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:

The events will be highly curated, free to attend, and application-only.

Monday night, we took over a room in Chelsea. 100+ people. 6 founders. One agenda: show up before everyone else decides they should care.

The energy was different this month. Not louder, just sharper. Every founder who took the stage had something concrete to show — not a vision deck, not a pivot story. Traction. Product. Teams already moving.

Six companies. Pre-seed to Series A. Spanning consumer AI, fintech infrastructure, compliance, creator economy, and health tech. Each founder had 8 minutes to pitch what they're building, why it matters, and what roles they're hiring for.

Sam Kececi is building The Sentience Company that sounds like science fiction but is shipping in production: a digital version of you. Your Sentience remembers everything — becoming the best search engine for your life and the best platform to share your knowledge with others.

The approach is unlike anything else in the space. Rather than trying to map the brain neuron by neuron, Sentience mirrors the systems of the human mind in increasingly high fidelity — the way Stable Diffusion coalesces around a generated image. Translating how the mind actually works into software, from the ground up. The team is ex-Macro, ex-Amazon, ex-Salesforce, Columbia alum.

Hiring: fullstack engineer, lead AI engineer

Daniel Caridi is building the operating system for organizations that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities — and it's already working. Kibu's platform handles content, compliance, and EHR in one place, purpose-built for I/DD providers who have spent years duct-taping together tools that were never designed for them. $2.7M ARR, deployed across hundreds of organizations in 46 states. $5.1M raised from GreyMatter Capital, Connecticut Innovations, and angel investors.

Hiring: senior software engineer, software engineer (content platform), account executive, account executive (government & enterprise), head of content, head of customer success, customer success rep, government relations manager, and more. Details here.

Nick Lawton built the infrastructure layer that the creator economy actually runs on. SideShift connects 800k+ creators with brands like Target, Brex, and Paramount Pictures — handling everything from creator discovery and campaign management to the payment infrastructure that moves money to creators at scale. $8M ARR. 30B+ views generated. 1,000+ active brand customers. $2.2M raised. NYC-based and profitable-feeling before most companies touch Series A.

Hiring: software engineers. Reach out to us directly!

Sophia Kianni is building the shopping agent that actually knows what you want. Phia's AI helps consumers discover the best products across 350 million items with personalized, real-time recommendations — and on the brand side, it turns shopping intent into measurable conversion, delivering performance lift for 7,200 brands through AI-targeted offers to 1M+ users. 87%+ monthly retention. An in-house product understanding system indexing 300M+ items across retail and resale. $43M raised. Stanford alum building one of the more quietly impressive consumer AI companies in NYC right now.

Hiring: principal full stack engineer, full stack engineer, senior backend engineer, senior iOS engineer, senior ML engineer, principal product designer, product manager, senior partnerships manager, and more. Details here.

Kieran O'Reilly built the infrastructure layer that lets financial institutions finally solve card-on-file switching — and the backing list alone tells you how serious this is. Knot is the first merchant connectivity platform connecting major banks and fintechs to hundreds of online merchant accounts through a single SDK. Backed by Amex, Plaid, and Mastercard, plus the founders of Twitter, Harry's, Warby Parker, Allbirds, Casper, Deel, DraftKings, and Flexport. $20M raised. Harvard alum building foundational fintech infrastructure in NYC.

Hiring: senior engineers and tech leads across infrastructure, product, and mobile (iOS & Android), GTM, sales, and a chief of staff. Details here.

Ashi Agrawal is rebuilding compliance from the ground up for financial institutions — and the traction speaks for itself. Kobalt Labs is the AI-native compliance platform that fintechs like Chime and Bilt and institutions managing billions in assets like Emprise and Celtic Bank use to slash vendor and fintech onboarding time by 60-70% and get marketing collateral reviewed and released 25% faster. $12.7M raised. Ex-Affirm, Stanford alum.

Hiring: Engineering, Ops, GTM. Reach out to us directly!

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.

​Our tech mixer for founders, operators, investors & friends in tech.

A curated dinner with 24 Seed–Series B founders in NYC.

Our fourth showcase. 100 people, 6 founders, one room in Chelsea. 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.

The flagship event for entrepreneurs, creators, and ambitious builders, brought to you by Carry and Andrew Yeung.

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.

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.

[email protected]

Sangavi, Ivor, Andrew & the Shortlist NYC team