Companies to Watch: Founder House Alums Powering the Next Generation of New York Tech
If you’re like us, you’re still riding the adrenaline (or perhaps still recovering) from the whirlwind of events during New York Tech Week — more than 420 of them made it the largest Tech Week in any city to date! But a real highlight for us was all the founders we met at the Tech:NYC Founder House.
For #NYTechWeek, we welcomed Cohort 2 of Founder House, a group of 40 founders at the earliest stages of building their companies. All week long, we connected them to investors, industry leaders, government partners, and — most importantly — each other. We heard over and over again that the opportunity to simply share workspace with one another — to get those serendipitous collaborations — can’t be understated.
To close out the month, we spoke with some of the most recent alums of the Tech:NYC Founder House, most of them first-time founders, on their commitment to the New York tech ecosystem and what’s next for their companies.
Meet this month’s Companies to Watch:
GOVIFY
What does your company do?
Govify co-founder and CEO Martin Rufo: Govify is fixing government hiring! Govify is a hiring platform designed to improve the recruitment process for public service roles. Our aim is to reduce the average hiring time from over 100 days to less than 30. We introduce transparency, simplicity, and better discovery into the job searching and matching processes for government hiring teams. The platform utilizes intelligent matching algorithms to ensure optimal job placements for both candidates and government agencies.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
MR: New York is home. I grew up an hour away from the city and I know it’s a faux pas, but when someone asks me where I’m from, I’ll always say here, and I’ll say it proudly. The melting pot that is New York demands the best and creates the best – whether it’s the best restaurants, museums, or even companies. New York will, in my eyes, always be the best place to build.
You began your career in operations and strategy roles at big companies like Uber. What made you want to jump into a founder role — and one working with the public sector no less?
MR: I think I’ve always had a bit of the founder bug. For me, operations is figuring out what makes things tick and how to make them better. I do that every single day as a founder. The public sector is especially exciting because there is so much to improve – even outside of what we’re doing here at Govify. I think if I can wake up every day and say “I’m figuring out how to make lives better” by placing more teachers, more police officers, more sanitation workers – it’s a good day.
Where do you see the most inefficiencies? What one easy thing government agencies can be doing to streamline their hiring systems?
MR: Communication. I think this is a bit of a multi-layered issue, but there are so many things that smart people within government are building – but they’re building in silos. If you could bottle up all of the products, processes, and best practices that each agency has built and pass them along to one another, you’d see an insane efficiency gain.
Tech:NYC’s founder Julie Samuels actually wrote an op-ed at the end of last year encouraging government agencies to recruit many of the engineers and other tech workers caught up in recent sector layoffs (as well as recent computer science grads). How do we make the public sector a more attractive career option for tech talent?
MR: I loved reading the article and I’ve been trying to get people in my network to follow suit!
The thing is, the public sector is already attractive! Beyond the very basic ‘you get to help real people’s lives every day,’ there are so many benefits offered by the public sector that most people don’t know or think about: work-life balance, stability, health benefits, a pension! Also, there are hotel and flight benefits for when you’re traveling for fun.
I think it’s ultimately a branding and discovery issue, which I hope to solve at Govify.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
MR: L’Industrie in Williamsburg. A slice of their burrata – wait no – the fig jam and bacon. (Hot tip: L’Industrie just opened their West Village location.)
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
MR: Union Square Cafe or %arabica for a coffee.
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on building a startup from the ground up in NYC?
MR: Build for people. Whether you’re building a startup from the ground up, or launching a new feature, keep your end user in mind and make sure you’re building to actually make people’s lives easier.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
MR: Huge shout out to Nick Rivadeneira, the founder of Racebuilds, another Founder House alum. Coming from the auto industry and someone who loves marketplaces, I’m excited to see what he continues to build.
MIRZA
What does your company do?
Mirza co-founder and CEO Siran Cao: Mirza is a platform to remove childcare as a barrier for frontline workers. We flag when employees are eligible for government childcare programs, guide them through the process, and even help them find and choose the best caregiver for their family.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
SC: It’s the best city in the world! You can feel the energy and hustle – it’s infectious. Plus, New York is a vibrant famtech hub. There are so many of us working to improve outcomes for caregivers!
