Opportunity, Lost

A lot of ink has already been spilled over Amazon’s departure from New York, but less has been said about what this campus would have meant for New York tech. It’s worth thinking about not to lament what’s gone, but to understand where we’re going as a community.

The appeal of Amazon in NY was in the name: HQ2. While some found this gimmicky, it meant the New York campus would be a center, not a satellite. Anyone who’s worked for a satellite office knows the routine: you’re on the periphery so you work on the periphery. You’re not inventing self-driving cars: you’re building the infrastructure around the algorithm, you’re working on the plumbing, you’re collecting metrics.

HQ2 promised a place in New York where entire teams exploring new technologies would be based — a place in New York where decision-making would start and end. The future of retail, the future of cloud, the deep tech required for AR, fashion-tech, and generalized AI — decisions about these technologies would be made by the denizens of this frenetic, hard-elbowed, but compassionate city.

Instead, to Amazon at least, we will continue as a satellite.

I spent some time on Twitter as the deal was floundering. The battle was — for the most part — over symbols: more ink was spilled over Bezos’ helipad than over what this could mean for young engineers graduating from New York’s college campuses. There were real issues — we can talk about the wrongfulness of tax incentives and ever-creeping rent — but not one word from our politicians was uttered about the impact this would have on our startup ecosystem.

This is politics: politicians showboat and grandstand and vilify. But what struck me most was this: representative after representative saying Amazon would *import* these jobs. That they weren’t for New Yorkers. That, to me, was personal. They don’t know the New York tech community exists. We can show them by voting, and we can show them by building. I’ll be doing both.