Companies to Watch: Five Founders Powering the Next Generation of New York Tech
A few weeks ago, Tech:NYC opened the doors to its first-ever Founder House, a new partnership with WeWork to support exciting New York founders at the earliest stages of building their startups.
The initiative was born out of a need we heard from many founders who started their companies leading up to — or right in the middle of — the pandemic. They’re entrepreneurs who missed out on the collaborations and networking they were banking on to get their businesses off the ground. So Tech:NYC decided to bring 25 of those founders together, under one roof, and make sure they had the right access to investors, industry experts, and most importantly, each other.
The inaugural Founder House was even more productive than we anticipated — curated introductions to local leaders we brought in from Carta, Innovatemap, and other industry partners helped the founders accomplish in one day what could’ve taken much longer on their own.
Stay tuned for details on the next Founder House (spoiler: Cohort 2 opens its doors for New York Tech Week this fall). Until then, catch up with five founders that were part of the inaugural cohort of Founder House — New Yorkers leading companies scaling new solutions in AI, food tech, mobility, and more.
Meet this month’s Companies to Watch:
TWINE
What does your company do?
Twine Co-founder and Head of Product Taylor McLoughlin: We recently released twine Ambient, an AI Chief of Staff that summarizes, threads, and shares important business updates from meetings, Slack, and other tools across a business. Our most popular feature today is our AI-generated meeting summaries — teams love them!
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
TM: I’m here for the serendipitous collisions that come with a city of such a density of people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. It’s magical here. We all feed off each other’s energy. New York didn't become a world-class city by chance, though. It’s a direct reflection of all of us, and we all play a role in shaping our communities. I think that’s what makes New York special.
Talk a little bit about Twine’s roadmap. You were set to launch what was largely meant to be an IRL networking app … and then the pandemic happened. How did you pivot your plans?
TM: First off, my team is incredible — so adaptable, so resilient. I’m incredibly proud of all of them.
We were scheduled to launch our first product when lockdowns hit NYC. We’ve come a long way since then and are on a new path. How we did it came down to two fundamentals: build conviction and move like hell.
When you pivot, you have to bring a lot of people along for that ride: your team, your customers, your partners, your investors, and many others. And you have to do it fast! My co-founder, Lawrence Coburn, wrote this incredible post on LinkedIn detailing the key moment at the beginning of 2023 where we took the business into a new direction.
Tech:NYC tracks a lot of various — and sometimes conflicting — data on hybrid and remote work models, and the version we hear is most frustrating is when team members lack a connection to how their work fits into the bigger picture. What tools are Twine’s customers asking for most to bypass pain points like this?
TM: I think this is a problem that hybrid/remote work has exacerbated, but it’s been brewing for a while with the explosion of tools in the enterprise.
In today's fast-paced environment, information dissemination can be challenging, with bloated Slack channels, monthly all-hands, and outdated internal wikis. At my last company, we tackled this issue by introducing an internal newsfeed called Pride. The problem with feeds in the enterprise is a lack of quality and consistent content. But today, the narrator is Generative AI, and it never sleeps. The content generated by AI helps keep teams — especially distributed ones — on the same page.
Our current version of Ambient summarizes meetings across Zoom, Meet, and Teams, and makes those updates quick to organize and share. Where our customers want us to take Ambient is across more systems (like Salesforce, HubSpot, Asana, Confluence, Jira, and many more) and to go deeper on automating workflows that are informed by data from those systems.
AI has taken a more central role in the product. If New York policymakers reached out to ask you how they should approach AI, what would you tell them is most important?
TM: In my opinion there must be a clear regulatory framework for this technology that garners global support. The tension lies in balancing innovation with safety, security, and inclusion. I remember when GDPR went live — it became the de facto rule book companies had to abide by. While not perfect, it at least created a clear set of guidelines. I think NYC has the opportunity to lead here.
