As summer heats up, so does the job search for many New Yorkers. From York to Yeshiva, Cornell to Columbia –– to far-flung locales like Caltech, Kyoto University and King’s College, Cambridge –– recent graduates are bringing budding talent to the city. These young candidates join established professionals looking for new opportunities and even more established veterans plying sought-after skills in the city’s job market.
Thankfully, Gotham’s roughly $150 billion startup ecosystem –– second in scale only to Silicon Valley according to Tech:NYC data –– is replete with growing companies offering competitive compensation to qualified candidates. This June, Built In NYC is shining our spotlight on 13 businesses, including supply chain management innovators and media analysis mavens, that are growing their teams and taking the tech industry a step forward.
What they do: A multi-brand platform and casino that processes 500 bets a second on any given Saturday, Caesars Digital deals with projects ranging from desktop and mobile casinos to betting sites and other digital betting platforms. Over the course of the last decade, Caesars Digital has expanded from a single Sportsbook in one state to more than 20 states and jurisdictions throughout the U.S.
Upping the ante: Caesars Digital is currently scaling its personnel across a number of departments and providing team members with the opportunity to grow in their role as the team expands.
“I was the second product person hired in the New Jersey office,” said Product Lead Nick Arcuri. “Now have 15 product managers, four leads and a large development team. We’ve been able to keep a small startup culture, which allows for ownership and autonomy.”
Sweetening the pot: This March, Caesars Entertainment and Caesars Digital announced that the sports wagering mobile app Caesars Sportsbook would be available for download and registration throughout the entire state of Illinois – allowing qualified users to enjoy mobile betting throughout the state. Caesars Entertainment noted, in a press release, that the expansion would also offer Illinoisans access to its latest platform, Liberty, “a substantial upgrade over prior versions of Caesars Sportsbook available in the state.”
What they do: Odeko offers mobile ordering and supply chain management software for coffee shops and cafés. By employing an all-in-one customizable dashboard, leveraging aggregated buying power and consolidating shipping, Odeko helps its partners save time, increase revenue and lower expenses.
Clearing congestion: Odeko’s platform also helps local coffee shops and cafés reduce their environmental footprint. According to the company’s website, The average cafe depends on seven to 10 vendors. Consolidating deliveries with Odeko leads to fewer trucks on the road.
Tiny steps, tinier footprints: This April, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, announced a partnership with robotic delivery company Tiny Steps to introduce an autonomous coffee delivery pilot in the city’s Plaza Midwood area. Tiny Steps has partnered with Odeko and its local café affiliate Undercurrent to launch the program – helping further reduce carbon emissions by doing so.
“Odeko is incredibly proud to announce that, in partnership with Tiny Mile and local café Undercurrent, we are testing semi-autonomous coffee delivery throughout the Charlotte area,” said Lauren Pelletier, vice president of engagement for Odeko, in a press release from the city of Charlotte.
What they do: A digital behavioral technology healthcare company, Talkspace connects individual clients with a network of thousands of licensed therapists through its web and mobile platform. Through its platform, used by more than 1.5 million people, the company provides psychiatry services including prescription fulfillment, adolescent therapy and couples counseling.
An emphasis on the interpersonal: As a platform for remote personal and professional connectivity, Talkspace is sensitive to its team members’ need to stay engaged in a remote workspace. To that end, the company has sponsored a variety of employee events that bring awareness to shared causes, cohort-based learning, skills refreshers for leaders and goal-centered employee resource groups.
“These events are a great way to network, learn and listen to other colleagues you normally have fewer interactions with,” said Ummey Karim, senior people ops manager. “We led a bi-weekly project management study group this year, which resulted in employees collaborating cross-functionally to achieve a common goal.”
Retention and health post-pandemic: Talkspace’s recently published “Employee Stress Check Report 2022” found that 57 percent of surveyed workers would be likely to stay at a job if it offered more mental health services. To address concerns like these, the company released Talkspace Self-Guided this April, a product suite to help employers, particularly managers, build emotional intelligence and foster mental well-being with an emphasis on helping working parents in and out of the workplace.
What they do: IPONWEB offers advanced programmatic, real-time bidding and media trading platforms across digital, TV, DOOH and audio. The company’s globally distributed team works with major brands, agencies and media owners to solve the challenges digital advertisers face.
Team expertise: IPONWEB places an emphasis on its team’s problem-solving and the opportunity to work with savvy adtech professionals. The company prides itself on being composed of “some of the most intelligent and dedicated people in the industry,” according to its website, and testimonials from the company’s leaders bear out that same sentiment.
