Mr. Ohanian (Photo: Twitter)

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian hosted a talk at NYU last night featuring a slew of fellow Y Combinator grads. The Rap Genius guys were all there, as was Shoptiques founder Olga Vidisheva, and Tutorspree founders Aaron Harris and Josh Abrams. The conversation mostly revolved around all of their transitions from the business world to the tech scene, but the night got interesting when Mr. Ohanian urged the panel to hate on Silicon Valley.

"We were hating on the Bay Area," he said. "And I think we should do that a little more."He then begged the aspiring founders in the audience to make a passable burrito chain in New York because it was the only thing the West Coast had to offer. The NYU crowd was quick to suggest Dos Toros, the New York chain that serves burritos "Mission-style" like their West Coast inspiration, Gordo's.

Mr. Ohanian asked the panel, "One of the things I see time and time again is that we have companies who went to the West Coast and then come screaming back to New York. What was the driving force to come back to New York?"

Rap Genius' Ilan Zechory took the question first. "It's where we lived," he said. "It's where our friends were. There are no women in the Bay Area, genuinely. We never considered moving out there. We always felt like our West Coast trips were, like, all of us in a Nissan Xterra, in like a Weston, with some weed, trying to steal bags of money to bring back to the East Coast."

Tutorspree's Mr. Harris said that the East Coast was "best for our business," but emphasized there was a major epicurean reason at play here. "Most importantly," he said. "The other side of the coin of the burrito question is that there's no good pizza in the Bay Area. You can't get a decent slice in half of the country. I'll throw bagels in there too. If I'm going to work for a long amount of time, I need pizza."

Audience favorite Ms. Vidisheva said that she couldn't manage to make her business successful while being so far away from the fashion companies in New York. Plus, there were better hires to be had in Silicon Alley. "The California mentality of 'let's chill today' doesn't fly in New York," she said.

The talk wrapped up with Mr. Zechory doling out this nugget of advice to the audience: “Don't write a business plan.” Mr. Ohanian was pretty surprised and asked him if that were really true. He confirmed and said, "We've had some tabs open...maybe we've opened a PDF." He then touted their $15 series A investment from Andreessen Horowitz and the crowd went wild.

You'd be hard pressed to find an aspiring banker or model or writer or actor who would need much convincing to move to New York City. Not so with tech folks. In the face of competition from the Valley and giants like Facebook and Twitter, suddenly in our midst, seven startups have banded together for a campaign called Come Work in New York that promises to ply talented developers, designers, and "business people" with $5,000 to help them move to the city if they're hired.

The list of participating companies, includes some of New York's most high-profile startups: Bit.ly, Yipit, Aviary, Ordr.in, Tutorspree, ChatID, and Dispatch. But just because they're willing to pay up doesn't make them humble. In bold lettering, the website declares, "NEW YORK IS THE GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD," and then proceeds to list reasons it is "Better" and "Awesomerer" than whenever you're living now:

TRUTH: We have the smartest and best looking people in the world, including Scarlett Johansson.

TRUTH: We have the world's best and most diverse restaurant scene. There are 23,499 here. You can eat at a different restaurant every night for the next 64.38 years.

TRUTH: Our public transit system is better than yours. Six hundred and sixty miles of tracks running 24 hours a day.

TRUTH: Speaking of tracks, you may have heard this little ditty Jay-Z and Alicia Keys wrote about us a few years ago?

You gotta give them credit. Given the desperation for devs we've been hearing about, $5,000 seems like a small-ish signing bonus. But a splashy landing page, some community spirit, and bada bing: new hiring strategy.

No fury like a start-up scorned. The Second Annual NYC Startup Job Fair burned about 80 start-ups today with an insensitive CC instead of BCC on the email notifying companies they'd been rejected. Rent The Runway, 10gen, Get Glue, Tenka, Pixable, Snap Interactive, Food52 and Boxee were just some of the start-ups shut out of the event. The scorned start-ups are starting their own counter-fair, and according to the Google Group, Fred Wilson wants to help. So who did get accepted? SecondMarket, Gawker, Meetup, Yipit, Popdust, Brainscape, NewsCred, Shapeways, Lot18 and others. Check Betabeat in the morning for more coverage of this developing story.

Returns: New York's Tutorspree (founded fall of 2010, Airbnb of tutoring, etc., etc.) has been getting some hot news off the presses in New York. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post recently gave the Y Combinator-funded company some love, and we hear the founders are missing New York and plan to move back after the program ends. Founder Aaron Harris was in the city for the weekend. "New York City. City of dreams...and snowy rain," he tweeted. We miss you too!
The long arm of social media has embraced our dear friend Daniel. Journalism developer, conference live-tweeter and new media whiz kid Daniel Bachhuber is back on Facebook and Twitter after a five-month hiatus that was supposed to be permanent. "Deleted my Twitter account. Made it to 8,234 tweets, 401 following, 2,056 followers, and 209 lists (for what that’s worth) over three years. I’ve deleted my Facebook account as well. Open systems need more of my attention, and it’s time to vote with my feet," he wrote in October, prompting bemusement from the peanut gallery. (The next day's post: "Witty things I would have said on Twitter today.") Being left out was too inconvenient, he told Betabeat. "Yes, you can call me a hypocrite. Yes, I’m still a firm believer in portable data and identity. Pragmatism won out over idealism," he blogged.

What's cool. Did 4chan founder Chris Poole really get dinner with enduring heartthrob and Sean Parker-poseur Justin Timberlake on April Fool's Day? Do those two people speak the same language?

Reddit #CanGetIt. Comedian Donald Glover conducted a lukewarm Ask Me Anything on Reddit today. "I'm not gonna be on here a ton. I gots work to do, homies. But I wanted to do a little," he wrote to fans. Still, the effort gave founder Alexis Ohanian the swoons.
21st century voyeurism. Foursquare's Tristan Walker had lunch at Color! How do we know? Technology. We're thinking a themed Tumblr, sourced entirely from Color: "Pictures of People Mid-Sandwich." Do you love it?