Celebrating Companies to Watch: A Year in Review
Since this time last year, Tech:NYC has added more than 100 companies to our membership — we’re now 750 tech companies strong, spanning across all 5 boroughs. We built Tech:NYC to allow any company to participate, regardless of where they were in their growth cycle. So while our membership roster includes lots of established tech companies you have heard of, we think that what makes our community special is the 600+ startups that have chosen New York as the place to build and grow their companies.
Two years ago we launched our monthly Companies to Watch series with the aim of celebrating these companies. After year one, we put together a special review edition, and now another year later, CTW has profiled dozens more startups across the New York tech ecosystem.
So to celebrate Year Two, we compiled everything we learned from them in the past year to uncover some key insights. The results are as diverse as the city itself: 59% of the companies we featured were led by women founders, and they represented an expansive collection of new ideas in health and wellness, sustainability, and cryptocurrency, to name a few.
And we can’t forget what’s truly important — coffee, bagels, pizza, and parks. Our founders have strong opinions about makes the top of the list, so we’ve compiled their opinions below and created an interactive map of everyone’s recommendations. It comes as little shock that the New York institution known as Roberta’s tops the list of founder favorites when it comes to a good slice.
Many of our Companies to Watch continued to have big wins throughout the past year. Here are some exciting updates that have happened in the time since:
Catalyst raised $15 million in Series A funding.
SomaDetect raised $2 million in seed funding to expand its operations in New York and Canada.
Tagomi raised $12 million in its latest round of funding.
HelloAva launched a partnership with Unilever to build a new haircare platform.
YayPay raised $8.4 million in its latest round of funding.
Spring Health was named a 2019 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and CEO April Koh was named a Crain’s Notable Woman in Healthcare.
Agrilyst rebranded as Artemis and raised $8 million in Series A funding.
BlockFi raised $18.3 million in Series A funding.
It’s no secret that launching a startup in New York City takes real guts. Here’s some of our favorite Companies to Watch founders on how they did it, in their own words:
All illustrations by Elly Rodgers
Noun Project Attribution