“Working at IPONWEB is never boring, and dealing with some of the most knowledgeable people in the market ensures a continuous learning curve,” said Barry Adams, executive vice president adtech.
Learning the lingo: IPONWEB offers its employees a number of educational and career-development opportunities. Benefits include cross-functional trainings, online course subscriptions, time allotted for education and paid certification programs.
What they do: A fixed income electronic trading platform for institutional investors and dealers, MarketAxess is on a mission to make it easier to efficiently trade bonds. The company’s patented trading technology is employed by a global network of over 1,800 firms. MarketAxess provides automated trading solutions, market data products and a range of pre- and post-trade services.
Bonafide benefits: The company recently secured a spot in Built In NYC’s 2022 Best Places to Work New York City ranking.
“It’s an extremely collaborative and fun environment, and our spaces promote connectivity and teamwork. Our people are energized to be there,” said Kathleen N. Harrison, internal communications manager for MarketAxess.
Growing returns: In a recent press release, Chris Concannon, president and COO, noted growing trading volume and the success of burgeoning product areas.
“We recorded strong double-digit growth in average daily trading volume in May in credit and rates on broad-based market share gains,” he said. “Furthermore, we are very pleased with the building momentum we are experiencing across our new product areas, including U.S. Treasuries and Municipal Bonds and our new protocols, where we are establishing a new liquidity model in fixed income.”
What they do: Sylva operates a platform that facilitates online communities’ growth and helps them develop stability, scale, return on investment and more. Sylva helps its members grow personally and professionally by building relationships and establishing an identity.
Bright beginnings: Founded in 2020, Sylva is currently growing its team as it helps online communities flourish. In addition to ample benefits that include wellness programs, fitness stipends and a home office stipend for remote employees, the company is offering qualifying positions company equity, giving prospective team members the chance to take ownership of their work at the company.
Rave reviews: Though Sylva is a young company, it’s not without accomplishments. And early adopters of the platform have high praise for the community-building tool.
“With Sylva’s help I was able to revamp our product and grow it into a thriving six-figure business growing 30 percent each month,” said Scott Amenta, founder of Chief of Staff Network, a five-year-old community for sharing and developing skills associated with the role of chief of staff, in a testimonial for Sylva.
What they do: Hiro Systems builds developer tools for Stacks, the network that enables apps and smart contracts for Bitcoin. As a core entity servicing the Stacks ecosystem, Hiro services a collection of independent entities, developers and community members working to create a user-owned internet on Bitcoin.
Creating on the vanguard of tech: “Most problems we encounter don’t have playbooks, so we’re often figuring stuff out from scratch; we don’t get everything right, but we learn and move on, ” said Diwaker Gupta, CTO of Hiro. For Gupta and his colleagues, the chance to explore new concepts and technologies and develop forward-thinking solutions is at the core of the work they do.
A fresh outlook: Hiro recently celebrated the successes of its first year. The company and the Stacks ecosystem celebrated a number of milestones which included going from zero to more than 400 million monthly requests for Hiro’s API. The company also noted the success of its customers – including Arkadiko, ALEX, Sigle, Layer and Moonray. Collectively, Hiro customers raised more than $24 million the company’s first year.
What they do: Offering its clients in the financial sector a platform to simplify even the most complex processes from end to end, Xceptor makes no-code data automation software for data ingestion, data transformation and process digitization.
Foundations for growth: Last March, Xceptor announced a strategic partnership with private equity firms Corsair and Astorg in a move intended to accelerate Xceptor’s long-term growth.
“We are grateful to now have support from two leading institutional investors for Xceptor’s next chapter of growth,” said Andrew Kouloumbrides, CEO of Xceptor, in a press release. “Corsair brings an extensive network of industry relationships and a strong presence in North America, as well as its unparalleled understanding of the financial services ecosystem, that will help realize our long-term growth ambitions.”
Future leaders: This may, Xceptor added two new chiefs to its leadership team, prepping the company for further growth. Josh Monroe serves as chief revenue officer and Ludovic Blanquet serves as chief strategy and transformation officer.
“By welcoming leaders of Josh and Ludovic’s caliber, we are demonstrating Xceptor’s commitment to offering the ultimate in data automation solutions for the modern BFSI enterprise,” noted Kouloumbrides, in a press release.
What they do: Swayable is a consumer insights research technology platform that measures how effectively media content changes opinions. The company services major brands, agencies, foundations and political campaigns around the world, providing insights at all stages of the creative process.
The future of AI: Recently, James Slezak, CEO and co-founder, discussed the exciting opportunity to work in the emerging field of causal AI.
