By YOUNG MONEY Staff
30 August 2010

A Wall Street Journal feature suggests that New York City may be sneaking up on Palo Alto, California as the best place for entrepreneurs to get started on a new tech business. In a reversal of the traditional paradigm, Silicon Valley now represents the old, the traditional, even the "establishment." New York, say some entrepreneurs, is a bit more rough-and-tumble, a bit more innovative.

Among the New York-based sites drawing significant traffic and media attention are the blog platform Tumblr, the onlineTV provider Boxee, the crafts site Etsy, luxury discount shopper Gilt Groupe and of course, Foursquare.

"Palo Alto is like Google," Carter Cleveland, the founder of art-trading site Art.sy, told the WSJ. "Big and established. New York City is like Foursquare. Not as big but tons of hype. It's going through a growth period and very exciting."

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has put some of his significant influence behind an entrepreneurial incubator and seed fund, and the big media firms that live in Manhattan are starting to turn the web in a big way. Some say that venture capital is ramping up in New York, and small tech startups have a better chance of standing out than they do in Silicon Valley, where everyone and their dog belongs to a tech startup.

Investors and entrepreneurs with an eye out for the next Google, then, might want to start their search in the Big Apple.