To Me, the biggest difference is an appetite for risk. The investment community on the East Coast is more conservative, they aren't as willing to take a big swing at a start-up. And that trickles down through the entire ecosystem. Investors are the igniters of growth, and you can't build a start-up without capital.
I see people move to Silicon Valley because they can actually own homes, they have yards. There's so much access to the outdoors. You can surf every morning and still have a productive life.
New York cares to much about money. Palo Alto is home to nerdy idealists who want their product to be perfect. As long as finance continues to exist in New York, it will drain too much talent from New York's tech scene.
We are right in the middle of a third huge wave. I prefer to think of the bubbles as booms. I think booms are good. Booms lead to over investment.
While we have a really strong, creative workforce here in New York, there are also incredible, incredible developers and engineers. The trick is making sure that we're connecting them to all these employment opportunities and attracting them to New York City.
The software business has morphed into the Internet business. Ten years ago, maybe 80 percent of software was being built for enterprise. Now it's being written for consumers and is more media-centric than ever. And, historically, those have been New York's strongest sectors.
We understand that we will not catch up to Silicon Valley overnight. Building a state-of-the-art campus will take years -- and attracting a critical mass of technology entrepreneurs will take even longer. But -- as with everything we have done -- we are taking the long view.
We're helping save the next generation of college grads that would have gone over to Morgan Stanley.