Zoe Oz

Looking to launch your company in the Big Apple? 🍎🚀 We've curated a comprehensive list of the top startup accelerators and incubators in New York City. These programs are crucial for early-stage ventures, offering: ◼ Funding: From seed investments to connecting you with VCs ◼ Mentorship: Guidance from seasoned entrepreneurs and industry experts ◼ Resources: Access to co-working spaces, legal services, and more ◼ Networks: Introductions to potential customers, partners, and investors ◼ Education: Workshops and seminars on critical business topics Explore here: https://lnkd.in/gqNatE8p Forum Ventures Big Idea Ventures GENIUS NY Luminate Accelerator XRC Ventures Echoing Green ICONYC labs Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator 43North Lair East Labs URBAN-X Blueprint Health LLC Squared Circles Waldencast Food Future Co | Scale-up Accelerator Virtual Force Inc. Cornell eLab Accelerator Dreamit Ventures FinTech Innovation Lab Starta VC Almaworks Accelerator VentureOut The Tech Garden at CenterState CEO Prospect Innovation #nycstartups #entrepreneurshipresources #innovation #startupaccelerators #startupincubators

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Are you having doubts about raising capital in today's market? 💡Join our friends at Philly Tech Entrepreneurs for an exclusive event featuring Josh Devon, an entrepreneur who secured millions from top VCs, and David Luk, a veteran investor turned "rescue capital" provider at Palm Venture Studios. They'll be dishing the REAL on fundraising: 📌Pros & Cons of raising from VCs, strategics, angels & more! 📌Unveiling lessons learned from their experiences. 📌Decoding the current market and its impact on fundraising. Open forum Q&A to follow - get your burning questions answered! Don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights! Register here: https://lnkd.in/dZAciMfy

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📣 Attention founders! We're thrilled to share that registrations are now LIVE for VC Open Office Hours happening June 4-7 during TechWeek! Sign-up here: https://lnkd.in/e9fesX-Q Dozens of NYC investors are offering 20-minute meetings with founders with no strings attached. Simply enter your startup's sector and the sign-up page will serve you any VCs with matching interests. You can secure up to four meetings directly on the platform without ever needing a warm intro. Feedback from founders on our last round of these: - "Had some really great meetings, would definitely do again!" - "Very effective way of meeting investors and getting direct feedback. " - "The 4 calls I had were some of the most relevant people I have met." This initiative is made possible thanks to our partners at Withum and Johnson & Oshan Law. J&O Law has interviewed leading VCs in New York to gather insights on optimizing meetings with them, check out the trailer below and all the full interviews on our site. https://lnkd.in/e9fesX-Q #nyctech #nycstartupcommunity #vcopenofficehours Charlie O'Donnell

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TechCrunch's founder summit empowers early-stage entrepreneurs, from pre-seed to growth stages, on their journey to success. Whether you're just starting out or aiming to take your venture to new heights, this one-day event is your essential guide to success and growth. Learn more and grab passes here 👇

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TechCrunch's founder summit empowers early-stage entrepreneurs, from pre-seed to growth stages, on their journey to success. Whether you're just starting out or aiming to take your venture to new heights, this one-day event is your essential guide to success and growth. Learn more and grab passes here 👇

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NY friends! Please come see me at Tech Day on my panel discussing the future of the NY tech ecosystem and what I hope to bring to it!

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Check out the latest episode of The Business of HLTH Podcast with guest Andrew Haughian!

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Ply Health (YC S24) helps behavioral health providers get in network with insurance companies faster by using AI to automate and monitor submissions. Providers simply input their information into Ply once, and with a couple of clicks, can apply to join any of the ~1,400 US insurance company networks. The process to join each insurance company’s network is highly manual and fragmented. On top of that, forms that aren't filled out properly cause significant delays, which in turn costs practices tens of thousands of dollars of missed revenue. Ply’s platform solves for speed and accuracy of enrollment submissions using a combination of automation and an experienced ops team as humans-in-the-loop. Samantha Wu and David Zhang founded Ply Health because of Sam's first-hand experience with the contracting and credentialing process while running BizOps for health-tech startup Finni. With Ply, behavioral health providers get into the network so they can start seeing patients ASAP. Congrats Sam and David on the launch!

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A Must-Read For Every Entrepreneur 📚 Lucas J. Pols, Managing Partner at Pegasus Angel Accelerator, highly recommends every entrepreneur to read "The Founder's Dilemmas" by Noam Wasserman. Lucas praises Wasserman's work as a seminal piece that delves into the often-overlooked nuances of founding a company, offering invaluable insights even seasoned VCs might miss. A must-read for any aspiring founder. #founder #startup #entrepreneur

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Catch another episode of This Week in Startups where Upfront Managing Partner Mark Suster interviews Max Altman and Ben Braverman, two of the three co-founders of Saga Ventures. With Saga’s new $125 million fund, the trio talk about: ➡ Fundraising challenges the co-founders faced as a first-time fund and the playbook of how referrals can be the best leads for increasing the chances of success ➡ Nuances of determining a fund size to maintain competitive advantages in deal strategies ➡ Ben’s learnings from working with Ryan Peterson at Flexport as well as Max’s experience and unique advantages working with his brothers Jack and Sam Here's a short clip below about the attributes of successful founders that they look for, including those willing to take unconventional risks 👇

