Built In New York
Why Tech Founders from Around the World are Flocking to New York
It all began with a few intrepid Europeans.
When Accel opened its London office in 2000, Europe was still five years away from its first unicorn exit with Skype. Fast-forward to now, and the region is rich with rapidly growing tech companies. For more and more of them, further growth will ultimately mean expanding to the United States.
When you arrive in a new place, it’s often hard to know what good looks like there or how to interview for it. We’ve always provided hands-on support to founders navigating the idiosyncrasies of new markets, but with more than half of our active portfolio companies founded in EMEA expanding to the U.S. in recent years, it became increasingly clear to our Accel team in London that we needed dedicated resource to help with a specific challenge: hiring U.S. talent. A few years ago, I stepped into that role.
Within a few months, I noticed two things. First, advising portfolio companies on “expanding to the U.S.” almost always meant “expanding to New York” in practice. Second, when our search partners returned candidates who matched the “wish list” of requirements the mostly B2B SaaS founders moving to New York shared with us for prospective roles, those lists were short — very short. I saw the same names appearing over and over again in every VP of Marketing search.
Those observations sparked bigger questions that I asked our partners at True to help me answer. New York has had a few tech waves previously, but it was known more for fintech and buzzy consumer products than the deep, B2B tech that drove the dominance of San Francisco’s tech economy. Was New York transforming into a true tech capital, much larger than the bounds of the quaint “Silicon Alley”? And could the supply of candidates available in the city meet the demands of that growth?
I could summarize how True’s data answered those questions with the old improv refrain: “Yes, and.”
Yes, there’s a boom of B2B tech companies in New York — both homegrown and European expansions. Yes, there’s enough experienced talent in New York to helm those companies...if founders are open to hiring differently. The pool of senior executives with at least a decade of B2B SaaS experience is shallow. Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Bloomberg, Condé Nast: Most of New York’s senior tech talent hails from brands founders will recognize, but not from the typical tech executive’s LinkedIn.
We knew the data didn’t tell the whole story, so we turned to our network of founders on the ground. If senior tech talent for fast-growing startups is scarce in New York, shouldn’t San Francisco continue to be the default place to build? And even for those committed to the East Coast, why New York rather than a traditional B2B hub like Boston or post-pandemic tech darlings Miami and Austin? How were founders on the ground navigating a more multi-disciplinary hiring market?
It turns out, people build in New York for the same reasons they move to New York: The hustle, the energy, the creativity, the globalness. Founders choose New York for its proximity to customers and partners from different industries, for its convenient time zones and global communities, for the intensity and creativity of its work culture – but also because it’s a city they want to live in. “New York is cool,” founder after founder from Silicon Valley, Boston, France, and Germany told us.
And yes, they confirmed the talent is different here. People with more diverse backgrounds are creating products and companies that look different from your typical San Francisco startup — and that’s a good thing. “If you only hire talent who has ‘seen the movie before,’ you'll end up replicating the same movie other people produced, and that's not the point of building a generational company,” Katie Burke, Chief People Officer at Harvey AI and former Chief People Officer of HubSpot, told us. Graphite co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Greg Foster told us he believes that New York teams channel the city’s unique “speed, intensity, and velocity.”
There’s an impulse to pit New York against San Francisco – that one city’s rise means the other’s demise – but we think that’s missing the bigger picture here. San Francisco’s tech industry continues to roar ahead, and the depth of the Bay Area's talent pool means it’s still the fastest place to scale a company. Instead, this report underscores a bigger story: that the U.S. can now sustain two great tech cities, each imparting a unique DNA on its companies.
New York has always been a city of industry, a place where builders and dreamers meet to create ambitious new ventures. We can think of no better place to shape the next generation of great technology.
A brief history of the New York tech scene
The companies, people, and sectors that have defined each of the New York tech scene’s distinct eras in the 21st century.
