Photos by PVO Media
What is The Shortlist?
The Shortlist New York is a monthly event series and newsletter connecting exceptional talent with breakout founders in NYC.
Every two weeks, we send you a curated newsletter featuring under-the-radar opportunities at companies that are actually moving.
Every month, we host a founder showcase where eight founders take the stage and tell YOU why you should grab a seat on their rocketship.
How to get involved:
Join our talent network → Tell us what you're looking for. We'll connect you with companies that match before roles go public.
Founders: Apply to pitch → Raising Series A through Series C? Hiring for key roles? Wanting to collaborate on a private event with top talent? Email: [email protected]
The events will be highly curated, free to attend, and application-only.
We're excited to announce: the July Showcase is coming 👀
Mark your calendar. July 21. Back at Betaworks.
Six more breakout founders. One room. Every one of them hiring. If June taught us anything, it's that these rooms fill faster every month — the June showcase hit capacity with a waitlist behind it.
Founders will be announced in the days leading up to the event. Attendance is intentionally limited. Apply for your spot here.
Upcoming Events
July 21st: The Shortlist Founder Showcase: Presented by Boardy — Toronto Edition (RSVP)
Our monthly showcase. 100 people, 6 founders, one room at Betaworks. Founders pitch what they're building, why it matters, and what roles they're hiring for. These spots fill fast.
Jul 24: Founder Strength Club, hosted by Andrew & Friends (RSVP)
A 60-minute group workout class designed to help ambitious founders connect in a more active, energizing environment.
Jul 28: Junto Founder Dinner (RSVP)
A curated dinner with 24 Seed–Series B founders in NYC.
Nov 5–6: The Outliers Summit (RSVP)
Our flagship event for entrepreneurs, creators, and ambitious builders. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT COMING SOON.
The June Recap: 160 people, 6 founders, one room
The June Founder Cohort
Showcase #6 is in the books, and the room keeps getting better. Six founders took the stage at Betaworks on June 23 to pitch what they're building, why it matters, and exactly who they need next. Here's who presented and yes, they're all still hiring:
Featuring George Kurdin from Monk
Monk
George Kurdin and Joe Zhou are fixing the most ignored corner of finance: actually getting paid. Monk is an AI-native accounts receivable platform automating the full contract-to-cash lifecycle, already managing $1B+ in receivables for customers like ElevenLabs and Profound. $29M raised, including a Series A co-led by Footwork and Acrew Capital.
Hiring: applied AI engineer, full-stack engineer, AE, BDR. Details here.
Featuring Estelle Palandjian from CAKE
CAKE
Estelle Palandjian is building CAKE, a private shopping membership community connecting aspirational shoppers with the brands that want to reach them — think Amex-black-card-level rewards across top DTC retailers. $6M raised, backed by Boston Seed Capital, Impellent Ventures, and XFactor Ventures.
Hiring: Director of Integrated Marketing (and reach out re: CMO/COO). Details here.
Featuring Maggie Tang from Magic
Magic
Maggie Tang built Magic to power personalization in the real world. Its first product, Loyalist, is an agentic CRM used by thousands of hospitality brands — including Carbone, Eleven Madison Park, and TAO Hospitality Group — so operators can treat every guest like a regular. $10M raised, backed by Ben Lerer at Lerer Hippeau, Bling Capital, Floodgate, and Major Food Group.
Hiring: founding sales, founding designer, founding marketing lead, senior engineers. Details here.
Featuring Louis Vichy from OpenRouter
OpenRouter
OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah and Louis Vichy built OpenRouter, the unified API gateway giving developers access to 300+ AI models through one integration — now one of the most-used pieces of infrastructure in the AI stack.
Hiring: multiple roles. Details here.
Featuring Tanya Saigol from Jetson
Jetson
Tanya Saigol (ex-HelloFresh, J.P. Morgan) and Dan Sipple built Jetson, an AI platform helping manufacturing plants right-size staffing and overtime against real production demand.
Hiring: enterprise AE, BDR, head of engineering, engineers. Details here.
Featuring Natan Wise from Conduit Health
Conduit Health
Natan Wise and Rocky Seftel founded Conduit Health to turn a doctor's order into a delivered, insurance-covered benefit at home — telehealth, prescriptions, authorization, and fulfillment in one system. 6x growth in the past year, 100K+ orders shipped in 2026 so far.
Hiring: product engineer, AI product manager. Details here.
Missed it? The full recap reel and founder videos are dropping on our Instagram this week.
What's Moving in NYC Tech 🗽
Our new section: the deals and moves worth knowing from the past two weeks.
LeapXpert raised $180M in growth funding led by Riverwood Capital. The compliance-grade messaging platform has now raised $236M total — one of the biggest NYC rounds of the summer.
The Premier Lacrosse League raised $100M in a Series E led by Ares and Joe Tsai, with ESPN and Glen Powell in the round. Yes, that Glen Powell.
Uniti AI raised $11.9M for its AI platform running sales and leasing conversations for commercial real estate operators.
The bigger picture: NYC startups pulled in $415M+ across 12 deals last week alone, on the heels of a $758M week before that. The capital is flowing — and the hiring always follows.
One Thing We're Thinking About
Every month after the showcase, the same thing happens. Someone emails us: "I talked to one of the founders for ten minutes and now I'm interviewing." No application. No ATS black hole. Ten minutes in a room.
Meanwhile, $415M landed in NYC startups last week. Not every dollar goes to hiring — plenty gets spent on compute, marketing, and runway, but headcount is almost always the single biggest line item in a post-raise plan, because investors fund teams, not ideas. That means a wave of new roles is coming over the next few months, and most of them will be filled before they're ever posted (by the people the founder already met).
That's the whole game. Be early, be in the room, be memorable. July 21. See you there.
See you soon.
Know a founder who should be featured? Reply to this email.
Looking for a role we didn't list? Tell us what you're looking for.
Are you a founder wanting to collaborate on a private event with top talent? Reach out to [email protected]
Want to grab coffee? We're always around.