(Updates with venture capital deals in fourth paragraph.)

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- New York is becoming a more popular city for startups, attracting angel investors and entrepreneurs in what Eric Hippeau, a partner at Lerer Ventures, called an “incredible” entrepreneurial boom.

“New York is seeing an incredible boom in entrepreneurship,” Hippeau said today at the Bloomberg Empowered Entrepreneur conference in New York. Lerer Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in New York.

When people want to start businesses, “the money will follow naturally,” he said. “There was always some angel community. In New York, it’s much more robust today.”

New York passed Massachusetts in U.S. venture-capital deals for the first time since at least 1999, as investors seek growth in consumer Internet startups. The city ranked second in the latest quarter behind California, according to an October report by CB Insights, a venture-capital database.

New York companies took in $831 million in 86 venture- capital deals in the third quarter, compared with $710 million for 83 investments in Massachusetts, CB Insights said. A total of 790 U.S. firms received $7.9 billion, the fourth straight quarter of growth in venture investments.

Entrepreneurs have to move faster than ever to ensure others don’t clone their ideas, especially in Asia and Europe, Hippeau said.

“How quickly you build your community, how quickly you build your customer base is how quickly you’re going to put a moat around your idea,” he said.

--With assistance from Sarah Frier in New York. Editors: Marcus Chan, Romaine Bostick

To contact the reporters on this story: Danielle Kucera in San Francisco at dkucera6@bloomberg.net; Dan Colarusso in New York at dcolarusso@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net -0- Oct/18/2011 19:08 GMT