Why is your platform focused on public money — sourcing government child care assistance — versus building corporate benefits programs?
SC: Childcare as an employee benefit has been offered predominantly to high wage earners, almost a nice to have, but we know it’s not. Look at the impact of childcare closures during COVID – it forced two million women to leave the workforce. Childcare is a must have, especially for frontline workers who can’t Zoom in to their jobs.
We think it’s time to build truly equitable benefits that support low-wage workers. Using government dollars both tackles inefficiencies in the system, helping families get the money they should be receiving, and ensures we protect families from falling off the benefits cliff, when they lose access to other valuable government benefits. When I say there are inefficiencies in the public system, here are two close-to-home examples: New York has expanded eligibility for childcare assistance, but it hasn’t gotten the uptake this expansion should see. There are even Universal Pre-K slots that are sitting open in some neighborhoods, while other neighborhoods in the city have massive waitlists. But this isn’t a problem unique to New York.
Clearly, there is a huge opportunity for technology to bridge the gap! We do build corporate benefits on top of those government dollars, though, because it’s an incredible opportunity to help companies see the ROI of supporting childcare. Not every employee is eligible for direct government dollars, so we help companies build targeted, tax-efficient stipends to support the folks who feel the squeeze when paying full freight for childcare. It’s roughly 20% of household income, and the reason 40% of parents are in debt!
You wrote at the beginning of the year on why, still, “caregiving and career crash” for too many people. What caregiving shifts have you noticed in the last few years, and how has that influenced your startup’s roadmap?
SC: Even though we’ve seen more men take on caregiving roles and responsibilities during COVID, there are several other factors at play. I think a visual might help. Pre-COVID, women on average were doing the majority of the unpaid caregiving work. Let’s say this is a cup of water. Our jobs fill up part of the cup, and the caregiving work fills up more. There’s a little room left, but not much. During COVID, we saw more men taking on some caregiving work, but the total amount of work needed increased. So men added more to their cups, but so did women – to an already full cup. The additional work is what makes the cup overflow. That’s why we saw the pandemic have a disproportionate impact on women. And now, not everyone has the opportunity to work remotely, but even for families who do, caregiving work itself doesn’t change. Someone still needs to do the school pickup or wash Johnny’s soccer uniform so it’s clean for practice.
From the last couple of years, we’ve seen a recognition of how important childcare is to enable families to work and gain financial health – and more than that, childcare is essential for parents to take care of their own health. This means there are additional stakeholders who can be part of the conversation, and clear ties to health equity for us to emphasize. All this has helped us zero in on frontline workers, but we also have new additions on the product roadmap to seize on the health opportunities down the line. You’ll have to stay tuned for that.
Part of the solution is on the supply side too, right? If you had a meeting with New York’s top elected leaders, what would you tell them we still need to expand the city’s provider network?
SC: Yes, we definitely need supply-side solutions. The number one barrier to expanding childcare supply is economics for providers. Many caregivers are on government assistance themselves, and the industry still loses workers to Starbucks for better pay and benefits. Adding early childhood educators to the health and retirement benefits that teachers receive could be an interesting way to go, on top of increasing reimbursement rates to provide living wages.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
SC: First you should know, I can’t eat dairy. But before I realized why I felt so awful, Roberta’s was a favorite.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
SC: I’m a big fan of The Butcher’s Daughter!
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on building a startup from the ground up in NYC?
SC: Get to know some friends in the ecosystem! Founder friends are a must have. And from there, eyes on the ball. There are events all the time, which could get distracting fast. I’d be strategic on when to attend events and make sure those are the highest impact for your business.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
SC: Everyone needs to know about Hey Jane: safe, private abortion care.
THERAMOTIVE
What does your company do?