Why EMEA founders are choosing New York
Andrei Brasoveanu joined Accel in 2014 and invests in early-stage enterprise software, financial services, and cybersecurity companies across Europe, including Checkly, Conduktor, Filigran, and Oasis. He anticipates that 50% of his portfolio will have a New York City headquarters within 12 months. We caught up with him about what’s driving that trend and how he’s advising founders to make the move.
Can you give us a brief snapshot of the current state of the EMEA tech market? Why are so many tech companies from those markets coming to the U.S. right now?
Two decades ago, it was unusual for a company from Europe to reach a global scale. The culture used to be to play it safe and exit early. That changed dramatically after successes like Skype, Spotify, and Supercell. They became role models for others in the ecosystem and grew talent pools that knew how to scale up. Now, founders have this increased ambition and desire to build global champions, and that’s driving an explosion of category-defining tech companies emerging from the region.
The other thing to consider is that the European market is very fragmented; Accel has backed founders in 70 cities across Europe. The strategy there is to win city by city, market by market. That localization can make it easier for early-stage companies to get momentum, but it makes real scale difficult. At a certain point, you need to be where your customers are, and for software or cybersecurity, that’s usually in the U.S. Nearly 50 cents of every dollar spent on software globally is spent in the U.S.
Why are they overwhelmingly picking New York over other U.S. tech destination cities?
New York would have been an unusual relocation choice ten years ago. Companies like Celonis, Collibra, and UiPath were pioneers. Now, 25% of my EMEA portfolio has relocated a founder to New York, and I anticipate that number doubling in the next 12 months. New York’s appealing because it’s easier to manage a global team from there. Flights and time differences are shorter, and there’s a cultural affinity — it’s a very global city, and feels closer to what they’ve known in Europe. (I always say New York’s like a more intense version of London, in a good way.) Companies like Datadog and Celonis have proven you can build enterprise tech in New York, and created a talent pipeline to hire from. And finally, so many of their customers are based there. No matter what industry you sell into, there's a good chance New York's a hub for it.
How are companies in your portfolio approaching this move?
The most popular model we see is the dual HQ. Celonis is a great example of this. Europe has abundant R&D and engineering talent, and because founders don’t have to compete against the likes of OpenAI in the same way they would in San Francisco, they can build elite technical teams here quickly and relatively cost-effectively. Founders or executives will then move to New York to build out commercial headquarters, where they’re closer to customers and go-to-market talent, which is often stronger in the U.S.
We’re seeing founders make this move earlier and earlier, often after their Series A. Whereas they used to establish European commercial operations first and then have a second, U.S.-focused commercial operation, now they’ll often hire their first global heads of sales and marketing in New York.
What advice would you give to a founder who’s considering this as a growth path?
If most of your customers are in the U.S., I usually recommend that the CEO lead the move and be on the ground; it can’t be done tentatively. We see a lot of European founders get sticker shock at the salaries and high cost of living in New York. That impacts everything from founder compensation to burn rate, and needs to be budgeted for when raising your Series A or B rounds. Start addressing the tax implications as early as possible. You should consider on day one if you should incorporate in Delaware and whether it's right for the company. Lean on your global partners and investors for help establishing a name and attracting those first customers and hires.
We see a lot of founders convince themselves they need to hire extremely established leaders, and I try and encourage them away from that. There aren’t many senior leaders who’ve successfully scaled technical startups before in New York, but there are a lot of great up-and-comers. Focus on the second-in-commands who’ve seen greatness and are ready for their first leadership role. Often, these people are a better fit for the earlier stages of your company anyway.
The emergence of a New Tech capital
The New York City tech economy is growing, thanks to a wave of European companies and a boom of investment in enterprise technology that started in 2021 and has continued since. But our data shows that that recent jump is an acceleration, not an aberration: the momentum began long before, as the number of venture investments in New York-based startups more than doubled from 2010 to 2020.
Tech jobs are booming: 41% of NYC’s net job gains since 2019 have been in tech.
Mapping New York City’s senior tech talent
The most common question we get from founders considering building in New York is, “Will I be able to hire the experienced leaders I need to grow my company?”
While there are a large number of senior candidates currently working in B2B SaaS in New York...
