Note from the Publisher: For those of us deeply embedded within the American fintech culture, it certanly comes as no surprise that NYC is ground zero for fintech. However, the rest of the world may not know that, so Atlantic Media's CityLab has done a piece explaining how and why this tech boom came to pass in The Big Apple. They also delve into the current NYC fintech culture, along with what needs to happen moving forward as traditional finance jobs continue to melt away. As we've said all along, we LOVE fintech, but we do realize that it is replacing jobs in traditional finance and banking, and the ratio of new jobs relative to displaced jobs is disproportionate, and not in a good way.
"Finally, New York is a bona fide technology startup hub.
It’s no longer a place with a gimmicky name—Silicon Alley—and an ephemeral tech scene that tries to be more than it is. There are venture capitalists with real money, entrepreneurs with ideas, and software developers who know the code.
Above all, New York has a corner of the vast technology world to which it can credibly lay claim as its own: fintech. This species of business, a conflation of the words “financial” and “technology,” plays to the strengths of a city that still views itself as the global center of all things money.
“The real draw is the existing financial center,” says Marco Santori, head of the fintech practice at the law firm Cooley. “There’s a lot of money in Chicago, LA, and Miami. But every aspect of the financial services industry is here.”
Though it took the collapse of the internet sector from 1999 to 2001, New York has moved beyond Silicon Alley as a simple marketing tool. The revival of tech investment in the early 2000s and the global financial crisis led to the emergence of a diverse set of companies. A maturing workforce, fortified by defections from Wall Street, has developed. And investments in education infrastructure are coming...."
Read Full Story at CityLab