Survey claims New York startup scene is more innovative

Out of 318 executives surveyed, more picked New York over Silicon Valley as the superior place to start a business, due to factors such as growing interest from venture capitalists, support from city and state government, and the considerable talent pool from Wall Street firms and Fortune 500 companies in the city.

The survey was conducted by a New York-based data analysis company, 1010data, so we should probably take the findings with a grain of salt. But it claims the executives surveyed, taken from its customer base, were from companies throughout the U.S.

The respondents praised New York IT professionals for showing more "intensity, ambition, tenacity, practicality, and analytical prowess," than their west coast counterparts, though San Francisco workers were praised for being more creative and humorous, if also prone to group-think.

Executives felt San Francisco and Silicon Valley have better weather and a lower cost of living, while New York excelled in public transportation, nightlife, food, arts and culture. At least two of those findings -- that San Francisco is cheaper and has worse food -- would surely horrify anyone from the west coast city.

Certainly the New York tech scene is growing.

The survey points to the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr in 2013 as an example of a New York technology company that proved to be successful.

New York-based Digital Ocean recently became the second largest Web hosting firm in the world, trailing only Amazon Web services, according to Netcraft.

The IT giants have noticed as well. Google maintains a considerable data center and engineering presence in the city. Last year, IBM established New York as the center of its operations for its Watson cognitive computing operations.

1010data released the survey as a way to plug its annual user conference, taking place this week. Founded in 2000, the company offers a hosted platform for analyzing large amounts of data. So New York was a natural home for it, said CEO and cofounder Sandy Steier, given that he and cofounder Joel Kaplan were already working for Wall Street firms there.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com