![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-919475938-e1779547262851.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, betting on New York as a serious technology hub felt contrarian to the point of naivety. Silicon Valley had the engineers, the venture capital, the density of ambition, and most importantly, the shared belief that this was where the future was being built. New York had finance, fashion, and media. The conventional wisdom was that you couldn\u2019t build the next great technology company from a city that didn\u2019t think of itself as a technology city.<\/p>\n
We met the way builders in New York tend to find each other: less by design and more because we were both doing interesting things in the same small room. This was a moment when people were openly debating whether Silicon Alley was dead. We built anyway. Matt was incubating and backing businesses like Resy, betting that New York\u2019s density and culture were features, not bugs. Patrick was creating new companies at Thrive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thrive Capital went on to become one of the anchors of New York\u2019s venture community.\u00a0When Google and Facebook announced NYC offices, the reaction from the tech establishment was skepticism. We disagreed. That disagreement turned out to be the thesis.<\/p>\n
We all know how the New York story turned out. Today, New York City is home to more than 50 unicorns and has produced some of the most industry-defining companies of the last two decades:\u00a0Oscar Health, MongoDB, Ramp, Wiz, Etsy. The city\u2019s startup ecosystem raised over $16 billion in venture capital in 2024 alone, ranking it consistently as the second-largest technology hub in the United States and among the top five in the world. The founders who took a chance on New York created companies that couldn\u2019t have been built anywhere else.<\/p>\n
After building, financing, and operating startups in what became Silicon Alley, we\u2019re seeing a similar confluence of talent, capital, and company-building emerge \u2014 but this time it\u2019s happening in South Florida.\u00a0This isn\u2019t a COVID-era migration story. It\u2019s something more structural: businesses and talent increasingly occupying the space between New York and Florida.\u00a0We believe the next generation of great companies will be built in this corridor.<\/p>\n
The Next Startup Ecosystem Will Be a Corridor, Not a City<\/p>\n
The playbook has long been that as a founder, you move to a geographic hub, absorb the culture, hire from the local talent pool, and network with your neighbors. Silicon Valley worked for this reason, and New York\u2019s concentration of capital, ambition, and adjacent industries similarly came together in a way that sparked cohesion and serendipity.<\/p>\n
But AI is challenging the necessity of physical proximity in ways that would have seemed impossible even five years ago. The best engineers can collaborate across time zones with a fluency that wasn\u2019t possible before. The tools that once required a full-stack engineering team can be built by a determined founder and a handful of models.\u00a0AI-native companies like code editor Cursor and Perplexity AI were built this way and are now valued at more than $20 billion.<\/p>\n
This doesn\u2019t mean place no longer matters. It means the nature of place is changing. The question is no longer simply \u201cwhere is the talent?\u201d It\u2019s \u201cwhat kind of environment produces the best company at each stage of development?\u201d We believe the answer is increasingly corridors: two cities with unique but complementary advantages functioning as a single integrated system.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re actively building what we believe is the most compelling version of this emerging corridor model between New York and South Florida. New York brings what it has always brought: capital density, an unmatched concentration of enterprise relationships, the talent networks of the world\u2019s leading financial and professional services industries, and a culture of rigorous, competitive company-building forged over decades. When your customers are banks, insurance companies, logistics operators, or healthcare systems, there is simply nowhere else like New York.<\/p>\n
South Florida, and West Palm Beach in particular, has transformed into a serious business hub.\u00a0Florida is already home to the second-fastest-growing technology job market in the country, and nearly half of people who move to Florida from New York choose West Palm Beach. Stephen Ross\u00a0\u2014 one of our partners in this effort \u2014\u00a0is developing West Palm Beach from first principles: talent pipelines, community, physical spaces, and the connective tissue between capital and founders.\u00a0This foundation is being built by people who have done it before.<\/p>\n
Introducing Latitudes<\/p>\n
Related Ross has already brought incredible talent, capital, and culture to West Palm Beach. Now, Juxtapose and RSE Ventures are joining Related Ross to help founders build new companies from the ground up in the region. This initiative is called Latitudes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Latitudes is designed to build category-defining technology companies that operate natively across the corridor \u2014 drawing on New York\u2019s enterprise access and talent density and on South Florida\u2019s speed, structural incentives, and business-friendly culture.<\/p>\n
The companies taking shape here are structurally different from what Silicon Valley typically backs \u2014 focused on defense technology, industrial software transitions, and infrastructure that the Valley has historically underweighted.\u00a0A different kind of startup ecosystem is emerging, built for durability, not just growth.<\/p>\n
What distinguishes this moment from previous regional tech ambitions that never achieved critical mass is the seriousness of the infrastructure commitment behind it.\u00a0For Juxtapose, this represents a genuine expansion of how we operate. Juxtapose and RSE are both establishing\u00a0second headquarters in West Palm Beach.\u00a0This is a flag-plant, not a satellite office.<\/p>\n
Looking back on New York City in the early 2000s, it seems obvious now that the tech community would grow the way it did.\u00a0We see the same signals emerging in South Florida today.\u00a0We\u2019re making another contrarian bet that the next chapter of great American company-building is starting here.<\/p>\n
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of\u00a0Fortune.<\/p>\n
#great #American #tech #hub #isnt #city #corridor #York #Miami<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty years ago, betting on New York as a serious technology hub felt contrarian to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[286,1699,8926,673,4405,1933,970,1420,4149,317,443,3776],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}