Welcome back!
If you read last week's issue and you're still here, you're serious. That means you're not just browsing—you're hunting. Good. Because the roles below aren't showing up on your LinkedIn feed, and the founders behind them aren't waiting around for the perfect candidate to stumble in.
This week: AI automating entire industries, developer infrastructure powering every LLM in production, video tools used by 20 million creators, and the picks-and-shovels companies making it all work.
Same promise as last time—these opportunities won't be here long.
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:
Attend our first event → Limited spots for our January 27 Founder Showcase at betaworks, where eight founders will be presenting. We have a few spots left.
Join our talent network → Tell us what you're looking for. We'll connect you with companies that match before roles go public. Sign up here.
Founders: Apply to pitch → Raising pre-seed through Series B? Hiring for key roles? We want to feature you.
The events will be highly curated, free to attend, and application-only.
Upcoming Events
January 26th: The Shortlist January Founder Showcase (RSVP)
Our very first showcase. 100 people, 7 founders, one room in SoHo. Founders pitch what they're building, why it matters, and what roles they're hiring for. You get to ask questions, meet the team, and decide if this is your next chapter. These spots fill fast.
January 29th: Coffee & Career Transitions (RSVP)
For tech professionals recently laid off or actively job searching. Informal networking over coffee and pastries. Hiring managers welcome. Hosted at Antler Accelerator. 9-10am.
January 30th: Founder Breakfast Club (RSVP)
Every month, we bring together a select group of people from the venture community for an intimate breakfast to discuss industry trends, collaborate, and make friends.
February 5th: February Brewing Connections (RSVP)
Monthly networking meetup for tech and startup professionals. Coffee tasting featuring beans sourced from Latin America plus hot toddies. Connect with peers to share insights, explore partnerships, and discover investment opportunities. Sponsored by Alt-Black, TriNet, and Propel Earth.
February 10th: Extraordinary Founders Dinner (RSVP)
On February 10th, we are bringing together ambitious founders and builders from around the world for dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant.
February 17: Junto Founder Dinner (RSVP)
A curated dinner with 24 Seed–Series B founders in NYC.
February 26th: Founder Breakfast Club (RSVP)
Every month, we bring together a select group of people from the venture community for an intimate breakfast to discuss industry trends, collaborate, and make friends.
The Shortlist Roles
Basis AI
AI agents for accountants. Not hypothetical—deployed today at some of the largest accounting firms in the world. Revenue 10x'd in recent months. Founded in NYC by Mitchell Troyanovsky and Matt Harpe, raised $34M from Keith Rabois (first check into DoorDash, Ramp, Affirm) and Vinod Khosla (first into OpenAI).
Hiring: engineering leaders, member of technical staff (all levels across applied ML, platform, agent data), product designer, account executive, solutions consultant. Details here
LangChain
Developer platform for building LLM applications founded by Harrison Chase and Ankush Gola. If a company is putting AI into production, they're probably using LangChain or LangSmith. The tooling that makes building with language models actually possible. SF and NYC offices.
Hiring: applied AI engineer, fullstack engineers (observability, growth & monetization), platform engineer, senior backend/frontend engineers, account executives (multiple regions), deployed engineers, solutions architects, education engineers, head of deployed engineering. Details here
Mirage (Captions)
AI short-form video company. 20+ million creators use their products. Building full-stack foundation models that redefine video creation and editing. Founded by Dwight Churchill and Gaurav Misra. Backed by Index, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, a16z, and Kevin Systrom. Union Square, NYC.
Hiring: software engineers (applied AI, backend, graphics & media, iOS, web product), software engineering manager, data scientists (marketing, product), performance marketing manager, technical recruiter. Details here
Synthesia
AI video generation platform founded by Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Prof. Matt Niessner, and Prof. Lourdes Agapito. Create professional videos without cameras, actors, or studios. Enterprise-grade video creation at scale. NYC office growing fast.
Hiring: enterprise account executives, strategic account executive, customer success managers, solutions architect, solutions consultant, sales development manager, revenue enablement manager, field marketing manager, product marketing managers, executive assistant. Details here
Clay
Data enrichment platform that turns messy customer data into usable intelligence founded by Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan, and Varun Anand. If you've ever tried to build a lead list manually, you know why this exists. Used by sales and growth teams who need accurate data at scale.
Hiring: software engineers (backend, frontend, full stack, infrastructure), enterprise growth strategist, solutions engineer, GTM engineers, product marketing, product design. Details here
Pinwheel
API access to payroll systems founded by Kurt Lin, Curtis Lee, and Anish Basu. Banks, lenders, and fintechs use Pinwheel to verify income, switch direct deposit, and underwrite loans without asking users for pay stubs. Building pipes that let underserved consumers actually access financial products.
Hiring: sales engineer, product engineers (backend, frontend), software engineer (integrations), product analytics manager. Details here
Copilot Money
Personal finance app that doesn't suck. Clean interface, smart tracking, no guilt-tripping you about your coffee budget. Founded by Andrés Ugarte.