TheraMotive founder and CEO Lola Omishore: TheraMotive is pioneering the future of physical therapy by transforming archaic brick-and-mortar clinics into tech-empowered portable clinics on-the go. Our “healthcare on demand” smart clinics boast all the amenities of traditional clinics without the limitations to establish a new standard in healthcare.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
LO: As a woman of color from the inner city of NYC, I've seen firsthand the disparities and shortcomings in the healthcare system – while working on extreme ends of healthcare access. On one hand, I have the perspective of working with elite professional and collegiate athletes who had access to the latest in health technology, top medical teams, and facilities. On the other, my work with New York community-based organizations highlighted the desperate need for quality, accessible healthcare in marginalized communities – a need still often left unmet.
My ten years of experience as a Doctor of Physical Therapy taught me that people from marginalized communities are not receiving the care that they need in order to feel seen, heard, and validated by health providers. I'm committed to addressing health inequities in physical therapy by becoming a voice for marginalized communities and improving quality healthcare standards across all zip codes.
We, of course, saw a major leap in telehealth and virtual care services when the pandemic began. Could TheraMotive be called a “hybrid” solution somewhere in between remote and in-office? Why are you building “clinics on wheels”?
LO: I developed the concept of TheraMotive to design and build state-of-the-art portable physical therapy clinics delivered to every community. TheraMotive is an inclusive movement centered on "healthcare on demand, emphasizing adaptable, accessible, and innovative care. We create physical therapy clinics that adapt, evolve, and literally move with patients on their healthcare journey. This model empowers physical therapists to reach more people across diverse communities more efficiently, breaking free from geographical constraints, and navigate around the restrictions of brick and mortar clinics to make access to physical therapy universally inclusive and equitable.
What parts of the healthcare system are still in need of the most innovation?
LO: The healthcare system is ripe for innovation across the board. However, the trends toward a purely digital health SaaS model fall short of patient expectations – and has actually even led to recent downfalls of major digital health companies.
I created TheraMotive as a hybrid model that embraces the best offerings in health technology while maintaining the human element of healthcare that appeals to both clinicians and patients. The key to widespread acceptance of a digital healthcare model by both healthcare providers and patients lies in integrating clinicians as a crucial component of success.
What skills from your work as a doctor and sports medicine expert have you found yourself transferring to your work as a tech founder?
LO: Working in sports medicine, you have to always be alert, observant, and ready to make tough calls under extreme pressure. As a tech founder, those same traits from working in sports medicine easily transfer. In tech, trends vacillate, with disruptive new players rising – and big players unexpectedly falling. Given the volatility of the tech world, tech founders must – to quote myself – “always be alert, observant, and ready to make tough calls under extreme pressure.”
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
LO: I’m a Brooklyn girl at heart, so I’d recommend San Remo Pizzeria.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
LO: As a New Yorker that’s always on the go, I usually opt for virtual coffee over Zoom!
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on building a startup from the ground up in NYC?
LO: If you want to work smart, then network your butt off. Warm introductions from esteemed investors have accelerated my startup in ways that I couldn’t have imagined.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
LO: During my time at Tech:NYC’s Founder House, I met Taylor McLoughlin, the phenomenal co-founder of Ambient, a SaaS company that uses AI to help C-suite executives recover 10 to 15 hours of productivity weekly. Taylor’s company is building the future of productivity to help CEOs and startups founders really get stuff done.
HIVECLASS
What does your company do?
Hiveclass co-founder and CEO Joe Titus: Hiveclass delivers equitable access to innovative tools that foster mind and body wellness in children and youth. We sell products to schools and public libraries to help teach physical literacy and ensure that all young people develop healthy habits that last a lifetime.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
JT: New York is at the center of so many industries and we believe it should be at the center of edtech and digital health. The city also allows for finding diverse talent in so many untapped industries for tech, like filmmaking and education, in which Hiveclass has been able to excel.
To jump right into the obvious question: For a lot of people, an online platform for physical education seems counterintuitive. But are digital-forward products doing a better job of reaching students?
JT: It’s estimated that young people spend as much as six to nine hours per day on screens, much more than most parents want. Still, tech-enabled instruction can help solve many of the challenges we face including broadening access, personalizing instruction, and making it more convenient to engage kids beyond class time. We wanted to build a product that capitalized on those benefits by teaching kids confidence and fitness skills while providing active screentime that is guilt-free because it gets kids moving.
