photo from Wikimedia Commons

According to a recent article in Mashable, New York is becoming a hotter and hotter site for start-up businesses and entrepreneurs. Where Silicon Valley is king, NYC, for many reasons, is rising in the ranks.

Young and popular companies like Foursquare and Kickstarter, as well as companies like Twitter and Facebook who have building offices here, are highlighting a vanguard of new and growing tech companies.

In April 2011 there were roughly 15,000 relatively new tech up-starts in the NYC area, but now that number has increased by about 11,000, the article says. It also says that…

“Last year, venture investors plowed $2.75 billion into 390 startups in the New York City area — the most money and investments since 2001, when the dot-com bubble was rapidly losing air in Manhattan’s “Silicon Alley” and everywhere else, too. So far this year, $942 million has been invested in 182 startups in New York.”

That number is merely a fraction of Silicon Valley’s funding —around 12 billion, according to Mashable— but it’s surely an auspicious spurt in jobs, opportunities, and innovation. New York is, actually, the second-largest technology hub in the U.S.

According to a May report by the Center for an Urban Future, New York has surprisingly sprung up to second and is the only major U.S. area to see an increase in venture capital deals between 2007 and 2011. It’s seen a 32% increase over the four-year span, opposed to a 10% decrease in Silicon Valley, 14% decrease in New England, 8% decrease in Orange County, and 11% decrease in the U.S. overall. IT is also the leader in NYC since job growth since 2007. (Publishing down 15.8%… uh oh…)

This is eerily similar to the dot com era, but we’re in a better position right now than we were at that time.

“You can get traction before you have to raise money. The tools are orders of magnitude easier,
and so investors aren’t funding ideas… They’re funding businesses”, Frank Rimalovski, the managing director of the NYU Innovation Fund, said in the report.

These numbers mark an auspicious future for the city’s employment, entrepreneurship, and innovation which, ultimately, marks an auspicious future for the city as a whole.

Who wants to start a tech company?!

Mashable

The Ritz-Carlton, Herlizya, Israel - photo courtesy of Schnur Associates

From Boston to Paris to London, the New York mainstay, The Ritz-Carlton, keeps expanding outward and moving forward. The company, whose establishments in Battery Park and Central Park seem to be monuments, will look to Israel for its latest endeavor.

Next month they’ll be opening The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, Herzliya, their “first-ever Kosher luxury residences.” The first in Israel, The Residences is Ritz-Carlton’s 77th establishment worldwide. The Ritz-Carlton currently has hotels in 25 different countries, as west as the U.S. and as east as Japan.

Designed by Rani Ziss, the famous architect whose resume includes spearheading the renovations of New York’s Plaza Hotel, and New York-based Studio Gaia, who in the past designed the interior of the W hotels in Seoul and Mexico City, The Residences, styled after a “luxury marina lifestyle,” has its own marina and is on the Mediterranean waterfront in the opulent city of Herzliya. The city is also the center of Israel’s own “Silicon Valley,” Silicon Wadi.

The Residences, though, are not your normal hotel. The 12-story central building is a five-star hotel on its bottom six floors, but on the upper six floors are 82 vacation condominiums.

“Residents,” or owners of properties in the top half of the building, are allowed 180 days per year in their respective room, and, of course, have access to the Ritz-Carlton’s roof-top pool, fitness center, and restaurant. Properties range in price from $1.3 million for one-bedrooms to $15 million for penthouses.

To learn more about The Residences click here.