NYCFC: July 2026
Upcoming events, June highlights, and fundraising tips from Hubly Surgical Co-founder and CEO
Opening Remarks
News from Members 🎉
Member Francesco Piccoli’s cybersecurity startup, Almanax, has been acquired by depthfirst! Congrats to the whole team 🥹🥳 Read more here.
This edition:
June highlights: Quarterly dinner and Knicks YC happy hour
Upcoming events
Job openings
Let’s get started! 🚀
Member Spotlight: Casey Qadir, Co-founder and CEO of Hubly Surgical
What are you building?
“In October of 2020, right after the demo day, I lined up 50 investor meetings for myself, and I remember meeting number three was a yes, meeting number six was a yes, and then I got four nos in a row.
I remember - it was very salient, because by the end of the 50 meetings, I had run out of people to pitch… I’d always ask for feedback from all the investors, and they all said I was too early. I went back to them and said, ‘Listen, I have been unable to raise this round. I need genuine feedback from you. Clearly you took this meeting knowing what stage we’re at, so there’s a world in which we wouldn’t have been too early. If you had to give me any other feedback other than we’re too early - what would that feedback be?’ And I got different answers, but the one thing that kept popping up over and over again was that they thought our COGS were too high. They were like, ‘You need to price your product higher to get a margin that makes sense. In this day and age, in COVID, hospitals are very cost-constrained.’
So Tyler and I went back to the drawing board at the very end of 2020, and Tyler reinvented the drill with that current-monitoring algorithm, and that cut our COGS by 80%. So we were then able to tell investors, ‘You’re right - because of COVID, especially, hospitals are especially cost-constrained right now, but we don’t need to be 4x the price of the existing standard. We can still get a premium and have fantastic margins, and there’s room to discount if we need to, and we’ll still be making great margins.’ So I went back to all the investors, and then I raised the round.”
What’s your biggest ask right now? How can others help?
“Well, we are expanding into spine, so the goal is to become the standard of care for our auto-stop safety technology for neuro and spine procedures. We’re FDA-cleared for cranial and for spinal decompression. So any introductions to neuro or spine surgeons, or anyone who works at a hospital in that space—I’d love to talk to them and provide some free medical education on what our drill is, and see if they’re interested.”
If this sounds like you or someone you know, reach out via LinkedIn.
Read our full interview with Casey here.
June Highlights
NYC Founders Club Quarterly Dinner (6/25)
On June 25th, we hosted our Summer NYCFC Quarterly Dinner with a group of our members at Casa Carmen in Flatiron. Highlights below!
YC Alumni Monthly Happy Hour: Knicks Edition (6/10)
On June 10th, we hosted our monthly YC happy hour at Penny Farthing in East Village, in honor of Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
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Coming Up 🔥
Events:
🗽 YC Alumni + Friends Happy Hour: Wed, July 8th
Next week - join us for live jazz, food/drinks, and most importantly AC! 🎷
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Wed, July 15th (members only)
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Tues, July 28th (members only)
🗽 [NEW EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT] The Great Founder River Float of 2026: Sat, Aug 22nd
Join us on Saturday, August 22nd, 2026 for an unforgettable river float retreat with 100+ founders on the Delaware River!
🗽 = NYCFC Event
Subscribe to our Luma calendar here.
Email jordan@nycfounders.club to have us feature your event!
Roles at NYCFC Companies 👩🏻💻
Kickoff is hiring a Provider Growth Manager and other roles across growth and engineering.
Cobalt ID is hiring a Chief of Staff and a Staff Software Engineer.
Zingage is hiring a Head of Talent Engineering, a Founding GTM Engineer, Founding Engineers, and SWEs.
Invoice Butler is hiring a Founding Engineer.
See you next edition!
You made it to the end - thanks for reading! If you're interested in sponsoring an upcoming edition, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a line at team@nycfounders.club.
– Aakash, Adam, Mike, and Jordan
P.S.