Ride the N train and you’re in the fashion center of New York City. On the street, some vendors sell you hot dogs, others sell you scarves and gloves. There, you’ll find all the necessities you need to stay warm and full. On Broadway, stores like Top Shop, Sephora, and Bloomingdale’s are packed with holiday shoppers.

What you can’t see beyond these stores, are the number of start-up companies who have begun to call Soho their home. Big open spaces with tall ceilings — there’s plenty of room for creativity.

Squarespace just had a party in their new loft.  Start-up companies are setting up shop in Soho, and you might not know it. These companies penetrate our digital lives, not our material one. We check into Foursquare, the location based mobile app, to explore the city and find out if our friends are nearby and what they like. Companies like Etsy change the way we shop and SEM & SEO changes the way we search. New York is also home of the blog world and the email newsletters.

VC principle of Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson, put the growth of start-ups in perspective when he gave a presentation. In 1995, there were 30 NYC seed and early stage tech deals, compared to the 230 in the Bay Area. Last year there were 95 tech deals in NYC, and 285 in San Francisco. This year, there were 150 tech deals made in New York and 336 in San Francisco. Why are more deals happening in New York? Here are some reasons Wilson gave to explain this boom:

1. Diverse Industries

2. Application Focused

3. Media central

4. Creative people

5. New York’s history of being entrepreneurial

6. Awesome lifestyle

Six is definitely true. At the last few technology parties, the rich start-up culture is certainly there. Even though the bars are dimly lit, the light from the gadgets and phones shine like fireflies in the night and it is clear that the devices out number the pints of beer on the tables.

Image: flickr/ oemebamo

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Start-up Scene in New York City is a post from: TechStartups.com

Can’t make it to SoHo anytime soon or in this lifetime? Then you should head over to StyleCaster to get a sense of what ambitious, smart fashion is walking the streets of NYC South of Houston. New York is teeming with this apparel and footwear clacking away to catch a cab.

StyleCaster is most definitely a Big Apple property, which is only to its benefit as they grow their site. The city is a fashion and media capital.

With the new boom of startup activity on the East Coast they find themselves in a great position to gain users, make partnerships (both tech savvy and with traditional media) and to be in the epicenter of the next fashion trends. Think what Portfolio.com used to be, but for fashion.

Fashion sites often suffer from a lack of depth, see content, or lack of tech to make them accessible. They often rely heavily on motion graphics in Flash and a business model based on revenue from affiliate sales. Not StyleCaster. They have mixed all the ingredients and a some other special sauce to create a complete user experience.

It would be hard to write this review if I didn’t break their site down from the beginning. StyleCaster is three distinct properties that have been plied together with one smaller cousin: Fashion Recommendations, Social Network, News/Blog and Shopping (the smaller cousin).

Fashion Recommendations

This is the core value proposition for StyleCaster. They deliver a tailored interface for weather and season with 360 degree model views.

Earlier this summer they took this concept and created an iPhone app that was just as robust as their site. The experience that they are able to deliver with their Daily Looks section should make retailers jealous. They have merged seamless cross-selling with the common sense that your friend might recommend and item to you.

Social Network

Everyone wants on this bandwagon for many reasons and the number one being to get funded. I’m not sure if this is what got StyleCaster $4 million but this is how it is done right, in case you were wondering.

They first look to a larger network, in this case Facebook, and integrate with their API through Connect. Second, they take this data and create an onsite profile each registrant. Third, and final in this process of hooking user into their community, they make it drop dead simple to engage with other users based on contributor types, cities, at random and a 15 minutes of fame section. A simple horizontal navigation that tracks users onsite fashionista moves.

News/Blog

Fashion Recommendations might be the awesome wow factor that you need to attract the fashion forward and a Social Network to get users connected and spending time on your site but the most impressive feature of this site isn’t really a feature. The Newsroom and Blog sections of StyleCaster are destinations for an insiders perspective on fashion. This is where the magic of this site is made.

This is content that matches the ambition and smarts of the fashion they follow . . . delivers and then some. My only gripe is that the IA and taxonomy is lacking lacking and it can be difficult to find much of the great content that is buried in the site.

StyleCaster’s headlines can be seen on other fashion/celeb sites around the net but smart money would probably say that there are more partnerships in the works to deliver full content. I’m not smart money, so I can’t say for sure.

Shopping

Well, what would a fashion site be without shopping? I called this the ‘one smaller cousin’  and I mean it. Simply put, the focus of this site is obviously to build a company and a brand based on high quality content, technology and a great user experience. It wasn’t built with shopping at its core. And that is awesome! There is a solid enough foundation in place that if StyleCaster went down this road they would find success but not as much as they will find by having all of other components in place.

I’ve gushed quite a bit here over what is just another startup. They are just another startup that needs to prove itself in the marketplace. I believe they will. And even if they don’t, this business, with any one of the three aforementioned sections would make any entrepreneur very happy with the traffic they could bring. Kudos to the team that are making this happen. They’re getting done the right way.

It wouldn’t be right to do a post about a fashion startup without some snark, now would it?

If you have ever wanted to release that inner hater, head to The Daily Looks section and spin them tall skinny models round and round until your petty little heart is content. Not that I did or would want to do this.

Tip if you do: Play house music to make it a party. Remember, you can’t do this in SoHo!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

StyleCaster Is Your SoHo Connection is a post from: TechStartups.com