...and any other city that is pouring money into tech to try to compete with NYC as the new rising star in the group of tech metropoli?

London is scheming...
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The common adage about how it's better to try to be yourself than to try to be someone else applies at the city level as well.

NYC is the crossroads of the world. It's where countless industries intersect, and it's where real business gets done.

We should continue to focus on fostering real businesses that actually make money. Wherever there is an intersection between an industry that's already well-established in NYC (media, finance, fashion, real estate, etc) with the disruptive new ways of approaching those industries, we'll continue to be able to prosper in a way that only NYC can.

Other cities can grow and succeed too; it's not a zero sum game. NYC just has to embrace what makes it great and continue to execute accordingly.

Agreed, but I think we also agree that it's a good thing that more entrepreneurs will be trained in NYC because of the upcoming cornell campus, and once Bloomberg is no longer in power it is not necessarily the case we will have such a strong supporter of tech. That's why I think that like you say, considering our strengths, what are the policies and programs that 1) we don't want to lose 2) that have not been implemented 3) are NOT working.

What happens when we have a real IPO in NYC - would it spur a big tech campus on Long Island? If you look back to the 1980s the significant investments in Long Island came directly from government in the form of Grumman and Shoreham. I'd rather see private businesses come from an incubation in NYC.

What do you mean by "keep its lead"? Are we talking about investment velocity, specific markets, # of entrepreneurs, # of exits? How do we compare NYC to other "tech" cities?

I agree with Tony's adage. I guess the real question is where will NYC naturally lead and how do we help it keep its edge?

I think the 'lead' I'm talking about is the level of private investment, for which NYC is seeing a lot of seed & A rounds. I do not have stats on # of entrepreneurs, and the # of exits is not as important as the number of big exits, either ones that generate NYC HQs for the acquirers or generate IPOs which could lead to an even larger physical presence in the greater metro area.

One indicator of how NYC's tech scene is maturing could be the number of say B, C, D round VC investments in NYC - for example, there's a ton of angel and A round VCs in NYC but fewer B, C, D investors (as you get later it gets to PE, and there's a lot of that in NYC).

Good question, I think I was guilt of being vague which branch reminds us not to do :)