“I think you’re going to see these numbers grow dramatically over the next five years,’’ said Cook managing director John Barrett, who created the survey. “We could easily add a thousand new jobs in this digital media sector in Boston in the next 12 months.’’
New York has 230 digital-only companies with nearly 20,000 employees, twice the size of Boston’s Internet and digital media sector - but New York’s population is 13 times larger.
Yet Boston will never catch up or even keep up, Barrett said, because a flood of venture capital funding in New York is spawning a surge in Internet start-ups there.
“Internet and digital media investing in New York continues to outstrip investment in Boston,’’ Barrett said, adding that New York’s huge media and advertising industries are important customers for Internet companies and a major source of skilled workers. “Boston just doesn’t have that same ecosystem.’’
Such pessimism doesn’t sit well with David Friend, chief executive of Carbonite Inc. of Boston, which sells online data backup services to consumers and businesses. Friend agreed that New York is a good venue for Internet companies oriented toward marketing and advertising, but he also thinks Boston has what it takes to compete. Carbonite, he said, relies on complex software for managing millions of gigabytes of stored data.
“For companies like us where there’s a lot of heavy-duty technology, I think we would have a hard time in New York,’’ Friend said.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said local universities produce a technically trained workforce here that New York can’t match.
“We have the brainpower,’’ said Menino. “Boston’s one of the best-educated cities in the world. . . . We’ve been ranked one of the most innovative cities in the world. We’re not going to let that ranking slide.’’
The Boston area is also an excellent place to find smart, dedicated employees, according to Brian Halligan, chief executive of HubSpot Inc., an Internet marketing company in Cambridge.