...most of them are relatively new to B2B SaaS itself, and have only a few years of experience.
The average New York City-based B2B SaaS Executive has spent 2.5 out of 24 total years of experience working in B2B SaaS.
“While New York has a lot of junior and mid-level professionals, the market for senior tech executives in New York is still very narrow. If you want to hire a chief product officer for a SaaS company with at least 10 years of experience in the role, you're going to have 20 candidates on the West Coast and maybe two in New York.”
Our Advice
- The New York talent market feels different because it is. It’s essential to calibrate what good looks like there before you hire.
- When you’re deciding the seniority level you need in a role, ask yourself first: What do I actually need this person to do? You might need a director instead of a CMO. There’s a lot more emerging talent in New York than executive.
- Teams need a balance of deep functional sector expertise and diversity.
- Don’t overthink it.
Expanding to New York from EMEA
Featuring Celonis, Conduktor, and Cyera
Relocate to New York from across the Atlantic: easier said than done. Fortunately, there’s a new playbook emerging from companies like Celonis, Conduktor, and Cyera. “When we moved to New York in 2016, it was not yet a tech hub,” said Alex Rinke, co-CEO and co-founder of Celonis. “The trend at that time was to go to Philadelphia or Boston, but we felt New York was the better place for us, and bet that the tech scene would eventually follow that. Now, there is a thriving SaaS and tech scene. We are proud to have helped spearhead that, and that we have created a bit of a blueprint for those who have followed.”
Below, leaders from the three companies share what they’ve learned about moving to New York:
Start considering your U.S. market needs from day one.
“The majority of the data market is in the U.S., so we knew from day one that if the company grew at the right pace, we’d move there,” said Nicolas Orban, co-founder and CEO of Conduktor. Nicolas and his co-founders incorporated as an LLC in the U.S., despite founding and initially building their company in France.
Find your wedge.
Only a few multinational corporations were based in Celonis’s home market of Munich. But Siemens was one of them — and winning the tech giant as a customer allowed Celonis to target other industrial manufacturers in the U.S. by using the company as a reference. “Within a quarter, we closed 3M (the multinational manufacturing conglomerate),” Marc Kinast, VP of corporate development at Celonis, recalls of their move to New York. “I don't believe they would have bought our solution if Siemens hadn’t given them a really strong reference.” Celonis also leaned on strategic relationships within its partner ecosystem to cultivate a pipeline of potential deals before they arrived. “Building up your own demand generation is expensive and takes time,” Marc said. “By initially focusing on that partner channel, we quickly closed four to five customers in New York, which validated the market and gave us the confidence to start hiring for direct sales.”
Moving to New York doesn’t mean giving up your international identity.
All three founders agreed: New York underscored their companies’ global identities rather than compromised them. “New York’s a place for A-players from all different nationalities. Both culturally and logistically, New York allowed me to keep a connection with Europe that I felt I would have lost if I’d gone to the West Coast,” said Nicolas from Conduktor. Still, maintaining a global team takes effort. “You need to ensure you don’t develop different kingdoms,” said Marc from Celonis. That’s why it was important to Celonis that their first few New York teammates come directly from their founding Munich office, including co-CEO and co-founder Alex Rinke. Retaining that connection with their German identity — and team — has remained essential as they’ve grown. They invite all new hires from the U.S. to Munich once a quarter; have established global operations and leadership structures; and continue to transfer employees from Germany to New York (and vice versa).Go GTM-first.
“We knew our product and R&D teams were well off on their way back home,” said Yotam Segev, Cyera’s CEO and co-founder. “It was the market that needed our attention — sales, marketing, our customers — which both my co-founder and I moved to New York to focus on.” All three teams initially kept their engineering and product teams in their home markets while building out commercial operations in New York, citing the wealth of European engineering talent as a strength. As they’ve expanded, some have also built up product teams in New York that tap into the city’s unique strengths: “We based our AI team here because there’s a lot of great AI talent in New York,” Marc from Celonis said.
Lean on an insider to help you hire.
