In tech, innovation doesn't necessarily come with experience. In fact, many of New York's legacy tech leaders launched their first business in college, or earlier, driven by the entrepreneurial itch from a young age.
So without further ado, here are 30 local tech leaders at the helm of companies with over $1 million in funding — and they're all under 30.
Ryan Bubinski, co-founder at Codecademy
Ryan Bubinksi co-founded Codecademy in 2011, the same year he graduated from Columbia University. In fact, Bubinksi met his co-founder, Zach Sims, while working for Columbia’s college newspaper. The pair’s initial concept for their company was a learning network that connected students with other students, which morphed into Codecademy while they went through Y Combinator. Now, the online coding program has raised over $42 million to date.
Nate Beatty, co-founder at IrisVR
Nate Beatty co-founded IrisVR in 2014 with Shane Scranton. The company came out of Techstars’ Winter 2015 cohort and allows architects, engineers and designers to use VR to create true-to-scale renderings of architectural projects. The company launched in beta in 2016, offering the first full-suite of products that can edit, share and visualize 3D models in virtual reality. The software is first-of-its-kind, and immediately caught the attention of 45 of the top 100 global design and architecture firms.
Max Bennett, co-founder and VP of Product at Bluecore
After graduating college in 2012, Max Bennett was a trader at Goldman Sachs before going on to create Bluecore in 2013. Bluecore makes customer behavioral data digestible and actionable and now works with over 190 customers representing more than 250 high-end consumer brands.
Scott Britton, co-founder at Troops
Scott Britton co-founded Troops, a Slackbot for sales teams, with Greg Ratnor and Dan Reich. At its core, Troops is innovating enterprise workflows through messaging, biting at the future of how people use Salesforce with a focused, intelligent product. To date, the company has raised over $9 million in venture capital, which includes investments from First Round Capital and Slack Fund.
Trace Cohen, Managing Director at NYVP
Trace Cohen co-founded his first company, Brand-Yourself.com, which helped people control their Google search results, while he was still an undergraduate at Syracuse University. He then went on to create Launch.it, which gave public relations professionals and brands the chance to write product news themselves. Now, Cohen is the Managing Director at NYVP, where he primarily makes angel investments.
Alexander Dahmani, co-founder and CEO at QuiO
Alexander Dahmani co-founded connected therapeutics company QuiOa in 2014. The startup improves clinical trials and disease management through remote monitoring of home injections, providing connected software for monitoring, engaging and supporting patients taking injectable therapies. The company raised a $1 million seed round last September.
Eric Duffy, co-founder and CEO at Pathgather
Eric Duffy and the team at Pathgather are working to build a social learning platform around personal and professional development. Pathgather went through Techstars' Spring 2014 cohort and has since raised $1.6 million. Duffy founded the company with Jamie Davidson to help employees discover great learning content, get recognized for their achievements, learn from the experts around them and grow to become experts themselves.
Dillon Erb, co-founder at Paperspace
Paperspace started with the idea that buying and managing computers is an unnecessarily painful and expensive process. Now, the company provides ‘effortless cloud computing,’ modernizing the desktop computer by allowing Linux or Windows VMS to be accessed through any web browser. A programmer and designer by trade, Dillon Erb previously worked in architecture before creating Paperspace in 2014.
Derek Flanzraich, CEO and founder of Greatist
Greatist began with Derek Flanzraich’s frustration with his own weight. As a result, he created a product that provides trustworthy information on healthy living and would speak to an audience like a friend. Since its launch, Greatist has experienced rapid growth as its audience has increased 250 percent year-over-year and now garners over 10 million unique monthly visitors.
JJ Fliegelman, co-founder and CTO at Way Up
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, JJ Fliegelman spent a year running his own tech and data business while backpacking around the world. He then joined McKinsey as a consultant for a year before creating WayUp with Liz Wessel in 2014.
Itay Forer, co-founder and COO at Cleanly
Itay Forer founded Cleanly with Chen Atlas and Tom Harari in 2013. The company was founded to make laundry simpler for New Yorkers by providing an on-demand laundry delivery service. Through the company’s proprietary technology, a fleet of pre-screened delivery valets receive and fulfill laundry orders all around the city.
David Haber, co-founder and CEO at Bond Street
Before launching Bond Street, David Haber was an investor at Spark Capital where he focused on marketplace and fintech investments. Before that, Haber cofounded Locus Analytics, a startup asset management company. Bond Street aims to make small business lending easier through technology, data and design. The company has raised $12.2 million in funding since it was founded in 2013.
Steph Korey, co-founder and CEO at Away
Away launched in 2016 with a mission to sell meticulously designed suitcases to the modern traveler. The company is the brainchild of Steph Korey and Jen Rubio, two former Warby Parker employees. Now, the company is focusing on expanding its online and brick-and-mortar presence both domestically and globally.
Brian Jones, founder and CTO at Latch
When Latch first got started, it kept its head down to focus on developing its first product — a smart lock product targeted at the enterprise market. Brian Jones co-founded Latch with Luke Schoenfelder and Thomas Meyerhoffer, which officially launched out of stealth a year ago.