But time is of the essence. I agree with Senator Chuck Schumer’s recent assessment that years of policy work must get done in a matter of months. The technology is moving that fast, so cooperation between the public and private sectors is imperative to meeting the moment.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
TM: Scarr’s in the Lower East Side is my favorite slice, but the best pizza I’ve had in New York is at Lucali. It’s a worthwhile commitment.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
TM: The early mornings in NYC have been amazing lately. I just had a great run meeting then a coffee at Laughing Man Cafe in Tribeca, and I only recently found out they have a social enterprise called The Laughing Man Foundation, which helps support coffee farmers around the world. Love that about New York. Go support!
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on growing a startup in NYC?
TM: I’ve the great fortune to have some amazing mentors in my corner. Their collective decades of wisdom have taught me the importance of staying cool in the heat — the “heat” being uncertainty.
Uncertainty is the frontier of action — it’s something to be embraced, not avoided. Yet, uncertainty can also exacerbate stress and anxiety, and it’s often avoided. I could talk for hours just on this topic because it touches everyone. We all experience uncertainty, sometimes in acute bouts. That’s especially true for founders. If you’re out there and want to talk, I know a great coffee spot!
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
TM: I have two! I love using The Browser Company’s Arc browser. The product is filled with all sorts of juice — lots of small details that really add up to something special. It’s a delightful product to use, and it’s fun to watch them build in public.
I also just learned about Alcove, a climate tech company helping to decarbonize the planet. Really talented team and smart, smart founders. We need top talent like Alcove’s working on climate issues.
STAK MOBILITY
What does your company do?
Stak Mobility co-founder and CEO Diallo Powell: Stak Mobility is making it possible for drivers and fleets in urban areas to transition to electric vehicles. We combine a simple and convenient mobile self-service experience with vertical (5-story) automation and EV charging for an innovative and environmentally sustainable solution to a perpetual urban problem: space. We reduce the car footprint by 85% while also scaling EV charging infrastructure. Imagine what cities can do with all of that reclaimed space — plus the health and environmental benefits we can realize — by transitioning all of our urban vehicles to EVs.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
DP: We are a team of New Yorkers, spread across Manhattan and Brooklyn. It’s clear that existing solutions aren’t tailored to folks living in multi-family housing or for city agencies or companies that have made significant commitments to transitioning to EV fleets. I have a great photo album of early-EV adopters in NYC. My favorite is an extension cord run from the window of a third-floor walk up to an EV parked on the curb. I definitely admire the ingenuity, but I think we can all agree that won't scale. The strategic deployment of Stak’s solution can offer people in multi-family housing the suburban garage experience and EV fleets, from sedans to sprinter vans, a scalable solution.
You got your career started in the healthcare and healthtech space. What made you interested in founding a new startup working on mobility?
DP: I was fascinated by all of the amazing applications of digital integrations with everyday devices, which is sometimes referred to as the Internet of Things, or IoT. I started to explore potential uses and an introduction through a colleague led to a connection with my Stak co-founders who were looking at ways to modernize the automated parking experience. The partnership resulted in the first iteration of our mobile platform and the discovery of a truly innovative approach to EV charging. That’s when we realized we had something really unique and Stak Mobility was born.
There’s consensus that we need more EV charging infrastructure, but there are all kinds of ways to set that up — charging hub sites, driveways, streetside, and your model, parking towers. Why are you betting on the parking space model?
DP: The energy transition will offer a lot of great opportunities for innovators, but we also want to build a business that is sustainable from Day 1. We really like the parking model because it provides a solid basis for our business to solve a perpetual urban problem (parking/vehicle storage) while preparing for the EV transition in an incremental and efficient way.
Individual EV ownership won’t go from 0 to 100% overnight, so we have a solid model for meeting the demands of today while becoming more valuable as EV adoption grows over time. We expect partners that have made significant EV fleet commitments will require 100% vehicle storage and charging and have a more immediate need for scalable charging infrastructure. Space in our cities comes at a premium and that’s at the foundation of the problems we solve for our customers and partners.