At first, Conduktor struggled to navigate the New York hiring market. “Americans are taught to sell themselves during the interview process in a way that can be really confusing for Europeans,” Nicolas from Conduktor explained. “We made a lot of early mis-hires.” They ended up working backwards, starting with someone on their London team who had a trusted former coworker in New York with a great network. “Suddenly, bam: that activated a lot of network things for us.” This person had an extensive, vetted network in New York from which they could quickly hire their early team. Celonis also struggled to attract qualified candidates at first, and ended up making an internal recruiter one of their first hires in New York. They also leaned on Accel’s global brand: “When no one knew our name, we were able to leverage the brand names of our global investors,” Marc from Celonis told us.
Hire the leaders you need now, not in three years.
While New York might have a small pool of tech executives with 10 years of experience leading a unicorn, Marc from Celonis cautions founders to think critically about whether that’s really the profile they need. “It can be easy to get swept up by brand name experience or to want the best for your company, but that can lead you to hire someone with skills you won’t need for another three to four years,” he said. “Hire the person who’s going to roll up their sleeves and get the job done now.”
Treat New York as the nucleus to your U.S. operations.
Eventually, as each company scaled, it began to expand beyond New York to be closer to its customers and to tap more experienced leaders. “As you grow, New York might not have everything you need,” said Alex from Celonis. “But New York is a great center of gravity, and remains our U.S. hub.”
In New York, a new kind of “tech worker” emerges
As tech booms in New York, demand for senior B2B software executives is accelerating so quickly that it’s outstripping the city's supply of experienced technical workers. That’s forcing the tech sector, which has always preferred hiring from within, to look outwards for talent.
At a glance
- Only 8 of the top 30 feeder companies for senior tech executives in New York are actually tech companies.
- Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Morgan Stanley, and Accenture have all produced more New York tech executives than Amazon.
- Google’s impact on the tech ecosystem in New York City remains singular.
- While marketing executives were more likely to come from a tech feeder company, sales leaders were more likely to hail from legacy media brands like Reuters, Time Inc, Bloomberg, and Condé Nast.
Made in New York: the Graphite playbook
In 2020, Greg Foster was ready to leave San Francisco. For years he had wanted to join his college friends (and soon-to-be co-founders) Tomas Reimers and Merrill Lutsky in New York City. “New York was exciting, social, and fast, in a way that I was missing in San Francisco,” Greg said. The only problem? The trio planned to launch a developer tools company, and weren’t sure if New York would set such a tech-focused product up for success like San Francisco could.
Fast-forward to spring 2025: The three friends’ AI-powered code review company, Graphite, has grown to include Asana, Shopify, Figma, and more as customers. Here’s what Greg, now CTO at Graphite, has learned about building technical teams and products in New York:
New York’s strength is its speed, intensity, and velocity.
Graphite’s tapped into that energy by working five days a week from their Soho office. “New Yorkers bring intensity to their work,” Greg said.
Being in a market close to your customers has an added advantage: Recruiting them to work for you.
As a dev tools startup, Graphite had the benefit of hiring early technical talent from its user base. But Katie Burke, Chief People Officer of Harvey AI, also told us the company has hired many attorneys to help them better connect with the law firms for which their products are built.
Be prepared to prioritize between quality, speed of hiring, or location.
“We’ve found incredible people in New York,” said Greg. “But I’ll be honest: The New York market has its limits. Hitting over 100 engineering new hires in a year for us might be tough.” Greg and his co-founders decided they’d rather intentionally hire more slowly and relocate people than compromise on the quality of candidates or working together in-office.
Hire a recruiter earlier than you think.
“We’re 30 people and just brought on our first in-house recruiter, and honestly, we should have done it when we were 20.”
You can find great tech workers who don’t come from tech.
Greg looked around the office, tallying people who hail from finance, consulting, and beyond. “We get access to a different talent pool. But the best engineers from McKinsey are just as good as the best engineers from Google,” he said. “These places hire really smart, hard-working, wonderful people.”
Do screen for a startup mindset.
