Tech:NYC is made up of over 650 tech companies spanning across all 5 boroughs. When we built Tech:NYC, we did so in a way that allowed 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 what makes our community special is the 500+ startups that have chosen New York as the place to build and grow their companies.

A year ago we launched our monthly Companies to Watch (CTW) series with the aim of celebrating these companies. In the time since then, CTW has featured more than 50 startups across the New York tech ecosystem.

For this month’s edition, we compiled them to uncover some key insights, and the results are as diverse as the city itself: 50% of the companies we featured were led by women founders or co-founders, and they represented an expansive collection of new ideas for the food, e-commerce, and urban transformation industries, to name a few. 

Just as importantly, every New Yorker we know has strong opinions when it comes to the things that matter most—coffee, bagels, pizza, and parks. We’ve compiled their answers below and created an interactive map of everyone’s recommendations. It comes as little shock that the institution known as Joe’s tops the list of founder favorites (though we’re partial to Pizza Suprema).  

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:

• Daily Harvest raised $43 million in Series B funding.
• Metaprop closed its second venture fund, MetaProp Ventures II, at $40 million with expected investments in 40 new Proptech software. They also established a new real estate accelerator in conjunction with Columbia University. 
• CARMERA raised $20 million in Series B funding led by GV and announced a partnership with NYC Department of Transportation to begin sharing data on pedestrian analytics and real-time construction detection events. 
• Move This World, raised $1 million in a seed round.
• Pilot Founder and CEO Joseph Fasone was named one of Inc. magazine’s 30 under 30 “Rising Stars”. 
• Pilotworks secured $13 million in Series A funding. 
• Hyr raised $1.6 million in a seed round.
• Mack Weldon teamed up with J.Crew and released a new line of smart underwear and t-shirts using Prime Cotton, a new body regulating technology.  
• Personals successfully completed their Kickstarter raise fund of $40,000. 

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:

• Pizza Slice by FARBAI/Shutterstock
• Coffee Cup by Jacky Co/Shutterstock
• Bagel by mouze_art/Shutterstock
• Pizza by Made from the Noun Project
• Coffee by Natalia Jacquier from the Noun Project
• Bagel by Madeleine Bennett from the Noun Project
• Park by Ralf Schmitzer from the Noun Project