Hiring: product designers (senior & staff, iOS/Mac), head of engineering, staff fullstack engineering lead, head of finance, head of strategy & revenue operations. Details here
Normal Computing
Building AI hardware that optimizes its own physics. Founded by Faris Sbahi (formerly Google X/Brain), Matthias Tan (formerly X, the moonshot factory), and Antonio Martinez (formerly Google X/Quantum). Working with the largest semiconductor manufacturers. Offices in NYC, SF, London, Copenhagen.
Hiring: software engineers (AI product, backend), AI engineer, hardware engineers, senior enterprise account executives, business operations. Details here
PhysicsX
Physical AI for engineering and manufacturing founded by Robin Tuluie and Jacomo Corbo. Overhauling how aerospace, automotive, semiconductors, and energy companies solve their most complex challenges. $155M Series B led by Atomico, backed by Nvidia, Siemens, Applied Materials. London HQ with NYC office.
Hiring: forward deployed software engineers, machine learning engineers, solutions architect, senior product designer, platform engineer. Details here
Nourish
Telehealth platform connecting patients with registered dietitians. Insurance-covered nutrition care that's actually accessible. Founded by Aidan Dewar, Sam Perkins, and Stephanie Liu. NYC-based, scaling fast across metabolic health and chronic disease management.
Hiring: strategy & operations roles, senior backend engineer, senior full stack engineer, staff software engineer, director of lifecycle marketing, enterprise growth director. Details here
Bevyl
AI brand strategist for modern marketing teams founded by Nina Liu and Noah Lindner. Turns raw footage into ready-to-post, on-brand short-form video in one click. Built for brands scaling across platforms, geographies, and audiences without losing taste or consistency. NYC-based, venture-backed pre-seed with live product and early traction from brands doing $100M+ in revenue.
Hiring: GTM lead (sales and marketing), community manager, software engineers, chief of staff Details here
Things to Know
NYC's AI ecosystem just hit critical mass
Over 2,000 AI startups now headquartered here, with $27B+ raised since 2019. AI deals up double-digits YoY in 2024. Runway, Hebbia, Rokt anchoring a broader cluster of applied AI companies across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Translation: more weird vertical ideas, more enterprise AI roles, more chances to join something people are actually using.
Health tech funding is back
NYC health tech companies raised ~$4B in 2024, the highest since 2021 and up 60% YoY. Healthcare and AI are colliding — ambient documentation, clinical automation, insurance infrastructure. If you've been waiting for the health tech market to thaw, it has.
The city is betting $400M on AI infrastructure
"Empire AI" and "AI Nexus" initiatives backing shared compute, research, and startup collaboration. Goal is to make NYC a national AI hub instead of a follower. For people between chapters, that means more applied AI labs spinning out of universities and big incumbents.
Recent funding rounds worth watching
Baseten ($300M venture, Jan 22) — infra for deploying ML models. LiveKit ($100M Series C, Jan 22) — real-time video/audio APIs. Railway ($100M Series B, Jan 22) — infra platform. Artie ($12M Series A, Jan 22) — blockchain gaming. These are the companies that'll be hiring founding teams and early operators in Q1.
Techstars NYC cohort starts March 2026
Applications opened late last summer. Demo Day will drop a fresh batch of post-accelerator companies looking for their first or second operator. If you're exploring, keep an eye on when that cohort graduates — that's when hiring pipelines open.
Funding is weird, but working in NYC's favor
Big tech layoffs continue (5,000+ companies announcing cuts since early 2025), but capital is still flowing into security, infra, and applied AI here. December alone saw multiple NYC rounds north of $60-100M. That's dry powder creating new founding teams and early-stage roles.
Mirage (formerly Captions) is scaling fast
20M+ creators, AI video company backed by Index, Sequoia, a16z. They're hiring aggressively across engineering and product. In-office 5 days in Union Square. If you're good at AI infra or building creative tools, worth a look.
Finch is the quiet consumer law bet
Sequoia and Redpoint backed. Growing 10x since April, automating pre-litigation for personal injury law firms. First design hire, early engineers, legal ops roles. If you want to work on something unsexy that could be massive, this is it.
One Thing We're Thinking About
Everyone wants to join a rocketship. Nobody wants to join the launchpad.
The best time to join a startup is right before everyone realizes it's going to work. Not after the TechCrunch article. Not when your friends have heard of them. Before that.
The problem is, that moment is invisible from the outside. The company looks like chaos. The job description is vague. There's no brand, no buzz, no social proof.
But here's what you can see: the founders have built something before. Early customers aren't just using it—they're obsessed. The team is tiny but exceptional. Revenue is real, even if small. The problem isn't theoretical.
If you're waiting for proof, you're not early. You're safe. And safe is expensive. Market-rate salary instead of life-changing equity. Employee #250 instead of #12. Executing someone else's plan instead of building it.
Rocketships don't look like rocketships on the launchpad. They look like risk. The question is whether you can see the difference.
See you next week.
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.
Want to grab coffee? We're always around.
Sangavi, Ivor, Andrew & the Shortlist NYC team.