Welcome back!
Hope everyone has had a nice start to Fall 🍂. We’re excited to be back with our next edition of the NYC Founders Club Newsletter!
As a reminder: you’ve likely met at least one of us at an event we’ve hosted, but for those who aren’t familiar, here’s the rundown on us: The NYC Founders Club is run by Aakash Shah, Adam Alpert, Mike Wang, and Jordan Deasy. We’re making NYC the best place to scale your startup. We host events and run this newsletter.
This edition:
Highlights from our September AI Speaker Series event with Databricks – our largest one yet
NYC Founders Club September highlights
Events to look forward to this month
‼️ NYC Founders Club Applications due 10/15 ‼️
We’re excited to welcome a few more community-minded, venture-backed NYC founders for our November cohort. We have limited spots available – apply here by Oct 15 to be considered.
Let’s get started! 🚀
Lord of the Rings, anyone?
Event Recap: Learn How the Best AI Companies Go from 0 → 🚀 - Growth Lessons & Hacks from Stripe, Databricks, and Almanax (9/24)
Last week’s event brought together leaders building the financial, technical, and security infrastructure for the AI economy. Here are the key insights from each speaker:
George Gilbert – Head of GTM, AI at Stripe
Topic: Financial Infrastructure for the AI Economy
George laid out the monetization and scaling challenges facing AI startups. While many companies achieve strong product-market fit, few have figured out sustainable business models.
Takeaways:
Monetization in AI is a key challenge: flat-rate pricing can’t survive power users, and usage-based billing overwhelms non-technical customers.
Profitability is vulnerable: AI apps depend on upstream costs (GPUs, cloud, APIs), so pricing shifts can crush margins.
Keep it simple at first: don’t let pricing block adoption; start simple, observe user behavior, then evolve.
Pricing isn’t one-size-fits-all: companies often experiment with subscription, usage, or outcome-based models, the key is to scale and eventually run A/B tests to find what resonates.
Every engineer matters: AI talent is scarce, so engineers should focus on building product – not complex billing systems.
Arjun Gheewala – Solutions Architect, Startups at Databricks
Topic: Accelerating AI Startup Innovation with Databricks
Arjun showed how Databricks helps teams go from idea to execution quickly, demoing live coding of an AI agent.
Takeaways:
Fast iteration is key: with Databricks workspaces, Git repos, and Terraform, teams can spin up environments seamlessly.
AI agents in action: demoed “Genie” answering queries on Formula 1 data, showing how agents can integrate structured data sources.
Beyond text: Databricks can parse PDFs into structured tables for agent workflows.
Experiment easily: the Playground Tool makes it possible to compare models, add tools, and prototype agents rapidly.
“Vibe coding is fun, vibe debugging isn’t”: strong project planning upfront reduces debugging headaches later.
Francesco Piccoli – Co-founder & CEO of Almanax
Topic: Almanax, The AI Security Engineer Demo
Francesco explored the massive security risks created by the explosion of AI-generated code, and how Almanax is tackling the problem.
Takeaways:
Security pipelines are breaking: more code = more CVEs, leading to overwhelmed security teams and dangerous remediation backlogs.
The threat is growing: future hackers may launch dozens of zero-day attacks simultaneously, overwhelming defenses.
AI can fight back: Almanax provides high-intelligence detection, integrates security checks into CI/CD, and automates triage + patching.
Demo in action: showed how Almanax surfaces vulnerabilities in live code and accelerates remediation.
September Highlights
Francesco Piccoli became a book author! “Blockchain Application Security: How to Design Secure and Attack Resilient Blockchain Applications” covers the essentials (consensus algorithms, digital wallets, smart contracts) to designing secure dApp architectures with component-level threat analysis and resilient APIs, token transactions, digital exchanges, and identity models. Check it out here!
Khaled Kteily’s startup Legacy has entered a new phase – profitability! 🎉 Read more here.
Vee Langer’s coworking space Workhouse has opened up a few more spots. If you’re a founder/startup looking for office space in prime Midtown, email [email protected]!
Event Highlights
Another YC Alumni Happy hour on September 10th at WORKHOUSE in Midtown! Shoutout to Zendesk for sponsoring.
Coming Up 🔥
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Wed, Oct 1st [members only]
From Founder to CEO: Leading Through Growth: Thurs, Oct 2nd
Fall Fintech Hour with Highnote & Oak HC/FT: Tues, Oct 7th
The Executive AI Cocktail Hour: Tues, Oct 7th
🗽 YC Alumni & Friends Monthly #9 by Rho & NYC Founders Club: Wed, Oct 8th
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Wed, Oct 15th [members only]
Crain's & Tech: NYC: Tech Summit: Thurs, Oct 23rd
🗽 NYCFC Founders Dinner: Tues, Oct 28th [members only]
🗽 = NYCFC Event
Subscribe to our Luma calendar here.
Email [email protected] to have us feature your event!
See you next month!
Thanks for tuning in! We hope to see you at one of our events.
– Aakash, Adam, Mike, and Jordan
P.S. New here? Check our website to learn more!