We’ve launched sites in Gainesville, FL and Pittsburgh, PA this year, are actively working with a Fortune 100 delivery and logistics company to optimize last-mile delivery properties. We also kicked off a large-scale, 271-space deployment in Northern California this month. We have an ambitious plan to reach 100 Stak sites before 2030, when a number of EV mandates kick in.
What’s one step you think New York can take to encourage more personal EV adoption?
DP: I’d go back to my earlier point on the observed struggles of early urban EV adopters. I spoke to a Tesla driver in Brooklyn who decided not to renew his lease because of charging challenges in NYC. He said more evidence of available and easily accessible infrastructure like Stak’s sites definitely would have changed his mind. I think New Yorkers need to have 100% confidence that a charge will be there when they need it.
We also need more affordable EV options. I’m excited to see more variety of electric vehicles and price ranges coming into the market. I think affordable EVs combined with all of the available incentives will have a significant impact on the rate of adoption.
We also see a great opportunity for our platform to play an instrumental role in scaling EV carsharing (e.g. Zipcar, Getaround) and for ride sharing (e.g., Uber, Lyft, Revel) drivers, most of whom live in multi-family housing, to store their EVs while off duty. Mayor Adams has required that all ride sharing vehicles need to be zero emissions by 2030. That will require creative solutions for scalable infrastructure. I think a lot of folks will have their first EV experiences with a rental or car share and hopefully that will give them more comfort and confidence in making an EV purchase.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
DP: That’s a tough one. I have a mental map of where to stop for a slice based on the neighborhood. I was on the Lower East Side last week and stopped at Scarr’s Pizza. Solid slice.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
DP: I’m a big fan of lunch meetings at Rosemary’s in the Village. Great central location, bright space, great food, good for casual to semi-formal, and the service is always on point.
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on growing a startup in NYC?
DP: I’ll go with the old adage “get out of the building.” NYC has such a dense pool of talent and expertise that’s all within a 30 minute subway ride. You’ll be amazed at how many people are willing to give you time, feedback, and introductions to help evolve and grow your startup. Listen more than you talk and seek candid and honest, real-world input on your company early, often, and always.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
DP: You mentioned earlier about the need for various solutions to support the energy transition. Tiya Gordon and Nathan King are Brooklyn-based co-founders pursuing an innovative approach to curbside charging with their startup itselectric. Outside of energy and mobility, I’ve been really impressed with Anthony Edward’s company EatOkra and the potential to scale their app and mission.
AIRPALS
What does your company do?
Airpals founder and CEO Joshe Ordonez: Airpals is an all-in-one B2B platform designed specifically for office logistics. It caters to coordinators, executive assistants, and other administrative professionals who frequently handle shipping for office and project-based items. By centralizing and streamlining all their shipping needs, Airpals brings peace of mind to operational workers while optimizing their time and shipping budgets.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
JO: I hail from Cuenca, a beautiful town nestled in the Andean region of Ecuador. Despite the vast differences between New York and Cuenca, I was exposed to a wealth of movies, TV shows, music, and news from New York while growing up. Immersed in my own Ecuadorian culture, this exposure to NYC's vibrant cultural scene shaped my worldview significantly.
My career journey began in fashion and other creative industries, and I felt that New York provided the ideal platform to forge a successful path. Being the hub of global activity, New York encompasses everything from financial markets to art, and I saw boundless opportunities there.
New York also held a special place in my heart as home to one of the largest Ecuadorian communities in the US. This allowed me to feel connected to my roots and maintain a sense of closeness to home while living in the city that never sleeps.
Your core thesis is to “give the old school NYC courier service a 21st century update.” It feels like there are now tons of delivery and shipping options — what is Airpals doing that makes it stand apart?
JO: Thanks for bringing this up. Yes, that statement was the foundation of our company. It's interesting to note that NYC presents unique challenges for logistics companies. Dealing with extreme congestion and highly polarized weather conditions throughout the year, along with complex traffic and industry-related rules, makes it one of the most difficult cities to operate in. That’s why successfully tackling logistical issues here would provide us with a playbook to expand our platform to other cities. As the saying goes, "If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere."
