NYC Tech Is Eating The World

May 27, 2025

Hi friends,

When I moved to New York City fifteen years ago, most people viewed our local tech scene as a cute little ecosystem in the shadow of Silicon Valley. Founders had to get on planes to raise funding. Engineers stayed in California because there wasn't enough density here to build a career. Big tech VCs would smile politely when you mentioned New York before suggesting they'd gladly look at your company if you relocated to the Bay Area. Those days are so thoroughly over that it's almost hard to remember them.

The Quiet Revolution

A new report from Tech:NYC x Center for an Urban Future has finally quantified something I've been witnessing firsthand. Tech is now the economic engine driving the city forward. The sector is adding jobs at nearly 10 times the rate of the city's overall economy, accounting for ~14% of all employment growth citywide over the past decade.

Between 2014 and 2024, the tech sector added an average of 8,000 jobs a year across the five boroughs. Employment surged 64% during this period. That's four times the rate of the city's overall private sector job growth and six times the rate of construction. Even more telling, tech has become the city's largest and most dependable source of new middle- and high-wage jobs.

The shift is perhaps most visible in the post-pandemic recovery. While other industries struggled, tech jobs grew by 26.2% since 2019. Of the 104,112 net new jobs created citywide since 2019, tech accounted for 41% of them.

What's most exciting to me is the balance we're seeing across different tech verticals. The city now boasts nation-leading numbers in healthcare (1,046 funded startups), AI (870), e-commerce (797), fintech (644), and real estate tech (310). We're increasingly capturing a larger share of the national market in critical areas. For instance, NYC-based companies attracted 30% of all U.S. investment in fintech in 2024, up from 22.7% in 2020.

I've long believed that AI would be transformative for the city, and the numbers are now proving it out. AI job postings in the five boroughs reached 25,337 unique listings in 2024, significantly outpacing San Francisco (15,386), Seattle (22,283), and every other tech hub in the country. With companies like Hugging Face, Runway, CoreWeave and OpenAI (which just opened its NYC office) setting up shop here, New York is solidifying its position as one of the two most important AI ecosystems globally.

The talent equation is fundamentally different from what it was a decade ago. Kevin Ryan, who's started numerous NYC tech companies since the DoubleClick days, says that when he was building in the late 1990s, he "was never able to persuade a single engineer from the West Coast to come to work with me in New York." Last year, by contrast, seven of his 23 new hires at Radical AI moved here from the West Coast.

NYC's Tech Tipping Point

As someone who's been backing NYC founders for years, I would love to see New York eventually surpass Silicon Valley as the nation's largest tech center. Maybe it happens in 10 years, perhaps 25… maybe never. The timeline matters less than the direction we're heading. Either way, three big challenges stand in our way:

First, housing affordability threatens everything. Tech salaries are high, but when entry-level engineers are spending half their income on rent for a tiny apartment, the math gets problematic. When those same engineers start families a few years later, the calculus gets even worse. We need to build much more housing at every price point, particularly for the middle income range.

Second, we're seeing tech jobs starting to hollow out in the middle. The highest-skilled roles and senior positions are staying in New York, but increasingly, the low to mid-level positions are getting sent to lower-cost areas. This threatens the career ladder that makes a healthy tech ecosystem function.

And third, many state and city leaders still don't seem to grasp tech's importance to our economy. Despite good intentions, we're seeing too many poorly designed regulations and compliance requirements that make it harder for startups to thrive here.

🏙️ New York Tech Week is coming soon (June 2-8). Flybridge will be hosting several events, including a $50K AI Pitch Competition, an AI Tools Workshop, and 100 Women in AI Celebration. These sell out quickly, so watch for details and RSVP early.

💵 $50K AI Startup Pitch Day kicks off NY Tech Week with Next Wave NYC. Expect NYC's hottest pre-seed AI startups pitching to 100+ investors. A huge thanks to Lynx Collective, Mercury, and Goodwin for helping make this happen.

📊 Tech:NYC and the Center for an Urban Future just released "Sustaining NYC's Tech Edge." It is the most comprehensive look at our tech ecosystem in years. Essential reading for anyone building or investing here.

💰 Next Wave NYC is a pre-seed venture fund run by some of NYC’s best and brightest founders and operators from the last decade. If you're an early-stage founder in NYC, let me know and I'd be happy to connect you.

Doubling Down

At Flybridge, we're doubling down on our commitment to funding the next generation of New York tech. Through our Next Wave NYC fund, we're focusing on founders who reflect the diversity of the city and who are using technology to solve big, meaningful problems.

If you're building something that's pushing the boundaries of what's possible in NYC tech, I want to hear from you. Hit reply or grab coffee with me next week.

Until next time,

— Jesse