In an op-ed you wrote earlier this year, you said “when physical education is not addressed in schools the physical activity gap starts to look a lot like the income gap.” Say more about the connection you’re making there, and how is Hiveclass trying to bridge that gap?
JT: Engaging young people in sports used to be much more accessible, but studies show that it is increasingly available to only wealthy families. You see this in stats around participation in youth sports, and those disparities contribute to disproportionately stratify childhood obesity rates that have lifelong consequences within marginalized communities. Schools are the first line of defense to address this health equity gap. By partnering with them, we hope our solution can help level the playing field and have a lasting impact on students’ health.
What’s your favorite course on the platform to date? And what’s the roadmap look like for future courses or product expansions?
JT: I really love the Dance courses, which cover some of the basics in Jazz and Hip Hop. We have slowly built our courses to include 14 units across multiple sports and wellness activities like mindfulness and yoga. The roadmap continues to expand as our partners share their interests, which led to recent rollouts including Pickleball and Strength & Conditioning.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
JT: That’s easy. Joe’s Pizza in the Village.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
JT: This shouldn’t be such a hard question, but it is! When I’m downtown I love Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery or Maman. The coffee is solid but the sweets are amazing!
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on building a startup from the ground up in NYC?
JT: Focus on what you can control. When we started the company we knew we wanted to focus on education, but a lot of people told us how long the sales cycles would be. Our team was intent on solving a larger equity problem so we wanted to build products which we felt our partners could really benefit from — we believed that by building something that addressed a fundamental need, there would be a natural market. One year after launching our commercial products, we are happy to count the New York Public Library and New York Public Schools among our most important partners and clients.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
JT: Over the last few months I have gotten to know the founders at Impactica Labs and am really impressed with their mission. Impactica builds fintech infrastructure for organizations to efficiently assist families to access the social safety net. So many folks in today’s day and age are not getting access to the benefits they qualify for, so it is great to see a company try and streamline services. In the end, I think public services need the private sector to come in with innovative solutions to fix things that should have been sorted many years ago.
EMISSIONLESS
What does your company do?
Emissionless founder and CEO Max Yergan: Emissionless is rebuilding trucking from the ground up. We use data and algorithms to better plan, schedule, and coordinate freight movements. We are enabling the transition away from grueling long-haul trucking routes where drivers live in their trucks for weeks on end to a relay system that helps get them home to their family every night. This approach also enables electrification of virtually any route, and it’s also 50% faster than conventional long-haul approaches because it eliminates 13-hour-long roadside rest stops which inhibit the free flow of freight. Simply put, we are building the ground freight system of the future.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
MY: I’ve spent my whole life here! I grew up right outside the city in South Orange, NJ and have lived in Manhattan since. New York is the best city in the world, there’s no place I’d rather be.
A lot of interest around electric transportation focuses on personal EVs (which we like!). But why are you focused on freight infrastructure? What’s the market opportunity there?
MY: We’ve all seen how transformative passenger EVs have been, a similar transformation is just getting started for commercial EVs. Commercial EVs have higher impact potential than passenger EVs – despite being only 1% of vehicles on our roads, trucks account for 20% of CO2, 30% of NOx, and 40% of particulate matter (PM) emissions. Removing one diesel-powered truck from the roads is like planting 5,000 trees. Further, electric semi trucks create significantly less noise pollution than diesel trucks. Deploying electric semi trucks is hard, but somebody has to do it, so why not us?
To take a step back: You started your career in finance. What attracted you to the mobility (or the climate tech) space? What surprised or challenged you most about becoming a first-time founder?
MY: I’ve always been fascinated with transportation, particularly EVs. Previously I was an investor and consultant, helping secure over $1 billion in funding for transportation and logistics companies spanning air, land, sea, and space. Trucking is a bizarrely antiquated industry, especially when compared to other modes of transportation. What we’re trying to do here is apply the best practices from other modes – particularly aviation – to trucking in an effort to increase speed, efficiency, driver experience, and safety for all.
