I was at the Silicon Alley 2.0 Breakfast briefly this morning; the whole thing was covered in ClickZ by Rebecca Lieb and there's also coverage of the event in the NYConvergence blog.  I won't repeat what Rebecca Lieb said; I'll just add my own impression - and I did not stay for the whole thing.

The overall impression I got was New York City Venture Capital is more conservative than VC's in California and Israel, both which have had more success growing technology firms.  In fact, it was brought up that a company like YouTube could not have happened in New York, and that's true.   When YouTube was created, there was no business model and many Web 2.0 companies don't really have a business model.

The attitude of the NY VC's is to make companies who want money become super resourceful - find ways to show there is a revenue model before getting much or any money.  The attitude of California VC's is much looser and they're willing to invest in companies without a revenue model much more easily.

Part of the reason is the way New York City is - it's so dense, so populated, so rich, the startups are almost invisible here.  But the East Coast investment community is also risk aversive …. to startups at least.   And that's when I walked out.  Don't know what happened after that.

I found the argument that a YouTube, or even, a Google…could not have happened in New York City … a very compelling argument that some areas of the country, of the world, are better to be located at if you want to take a stab at invention, and perhaps, having the next big idea.

There's only one problem….New York City wants to grow business - wants to harvest Silicon Alley 2.0 - and is trying to be supportive of financial and investment interests that would benefit the city; in time, New York may change, may grow friendly to the new startup.

But like I said ….I  left at this point - with the general consensus that New York is really a much harder place to have a startup and get Angel Investment money - and that the next Google, the next YouTube…probably still would not happen here.   I'm also glad I got a chance to run into my friend Matt, who works for Trylon SMR; Trylon helped set up the event this morning.