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It’s NY Tech week and my new favorite thing is teaching underrepresented founders how to talk back to investors. So many of them ask me for help fundraising, and I get it. I may not always think of myself as an expert, since I’m lucky enough to surround myself with people who are much more experienced at it than I am. But we did do it successfully once, raising more than $3M along the way with little more than a deck, a dream, and an incredible founding team. Of course, we’re all aware that this success puts us in the teeny tiny cohort of startups who raise without a traditional-looking founding team. So what’s the common theme in my advice to non-traditional founders at the early stage? Push back. It’s easy to get intimidated by investors. They’re smart, aggressive, and ask really hard questions. It can be hard to remember that YOU are the expert on your market. They are generalists. Even if they have strong opinions on your market, it’s OK to tell them when you think they’re wrong. In fact, if you have the conviction and confidence (plus evidence to back it up), disagreeing with your prospective investors can even be seen as an advantage. When a VC asks you a question at the pre-seed stage about your path to $100M in ARR, it’s OK to say “dude, we’re a pre-seed company. I know what our path is to get to a million, and we will have a lot to figure out after that.” Now, this only works if you have a track record that can support your confidence. Or if you don’t know the answer, but you DO know HOW you’re going to figure it out, talk about the path from experimentation to scalability. It’s better than making up a bunch of stuff that you’ll probably throw out eventually, and VCs will respect your focus and defense of your precious little time. Plus, they can usually tell if your confidence is lacking in your answer, anyway. This investor market is a tricky one, but never forget that they (investors) need you (founders) just as much as you need them. And hey, if you’re an up and coming female or underrepresented founder, and you need some help (or just a pep talk) I’d love to help. Happy Tech Week everyone!!

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Everybody needs a place to put their love. - Karina Dresses tagline, circa 2012 In 2012 I made my first investment in a #femalefounder who also happened to be 50+. At the time I had no idea how unusual these founder traits were. I just knew the founder was passionate, authentic, experienced, perfectly aligned with both the product and the market. Most importantly there was a strong emotional bond between the product and the customers who bought it. 🤷🏾‍♂️- it just seemed like the smart thing to do. Not a lot of my investor buddies agreed at the time- probably not so surprising. Fast forward 10+ years and the value of my investment is ~20x & the amount of free cash flow distributed to equity holders is substantial & still increasing YOY. My takeaways: ✅Invest in authenticity, passion and intimacy (customer)- no matter what the founder profile looks like relative to others. ✅Follow your gut. ✅Not every deal is venture scale worthy. But there’s a potential investor for every deal. ✅Be the best version of you, not a lame version of someone else. Works for both investors & founders. :) Congratulations to Karina and the team at Karina Dresses! Proud as punch to be on this journey with you all🚀

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For NY Tech Week we'll be demo-ing Substrate at the South Park Commons Science Faire on Thursday: https://lnkd.in/e5JwDKKX There are so many incubator-shaped things out there these days, but there's nothing quite like SPC. It's like a chill, small-batch, locally-sourced alternative to YC, where you can either hang out as a member forever - or choose the VC-funded adventure. The -1 to 0 phase [0] they talk about at SPC is real, and it made a real difference for us to have a home at SPC. It takes a lot to quit your job and do something new, especially when it isn't entirely clear what you're doing. (1) Do it – take the leap! and (2) consider joining SPC. Though the core vision has remained the same, many of the important turns in our squiggle at Substrate (including the graph framework) came from those early days at SPC. If you're here for tech week and can't catch us at SPC on Thursday, DM me if you want to meet up! [0] https://lnkd.in/e6KEMr9V

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Calling all #Founders: Venture Capital Association of Alberta (VCAA)’s Deal Flow Calls represent a great opportunity for #PreSeed to #SeriesA companies to gain exposure to some of the countries most active Venture Capital #investors. If your company is raising equity capital, I strongly encourage you to check out the link below!

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13% of Venture GP's don't plan to raise another fund due to LP pullbacks and a tough fundraising environment. In 2024, Weraise Ventures is redefining how founders and GP's raise capital - if you're apart of the 87% of GP's actively fundraising, let's chat! #venture #capital #markets #vc #gp #lp #fundraising #business #crypto #fund #founder #startup

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Coverage in top media can be the difference between anonymity and growth for a startup and help you stand out from the competition. However, many startups struggle to get in simply because they don’t know how to do it right. Rather than telling you what to do, we decided to tell you what NOT to do. Our newest blog reveals a list of things you need to avoid if you want top media coverage! 👇🏻 #PR #publicrelations #pitching #communications

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Startup Spotlights: a new series of chains (collaborative memos) highlighting founders and their startups. Each will feature founder(s) sharing their company's story *and* investors sharing what makes this founder / startup special and why they invested in them. Episode #1 coming next week. Want to be featured? Let us know! [Video: featuring Memo's founder/CEO, Isaac Saldana]

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Yesterday, Underscore Partner Lily Lyman joined TechCrunch Early Stage to share tactical advice on how founders can effectively build relationships with the right investors. Importantly, she shares the nuance between the "nurture phase" and the "actively raising phase" of fundraising. Turns out fundraising has a lot of parallels to the 2000s romcom "He's Just Not That Into You" - So we were sure to have some fun drawing out the similarities! Explore the deck here by swiping right *pun intended*:

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Big news for Innovatemap in NYC! 🗽 We’re thrilled to announce our partnership and the official launch of Startup:NYC, a community built by Tech:NYC to support the most promising founders building companies in New York City. We’re excited to join forces with tech leaders and some of New York’s most active VCs to offer critical resources for emerging and underrepresented founders in the city. Founders, interested in joining the #StartupNYC community (and spending time with Ashley King & Meghan Pfeifer Corsello)? Learn more and apply here: startups.technyc.org

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