Silicon Valley Sets Up Shop in New York

Start spreadin’ the news: Silicon Valley is invading New York. In the past year, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, game maker Zynga, and other technology players have opened offices in New York City, hiring software coders and product designers in addition to the marketing and salespeople many already had in the city. “We’re going to make sure we get the best talent we can as aggressively as we can,” says Serkan Piantino, who oversees Facebook’s half-dozen engineers in New York. In January they moved into a 17th-floor office near Grand Central Terminal, the company’s first engineering outpost on the East Coast.

New York has a strong community of homegrown tech outfits, from luxury e-commerce site Gilt Groupe to location-sharing app Foursquare. Entrepreneurs and investors say the influx of big-name companies will give that local tech community a big boost. “The talent pool will increase, there will be more startups, and the tech industry in NYC will grow and develop,” says Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures in New York. Fewer recent grads “will make a beeline to Silicon Valley.”