Indeed, the delivery and logistics industry is highly fragmented, but we are focused on developing software specifically for administrative and operational workers. In a world where many software solutions cater to specific professional roles, we hold the belief that all individuals across various corporate levels deserve access to effective tools and automation capabilities for their time-consuming tasks. Having experienced it ourselves, we understand how calling couriers to coordinate and request quotes can eat up valuable time and energy, leaving little room for focusing on actual projects and career growth.
Our obsession with this thesis drives us to bring something new to the industry and, most importantly, build strong relationships with our customers and users. By doing so, we aim to make a positive impact and provide much-needed support to those in the operational workforce.
You also take a sustainability-forward approach. How big is the emissions problem in shipping operations? What’s one fix you’d like to see more companies making to reduce their carbon footprint?
JO: Transportation and logistics are significant contributors to carbon emissions. At Airpals, we are dedicated to making a positive impact by leveraging technology and forming partnerships with conscious delivery providers. Our goal is to assist our clients, other companies in adopting more responsible practices. While there is growing interest in electrifying fleets and addressing the lithium battery dilemma, we also aspire to see a more assertive reduction of plastic usage both at the consumer level and within businesses.
As a first-time founder (who was part of the inaugural cohort of Google for Startups’ Latino Founders Fund!), what more does the tech sector still need to do to diversify its founder ecosystem?
JO: The lack of diversity within the founder ecosystem is just the surface of a more extensive issue. The real challenge lies in the scarcity of strategic partners and funders who share our perspectives, understand our experiences, and are genuinely interested in the problems we aim to address. Increasing the representation of Latinx individuals in executive and leadership roles at large tech companies can lead to more people from our community being exposed to cutting-edge technologies. This exposure, in turn, has the potential to boost the number of Latinx investors and founders in the tech industry.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
JO: Artichoke Basille’s Pizza and the Cherry Jones pizza from Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
JO: Maman in Soho.
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on growing a startup in NYC?
JO: Make sure you are building the right “it” before building it. This concept was introduced by the book "The Right It" by Alberto Savoia, which emphasizes the significance of validating an idea before investing resources in its development. This approach might challenge the conventional notion of building an MVP, but founders could benefit from first formulating a scrappy plan to sell the idea and validate its potential before committing to building even an MVP.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
JO: I'm thrilled about Wondermind, founded by Daniella Pierson, a young Colombian-American entrepreneur. The company is addressing the pressing issue of mental health, which I believe is one of the most critical challenges of our time.
FIG
What does your company do?
Fig co-founder and CTO Jake Lynch: Fig (Food Is Good) is helping millions manage their dietary needs. Fig is an app that shows you everything you can eat. Whether you’re gluten-free, have food intolerances, or simply want to cut out certain ingredients, we’ve got you covered. No more restrictions. Only options.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
JL: I’m from New Rochelle, so part of the reason I came back to New York was to be closer to home. All my friends and family are here, and they’ve been incredibly supportive as we’ve been building Fig.
We started right before the pandemic in a WeWork in midtown. COVID really reshaped how we were building things as we couldn’t be in the office together. But New York has come back in a big way. It’s been really fun to be around so many companies and people I know and love. The founder community here is really awesome because there are so many different industries, and because it’s such a social city, there are always meetups or dinners. Plus, at some point all my friends from other cities come to visit, so I’m constantly catching up with people who are passing through.
What’s the scale of the opportunity for Fig? Do you have data on how many people now rely on specialized or modified health plans?
JL: Over 4 billion people worldwide have dietary needs. We started by serving those eating for mostly medical reasons — people accommodating allergies, gastrointestinal issues, or autoimmune conditions. Surprisingly, that represents nearly 20% of the US population. Seemingly everyone we know or talk with knows someone who can relate to what we are building.
