New York was one of the top five global destinations for venture capital dollars in 2017. The number of venture capital deals in the city grew by 256 percent, and the amounts invested by 439 percent, since 2008. The analysis –released by Comptroller Stringer and based on data from Crunchbase – also detailed venture capital’s impact on the New York City economy, as venture capital flows to a wide range of businesses in and outside of the city’s legacy industries of finance, advertising, media, and culture that support roughly 355,000 jobs – building on the city’s existing economic foundations to modernize and reshape the way those industries will do business in the 21st century.

New York-based companies closed nearly 1,000 deals valued at a total of about $9.4 billion in 2017, up from $1.7 billion in 2008. That left New York behind only Silicon Valley and San Francisco in terms of total domestic capital raised.

Orin Herskowitz, executive director of Columbia Technology Ventures at Columbia University, said to the WSJ that the growth of accelerators, incubators and an increased focus on raw innovations by research institutions have helped the city develop a robust startup community.

“It’s completely true that the rise of venture capital availability in New York in the past couple years is truly breathtaking,” Mr. Herskowitz said. “I think it goes well beyond access to capital, though, in the sense that this is a much broader story about the way New York City has pivoted to become a truly world-class place to start and grow a company.”