“For the first time in about a century of statistics, there have actually been some meaningful advances in how causal relationships can be discovered by machines,” said Slezak. “We’re building a data platform where the structure at all stages is optimized around proving causality, starting with consumer opinion. As the sophistication of the modeling and computing increases, you start to discern more and more subtle causes, giving greater insight into how to move the metrics that matter most.”
A mission-based approach: Swayable is incorporated in California as a public benefit corporation with a dedication to effective truth telling. The company is also committed to exceeding the world’s highest regulatory standards on data privacy and security, including Europe’s GDPR.
What they do: Founded in 2014 with the goal of solving everyday issues in business document creation, Templafy’s next-gen document generation platform has grown to service more than two million users in enterprises worldwide. The company’s SaaS solutions connect content across all company-owned platforms and deliver that content directly to the end-user in an intuitive workflow.
Collaborative at its core: From senior leadership to new hires, Templafy’s culture emphasizes close collaboration.
“Templafy’s culture promotes collaboration and communication across all departments and locations. It’s very common for all levels of employees to Slack directly with leadership or members of the C-suite – something that we hope to continue to foster as we grow,” said Senior Talent Acquisition Partner Heather Harvison. “A new hire recently emphasized how much everyone truly cares about their team and getting to know one another.”
Funded for the future: Last June, Templafy marked a major milestone when the company announced the closure of a $60 million fundraising round led by Blue Cloud Ventures.
“The ambition to solve disconnected content for all enterprises combined with a ripe market, an operationally strong team and a powerful user-friendly platform makes Templafy an exemplary partner,” said Mir Arif, managing partner at Blue Cloud Ventures, in a press release.
What they do: More than 37 million students and 100,000 instructors have used Teachable’s online platform. The company enables instructors to easily create an online business and students to enroll in courses on subjects as varied as podcasting, plant propagation and baseball fundamentals.
Building bonds: At Teachable, leadership makes a concerted effort to strengthen teams’ interconnectedness and foster a genuine sense of camaraderie.
“As a distributed team, we’ve been especially intentional in finding ways to get to know each other, even though we’re not physically together,” said Dani Schufeldt, director of engineering. “Our team rotates our meeting facilitator every week, providing leadership experience, shared responsibility and empathy.”
Helping users scale: This month, Teachable launched a new public API designed to allow maximum flexibility and to help instructors on the platform scale their course or coaching business.
“Our goal is to make sure they have the freedom to access and integrate with those best-in-breed solutions via our API,” said Mark Haseltine, chief product and technology officer at Teachable. “This launch is a natural extension of our founding belief in creator autonomy. We are always looking to make it even easier for our creators to scale in the ways that work best for them.”
What they do: Torii is a Saas management company that lets IT and finance professionals discover, optimize and control their organization’s SaaS usage and costs. A number of high profile clients use the company’s platform including Twitch, Delivery Hero, Pipedrive, TypeForm and monday.com.
A winning formula: This year, the Torii team was honored for its SaaS excellence. The company took home five awards at the IT World and the Golden Bridge Awards.
“These IT World and Golden Bridge awards validate the importance of our solution as companies struggle with SaaS management and look for better ways to manage costs,”said Uri Haramati, CEO and co-founder, in a press release.
A healthy workplace: In addition to comprehensive health, mental health, vision and dental benefits, Torii offers its employees a $400 fitness benefit that can be applied to gym memberships. The service is offered through HR partner Sequoia One.
What they do: Ideon connects insurance carriers and technology platforms through a suite of APIs. Formerly known as Vericred, Ideon operates APIs that transmit billions of data points between insurtechs and insurance carriers, enabling the benefits ecosystem to grow, operate more efficiently and deliver a seamless experience throughout the insurance ecosystem.
An expansive outlook: Last spring, the Vericred raised $23 million in an oversubscribed Series B led by Aquiline Technology Growth and subsequently. announced plans to double the size of its team. Shortly thereafter, they rebranded as Ideon.
“It’s an exciting time for Ideon as we enter this next chapter, bringing with us a new name to better reflect our role as the central point in the employee benefits ecosystem,” said CTO Dan Langevin, in a press release issued this May.
Forward-looking leadership: In that same press release, Ideon announced the expansion of its leadership team, citing a commitment to “double down on its commitment to product innovation and customer growth.” The company added Chief Growth Officer Meg Collins and Vice President of Product Meghna Misra to a growing list of senior level talent including recently hired Vice President of Engineering Claude Correll, Senior Vice President of Carrier Sales John Emge, Vice President of Marketing Lindsay Gerspach, and Senior Vice President of Solution Delivery Kevin Thompson.