As we grow, we see the potential to expand to serve more preference-based diets as well like vegan, halal, keto, and diets for consumers that just want to be healthy. We think starting with the communities most in need allows us to build an awesome experience for a group that is really engaged with the product and expand over time.
Obviously, accuracy and trust in the app’s recommendations is really important — lest someone get a bad lead that triggers a health issue. How are you building the technology to ensure it’s meeting users’ real health needs?
JL: Fig works closely with a number of dietitians, who deal with a variety of conditions. They stay up to date on the latest science and what they are seeing in their clinical experience. We’ve found that rarely is a dietitian an expert in triggers for all conditions, so we have to find experts from many different backgrounds. We continuously update ingredient ratings for each diet on the platform as new information becomes available.
There are more than 2,500 ingredients and 200,000 ingredient synonyms in our database. For example, while similar apps might consider “cherry” as one ingredient, we’ve painstakingly built our algorithms to tell the difference between cherry, cherry powder, cherry juice, cherry juice concentrate, artificial cherry flavor, and cherry tomato. These are all unique ingredients evaluated differently for every diet on the Fig platform.
Now that we have a community of members built up, we have a continuous feedback loop as well. Our members are constantly telling us about ingredients changing in products or new research that has recently come out. This allows us to make updates more quickly and work with different communities to best suit their needs.
You’re collecting a lot of insights on the types of options users are searching and scanning in the app. Have you uncovered anything you think clinicians might be surprised to find out — or think they could be doing a better job responding to?
JL: As we’ve built Fig, communities have reached out to us and ask us to add support in the app. This is really motivating to us, because it tells us there is a really strong need to help a group that does not have another tool. Not too long ago, we heard from a group who supports people with Alpha Gal Syndrome, a tick-borne illness that causes people to be allergic to a protein found in mammalian meat. We thought it was more of a niche community at first, but we heard time and again from the community that the number of Americans who suffer from the condition was a lot larger than previously understood.
Recently, The New York Times published a couple of articles on Alpha Gal Syndrome and new research out of the CDC on how prevalent the condition is — it was recently estimated to affect 450,000 Americans. Healthcare providers don’t always know how to help people with these conditions so we think there is an educational component to the health care system we can play a large part in — especially for communities that have been previously underserved.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
JL: I’m a Brooklyn resident, so I’m partial to Brooklyn pizza. My favorite slice is at Williamsburg Pizza on Union Avenue.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
JL: The Smith in NoMad was our meeting spot in the early days. I like it because it’s central and has something for everyone. But Devoción in Williamsburg is a nice spot to grab a coffee.
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on growing a startup in NYC?
JL: I’d encourage people to get involved with communities like Tech:NYC and talk to as many people as possible. As I mentioned, one of the best parts of NYC is that every sector is here — I’ve found meetups for health tech, food tech, and early stage startups. It’s a great way to meet people and find out about other companies, founders, and operators that are working on exciting problems.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
JL: My friends and I have been using Beli, the app that allows you to rate restaurants against each other and gives you a score for each restaurant based on your rankings. I don’t know the founders, but I’d love to meet them, especially knowing they’re based out of New York. They’ve been a hit with my friends who rank every restaurant they go to now. Maybe we can work with them one day! I’m also a huge fan of what the team at Healthie is building. They are supporting a lot of the health tech community in New York and elsewhere, and I’m really excited to see where they go.
DATHIC
What does your company do?
Dathic co-founder and CEO Laura Rocha: Dathic is a New York-based insights and analytics company helping brands understand, set effective growth strategies, and engage authentically with US Latinos and multicultural consumers, online and in-store.
The US multicultural market is the fastest-growing market with huge spending power. Latino consumer power in the US alone is almost $2 trillion dollars. It's hard for brands to understand the diverse cultures, needs, and preferences of these communities based on aggregated data they usually get from many stores or online. Dathic’s platform analyzes billions of data points to understand local communities, cultural nuances, product preferences, and ongoing gaps to provide brands with personalized insights and recommendations that better serve multicultural consumers.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
LR: New York is the most diverse and dynamic city! Aside from having gone to grad school at NYU, and falling in love with the city, there are an immense amount of opportunities for tech startups here. The city is as diverse, ambitious, and exciting as the people that live here. We’ve had great success meeting with people from the tech ecosystem, the multicultural communities we want to empower, and brands who recognize the value we are bringing to the market with Dathic.