As a first time founder, you need to realize that you move at a much faster speed than virtually everyone else. Patience and resilience are two of the most important traits a founder can have. It can be incredibly frustrating to wait around for responses from investors or strategic partners or regulators. It can be incredibly hard to keep going even when it feels like you’ve just been crushed like a cockroach or spotted lantern fly. You just gotta keep going. It helps if you’re a little crazy – you gotta assume that everything will work out in the end, and it usually does, but it takes time.
Obviously, a place like NYC needs highly-functioning logistics infrastructure. What’s the key to scaling a startup like Emissionless in a dense urban environment like NYC?
MY: Our mantra is ‘crawl, walk, run.’ Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Start small and work your way up.
For example: we are mainly focused on medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicles, but our first deployment is at the Brooklyn Navy Yard with what’s basically the cross between a golf cart and box truck. Next, we’re deploying one single heavy-duty truck to operate in and around NYC. We will keep adding trucks and hubs until eventually we can serve all of New York State, then the Northeast, then nationwide. Some of our peers are struggling to get their trucks moving due to supply chain delays and inability to get sufficient power in place. We also take an ecosystem approach – we have strategic partners who invest in and finance the trucks, charging, and real estate, so that we can focus on our core competency of moving freight really fast with zero emissions.
Also: don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Tech companies often focus too much on the ‘bits’ and not the ‘atoms.’ Innovation happens in the real world. Get out there, roll your sleeves up, and experience the problem you are trying to solve first-hand.
Okay, some rapid-fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
MY: Upside Pizza on Spring Street has a deal where you can buy a membership to their ‘Pizza Social Club’ on an app called Blackbird for about $200. You get one free slice per day, which equates to $1.83 per slice. As long as you have one slice a week, you break even. This is a huge deal if you’re a founder who is bootstrapping your business, especially if you love pizza like I do. Shoutout to Upside co-founder Noam Grossman. A special shoutout to Star Tavern in Orange, NJ too.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
MY: For coffee, my go to is Saturdays NYC – it’s dog friendly and has a pretty sweet backyard. The best meetings are the ones where you can bring your dog. I’m more of a breakfast meeting fan, I love coffee and pastries, and you can’t go wrong with Daily Provisions or Lafayette in Noho.
What’s one piece of advice — that you shared or was shared with you — on building a startup from the ground up in NYC?
MY: “Every patch of dirt is special” in NYC. Since everything is so packed together here, literally and figuratively, there are a lot of people going after the same resources. If you’re a hardware company or a tech-enabled services company like us, the density of NYC can make deployments more challenging. You have to be creative, flexible, and resourceful. Here’s an example: ElectricFish deployed their revolutionary 350^2 charger at Floyd Bennett Field, which is federally-owned land and part of the National Parks system, meaning they were not subject to some of the typical constraints and regulations of operating in NYC. Thinking outside the box and keeping an open mind are key.
Besides your own, what’s another early-stage startup in New York you think more people should know about?
MY: Two in particular: Circuit and Stak. Both are zero-emissions mobility companies with novel approaches to major issues that plague EV adoption in cities.
Circuit, led by Alex Esposito and James Mirras, provides last mile passenger shuttle services for transit deserts. Access to public transit is key for economic mobility: Circuits offerings do much more than help people get around, they help open up more opportunities for folks in communities with limited transportation options. I just wish they had a shuttle deployed in my neighborhood. Stak has created an EV charging carousel, where EVs are charged while stacked on top of each other vertically. Parking is tight in cities: Stak provides a way for fleets and property owners to increase their number of parking spots without increasing their physical footprint. I’m fortunate to bump into founders Diallo Powell and Santi Rios all the time – fun fact: we were together at an event in Los Angeles one day, then together at the Tech:NYC Founder the next. It’s a tight knit community with lots of really smart folks working to make life better for all of us.
Before I let you go: we just launched our pre-seed round, and are looking for strategic partners with freight transportation needs in NYC. Please contact me to discuss.
