。