Philip Lang, co-founder at TripleMint
TripleMint combines technology, data and real estate agents through software that helps buyers, sellers and renters make smarter decisions. Prior to launching TripleMint in 2011, Philip Lang worked as an analyst at Macquarie Capital.
Jérémie Lasnier, co-founder and CCO at Livelike
Jérémie Lasnier is the co-founder and CCO of LiveLike, a platform for watching sports in virtual reality. In 2016 Lasnier was recognized as an industry leader at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future startup competition, winning the grand prize of $50,000 from the NFL. LiveLike is also a graduate of Techstars NYC.
Scott Lee, founder and CEO at Gooroo
Scott Lee got his entrepreneurial start early in life, creating a non-profit English volunteering platform in high school where he connected over 7,000 English tutors with underprivileged children. While he was attending Columbia University and studying engineering, we went on to create an online fashion retailer, Mud Cafe. After a stint at J.P. Morgan, Lee launched tutoring service Gooroo, which connects students to qualified tutors on-demand.
Chris Maddern, co-founder at Button
Chris Maddern is one of the six co-founders of Button, a mobile-deep linking startup that connects apps so mobile users can complete multiple actions without bouncing between apps. To date, the three-year-old company’s impressive roster of clients includes digital media giants like AOL, Conde Nast, Huffington Post and Time Inc., as well as merchants such as eBay, Groupon, Hotels.com, Jet and Uber, to name a few.
Dan Pratt, co-founder and COO at AdHawk
Dan Pratt founded AdHawk, a startup that aggregates digital marketing data from companies, with Todd Saunders. Prior to launching AdHawk, Pratt worked on the AdWords team at Google, where he helped advertisers scale.
Todd Saunders, co-founder and CEO at Adhawk
Todd Saunders founded adtech platform AdHawk with Dan Pratt in 2015. The pair took the startup through Techstars Boulder 2015 cohort and have raised over $2 million to date. Prior to Adhawk, Saunders also worked at Google, where he was a founding member of the Accelerated Growth Team.
Luke Schoenfelder, Founder and CEO at Latch
Prior to launching Latch, Luke Schoenfelder worked at Apple. He then founded his own startup, GridPotential, which produced technology for South American utility companies. Now, the company is focused on scaling its operations and manufacturing capacity.
Jared Schwartzentruber, co-founder and Lead Engineer at QuiO
Jared Schwartzentruber launched QuiO with Alexander Dahmani with a mission to create the first fully connected drug delivery device platform. The company, backed by a recent $1 million funding round, is at the forefront of the internet of medical things (IoMT).
Shane Scranton, co-founder and CEO at IrisVR
Before founding IrisVR, Shane Scranton started his career in 3D rendering technology as a visual artist. However, since the release of the first Oculus Rift, Scranton has been focused on building technology so that anyone with VR goggles can navigate through architectural designs like they were doing a real walk through. To date, the company has raised over $9 million in venture funding.
Ryan Smith, co-founder at LeafLink
LeafLink, a wholesale management platform for the cannabis industry, was founded by Ryan Smith and Zach Silverman in 2015. The startup partners with cannabis brands to simplify how they interact with retailers on the B2B side of the industry. The company has already raised a $1 million round, with plans to become the go-to supply chain solution for weed buyers and sellers.
Alan Tisch, founder and CEO at Spring
Spring was founded with the simple mission to create a better mobile shopping experience. After stints at both J.P Morgan and Fab.com, Alan Tisch created Spring to provide a single shopping destination where shoppers can discover products and buy them directly from the brands and designers that make them. In 2014, the company was selected by Apple as one of the best apps of the year.
Dan Teran, co-founder and CEO at Managed by Q
Dan Teran co-founded Managed by Q in 2014 to help other companies use smart technology to manage their offices. Prior to founding Managed by Q, Teran worked as a product designer and Partner at prehype, a venture development firm. Managed by Q has raised $72.5 million to date.
David Walker, CEO and co-founder at TripleMint
David Walker launched TripleMint in 2011 with Philip Lang with a mission to leverage data to help home buyers identify off-market inventory and help sellers generate more demand for their property. Now, the company operates a sleek end-to-end property solution and has raised over $6 million in venture backing to date.
Zach Weiner, co-founder at Overtime
While there is no shortage of sports content online for professional and college-level teams, Overtime is a tech-powered platform on a mission to highlight high school and amateur sports through video. Prior to co-founding the company in 2015, Zach Wiener started another company, The Sports Quotient, while he was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Liz Wessel, co-founder and CEO at Way Up
While earning her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Wessel started two businesses, catching the entrepreneurship bug early. After graduating in 2012 and working for Google, Wessel went on to create WayUp, a platform that helps college students recent grads find jobs and helps companies find young talent.
Alexandra Zatarain, co-founder at Eight
Alexandra Zatarain took her first step into New York City’s tech scene when she co-founded mobile marketing company MOWA in 2012. The company was quickly acquired and Zatarain continued to work in public relations before launching Eight in 2014 with her three co-founders, Matteo Francheschetti, Andrea Ballarini and Massimo Andreasi Bassi. Earlier this year, the company raised a $11 million Series A.
Images via LinkedIn.