You’re a first-time founder. What’s been the most exciting — and the most challenging — part of getting a startup off the ground?
LR: When it comes to getting off the ground, there are always challenges in hiring, funding, and getting first customers. You’re wearing all of the hats at the beginning, and it’s hard. Most startup founders can relate to this. However, in terms of progress, we are excited to be introducing technology in the consumer goods sector and the multicultural space. More and more small and medium businesses (SMBs) will be using this AI technology, which is a rather unexpected use case, and I think that’s what makes it exciting.
The fact that it's happening at a fast pace — we are creating a product, learning how to grow a business, leading a team, and introducing it to the market at the same time — always makes it a challenge, but a great opportunity to grow personally and professionally as well.
How have the last few years changed the consumer landscape, if at all, and what are brands still getting wrong about how they reach a more diverse consumer base?
LR: in the last decade the US consumer market has become more multicultural than ever. Just consider this: Latinos are the majority group in California and Texas, and they represent almost 29% of consumers in NYC.
Diverse consumers’ buying power is growing faster than any other group, and they are more educated and tech-savvy. In terms of culture, they have a very strong sense of pride in their roots and communities. So for brands, this is a great time to be more conscious in understanding the diversity of consumers, their specific needs, and engaging authentically with those consumer segments — a one-size-fits-all strategy doesn’t work anymore. Consumers are more intentional in moving their dollars to support brands that serve them and their communities.
Just as an example, through Dathic’s data, we see how even Latinos in Florida are very different from the community in Orlando versus the community in El Doral near Miami — in language, store preferences, and product gaps. There is no unique way to serve all the communities and using technology can help a lot to understand and serve them authentically at scale.
As you’re building a platform powered by AI, do you think the technology is going to become as ubiquitous as everyone expects? What’s the one thing you wish more everyday consumers knew about AI technologies?
LR: There is a massive opportunity to use the power of AI to help people live a better life and to help businesses be more efficient. The use cases are expected to increase as the data grows and algorithms become easier to train and implement. Right now most of the power of AI is serving the needs of large companies, but I see an opportunity to intentionally develop AI algorithms that help US-based SMBs grow. I’d love to see more efficiency in how SMBs operate, strategize, and engage with their consumers.
With Dathic, we help small and mid-sized consumer packaged goods brands implement recommendations models to identify the retailers that match the communities they are serving. They often see resulting growth of more than 25% in sales — plus, multicultural consumers get access to healthier and better products, so they also feel served and valued.
In terms of consumers, they need to know and understand that AI models need to be trained to gather specific results. Consumers may not even realize that their favorite brands are using AI to reach them, but they will be grateful when it happens, and they don’t have to think about whether their local store is carrying the products that they know and love. However, as the technology keeps growing, it's important for consumers to understand the results they seek, or those that “seek” them, aren’t happening by magic, so they can take part in the conversation of the data they agree to provide, as well as the use cases or results they want to see to drive the implementation of AI in their benefit.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
LR: Joe's Pizza is my go-to place for a slice. To sit down, Celeste in the Upper West Side — fresh ingredients, a wood-fired pizza, and it’s a lovely, cozy space.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
LR: I really like Devoción. I’m from Colombia, so I really like their fresh coffee and the fact they work with local farms in Colombia. The place also has a great ambiance to get work done.
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on growing a startup in NYC?
LR: Ask questions. Involve your community. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. So many people have gone through the process of launching a product or raising money. I’ve found entrepreneurs are happy to share advice with first-time founders. There is so much to learn from those who have been there before.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
LR: I love what Emmanuel Brown from Church Space is doing to help communities use empty church spaces to build their local food businesses.
