NYC is losing young technical founders to SF — and it’s not about vibes. It’s about cost of entry.
SF has far more entry infrastructure than NYC: i.e. the housing, community, and early support (financial and otherwise) that lets founders start building before they raise capital. This is widening the gap between the two cities' tech sectors.
We are specifically calling for ideas (and hopefully action) to address NYC’s dearth of hacker houses: physical spaces that combine housing, workspace, community, and early peer support. I’m convinced that seeding hacker houses, if done right, is a low-cost, high-impact way to attract more young technical founders to NYC — and critically, something this community can actually do.
And we should. The data is stark. Venture investment in NYC is ~19% of SF’s total — the lowest since 2017 — and the biggest, most innovative companies (especially in AI) are overwhelmingly being built in San Francisco. People who want to be entrepreneurs tend to work where those companies are. Unsurprisingly, many students and young builders assume they must go west.
But do they actually want to — or is it just easier to get started there?
I spent significant time in the Bay last year, and one difference stood out immediately: SF is dense with hacker houses and founder residences that help people get from 0→1. These resources are especially critical for recent grads and first-time founders who might lack capital or built-in networks. NYC may have long-term pull, but at the earliest stage, higher upfront costs and friction (recent Economist data suggests ~50% higher rents than SF) push many founders away.
Hacker houses may sound anachronistic, but they’re real centers of gravity. We estimate SF has at least ~10x more active hacker houses than NYC, and that these houses have helped foster hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.
I’m an NYC tech evangelist. I’ve worked on tech ecosystem development at New York City Economic Development Corporation, helped design national innovation programs for the Obama White House, and now invest in early-stage companies as a GP at Max Ventures. From a dollars-to-impact perspective, seeding hacker houses in NYC is one of the most efficient levers the city can pull.
We wrote an overview doc (linked below) that explores this concept — and we'd welcome feedback from the NYC tech community.
We are also hosting a small series of conversations — starting with a dinner in February co-hosted with Tech:NYC, Keel (Brent J. Smith), Company Ventures and Inspired Capital — to bring together leaders across tech, real estate, and policy.
👉 If you’re a founder, operator, VC, student, or have built / lived in a hacker house:
• Does this resonate?
• What would make this work in NYC?
• Who’s already doing something adjacent we should talk to?
Would love to connect if you’re interested in contributing or joining the conversation.
