A lot of people have talked about the need for NYC to have a PayPal--a multi-billion dollar exit that scattered on the rest of the community a bunch of experienced startup talent that scaled a company over time, as well as a host of new angel investors.
The key to this, of course, is that PayPal had over 200 employees when it was acquired. As Shai points out, if you sell for a billion dollars and have 13 employees like Instagram, you're really not going to do much for the ecosystem.
To foster the ecosystem in New York City, it seems that the community, investors, and the government have taken an approach that focuses on letting a thousand startups bloom. We now have incubators, accelorators, business plan competitions, and government backed seed programs, but it's not clear to me that this is where the pain is or where the impact is. Just because you help more people start doesn't mean you automatically get more success stories. I could double the number of people who get into the NYC marathon (which I'm running and raising money for, btw...), but that doesn't mean I'd double the number of people who run it in under three hours.
To read the original article: - Thisisgoingtobebig.com - The Most Critical Startup Talent Crunch: Great Leaders at Growing Companies