One of the first things Greg and his co-founders vet is a candidate's specific interest in working at a startup. For people coming from non-tech companies, “we’re paying attention to culture. They have the skills, but some of these companies just have very old technology cultures, and we find that’s harder to adapt from.” And if candidates are still deciding between working for bigger tech companies versus a startup of Graphite’s size, it’s usually a losing proposition for Graphite. “Usually when someone's still considering Facebook, their risk aversion eventually kicks in, and they just choose to go to a bigger tech company, which is fine.”
The grass is always greener.
“There might be more qualified candidates in San Francisco, but there’s also more competition.”
The cost of doing business
While the cost of building a company in New York won’t surprise founders from San Francisco, sticker shock is the most common reaction we see from EMEA founders beginning to hire in New York. New York is expensive, and founders planning to move from EMEA must start budgeting realistically before fundraising for their expansion. “New York candidates typically expect high-end compensation,” says Josh Whithers, General Manager of Platform and Americas Search Operations of True. “Prioritize the budget for executives who contribute significantly to growth, address critical gaps, or where in-person presence is essential for company culture."
Receipts
When budgeting for a New York move, you’ll need to plan for:
- Rent.
Coworking spaces offer a great place to land, but eventually you’ll need your own office. We see growing teams upgrading office spaces as frequently as every 12 to 18 months. - Benefits Package.
EMEA founders are often unpleasantly surprised that they have to pay (a lot) for a benefits package to hire in the U.S. legally. - Compensation.
While cash and equity packages vary by stage, they both tend to be much higher in New York than EMEA. - Overhead.
Comparing Compensation Costs by Region
While specific salary and equity packages should be rooted in each unique company’s compensation philosophy and stage, the below presents a snapshot of how the market rate in New York compares to other regions. 100% corresponds with market rate, while percentages above and below that figure indicate relative deviation in that region.
| Location | Salary Adjustment * |
Equity Adjustment ** |
|---|---|---|
| US All | 100% | 100% |
| SF Bay Area | 113% | |
| Seattle | 108% | |
| New York | 106% | |
| Boston | 100% | |
| Atlanta | 97% | |
| Austin | 97% | |
| Denver | 94% | |
| Miami | 94% | |
| Phoenix | 85% | |
| United Kingdom | 70% | 70% |
| France | 61% | 45% |
| Netherlands | 74% | 65% |
| Germany | 66% | 70% |
| Norway | 49% | n/a |
| Poland | 63% | 15% |
| Israel | 71% | 85% |
| Sweden | 55% | 45% |
Parting advice
Whether you’re building a homegrown company or expanding from Europe, here’s our best advice for navigating the New York market:
- Budget accordingly.
Compensation in New York is second only to San Francisco, and we predict it’ll only become more expensive. - Hire an internal recruiter earlier than you think.
They’ll help you navigate a fast-moving market, evangelize your company as competition for hires heats up, and be a helpful interpreter for candidates with more varied resumes. - Be realistic.
Founders who only want a VP of marketing with 10 years of SaaS experience who’ve scaled from $50-100 million in ARR and have a successful exit under their belt are setting themselves up for disappointment. That doesn’t mean the right candidate isn’t out there. Prioritize what really matters in each role before you start. - Focus on the up-and-comers.
New York’s a hotbed of emerging leadership. Look for people who’ve been a part of great teams and are hungry for their first chance to lead. - Look to talent feeders both within tech...
MongoDB, Datadog, and Figma New York all came up as great B2B talent pools to dip into. And of course, there’s Google, the ultimate New York talent feeder. - ...and beyond.
New York startups are finding strong skill alignment in finance, consulting, and media. Different industries cultivate different strengths, so be both strategic and creative about who you hire from where. - Proximity to your customers is your advantage.
How will you use it? Growing faster, molding products to their preferences, and hiring evangelists and experts. - Channel the strengths of the city.
There’s a new breed of exciting, ambitious tech company rising that taps directly into New York’s creativity, intensity, and global melting pot of culture and industry.