Opening Remarks
Hope everyone is having a nice Halloweek! 🎃 Nothing scarier than missing out on NYC’s top startup happenings, so keep reading!
What to expect this edition:
NYCFC October Highlights
Upcoming Events
Roles at NYCFC Companies
Let’s get started! 🚀
Thanks, AI!
Member Spotlight: Daniel Tian,
Co-Founder and CTO of Zingage
What are you building?
“What we’re building here [at Zingage] is AI for home care. High level, this is the industry where, if you have a grandparent, a parent, and they want to age in their own home as opposed to going to a hospital, this is one of the essential services that’s going to need to enable that. With about 80 million seniors above the age of 65 by the end of this decade, it’s one of the most important industries that nobody is talking about.
Today, the best way I can describe this industry is: imagine the taxi industry prior to Uber inventing ridesharing. People are still using notepads, Excel sheets, etc. So, you can imagine running Uber based off that.”
How did you land your first customers?
“It’s kind of this winding journey where when we first started exploring this industry, we were kind of a nobody. And so, early on, we did a lot of scrappy stuff.
My co-founder and I, one of our favorite things is that we’d go down to Sheepside Bay, Brooklyn. We’d bring a box of doughnuts. So, we rented my co-founder’s girlfriend’s car and just bought a whole trunk full of like, 20 boxes of doughnuts.
We got like 50% on the spot demo rates. So, it’s one of the best ROI investments. Very early on, we did all of these free, hands-off things.”
Looking back, what have been the biggest challenges?
“I think the biggest thing for us has always been: how do we build a phenomenal team?
One of the things we always try to educate people here is zooming out to the larger vision. When you're a talented engineer in New York City or Silicon Valley, you have so many options.
What makes Zingage unique?
For us, we really put a lot of thought in terms of reframing this. Like, look, you're not here to just build another ChatGPT wrapper. You’re here to really help your own grandma.
What ends up happening here is that we attracted a lot of really great people who are sometimes building for their own family.
I think for us, especially right now, capital is so abundant – great ideas, distribution, thought partners – all of that is solved with so many great technologies. I think the last battle here is: how do you win the talent war?
And for us, it's always about: how do you shape and narrate the best stories out there? You know, we're not here to just build a tool. We're here to keep your own grandmother out of the hospital.”
What’s your biggest ask right now? How can others help?
“Yeah, we're hiring across the board right now. So we have a small, mighty team of 20 people. Our goal is to double that by the end of this year.
We're hiring eight engineers right now. We're hiring on the finance team. And so it's really just kind of anyone, anywhere and everyone who's that talented, we look forward to chatting with them.”
If this sounds like you or someone you know, reach out at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.
October Highlights
Daniel Tian’s startup, Zingage, just announced a $12.5M Seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with support from TQ Ventures, South Park Commons, and WndrCo. Read more here!
Event Highlights
Earlier this month, we hosted a special (N)YC Alumni & Friends Happy Hour: Halloween Edition 🎃! What made it so special for Halloween, you ask? We brought in a tarot card reader to give us readings about our companies, and life…
Some of our favorite readings of the night:
Wheel of Fortune: “You’ll close your round… probably when you least expect it, like that random Twitter DM you forgot about.”
The Tower reversed: “Your startup will probably pivot… again… but this time it’s totally strategic.”
Strength reversed: “You’re strong… until investors ask about traction.”
Shoutout to Rho for sponsoring!
Coming Up 🔥
CTO Lunches (Scary Edition): Thurs, Oct 30
AI Agents 101 Bootcamp: Thurs, Oct 30
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Tues, Nov 11 (members only)
🗽 (N)YC Alumni + Founder Friends Happy Hour: Wed, Nov 12
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Tues, Nov 18 (members only)
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Wed, Nov 19 (members only)
🗽 = NYCFC Event
Subscribe to our Luma calendar here.
Email [email protected] to have us feature your event!
Roles at NYCFC Companies 👩🏻💻
Each edition, we’ll showcase our members’ companies and their top open roles. Check out these roles:
Wyndly is hiring a Performance Marketing Lead.
Zingage is hiring a Head of Talent Engineering, a Strategic Finance Lead, Founding Engineers, and SWEs.
Savvy is hiring a Sr. Engineering Manager, Head of Customer Success, and Sr. Software Engineers.
Invoice Butler is hiring a Founding Engineer.
See you next month!
Thanks for tuning in! We hope to see you at one of our events. Don’t forget to set your clock back this weekend (if you still have one!) ⏰
– Aakash, Adam, Mike, and Jordan
P.S.