Did The Financial Crisis Spur The City's Interest In Tech?

Caroline McCarthy from CNET has a terrific feature today about the EDC's efforts to bolster the tech industry here in New York. 

It covers some of the tension between the startup community and the EDC that the Observer highlighted a few weeks back. 

One fascinating nugget is the idea that the city, demoralized by the effect of the financial crisis on their traditional development strategy, changed course for tech in the wake of Lehman Brothers.

"I think Lehman was the fulcrum," said David Lombino, the NYCEDC's senior vice president of public affairs. "There was this wave of understanding that in the established New York business community, something fundamental was going to have to change."

As Chris Dixon wrote told The Observer weeks back on Twitter, "Competition in NYC isn't other VCs, isn't CA—it's Wall Street, ad industry, etc."

They may be battling for talent, but with the IPO market cracking open and banker backed investments sending tech shares sky high, it's clear the two sides have a few things they agree on. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper