23 Top NYC Startups to Watch in 2023

Every year, new startups pull to the forefront of their industry through exciting innovation, tech, and cutting-edge business models. We’ve rounded up the top startups in New York of 2023 that startup lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow.

Disclaimer: With so many exciting New York startups launching and growing, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.

• Industry: Fintech, Neobanking
• Founders: Lilac Bar David, Liran Zelkha
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Series B, $80 Million
• Investors Include: Google for Startups, Target Global, Foundation Capital

Lili is a neobank focused on empowering business owners and freelancers with tailored mobile banking solutions. Their user-friendly app streamlines financial management by providing features like expense tracking, tax tools, and early access to funds.

• Industry: Software
• Founder: Mark Milastsivy
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: Series A, $3.4 Million
• Investors Include: Carta Ventures, Amino Capital

Firstbase.io is an all-in-one business operations platform designed to help entrepreneurs launch, manage, and grow their startups. With its comprehensive platform, Firstbase is enabling businesses worldwide to efficiently handle essential operations like incorporation, banking, payroll, accounting, and more. 

• Industry: Fintech
• Founders: Ignacio Moreno Pubul, Luis Basagoiti Marqués, Miguel Fernandez, Przemek Gotfryd
• Founded In: 2020
• Funding: Undisclosed, $949.6 Million
• Investors Include: Caffeinated Capital, Bling Capital

Capchase is an exciting fintech company helping other startups secure non-dilutive capital through recurring revenue financing. By providing flexible cash flow to high-growth companies, Capchase allows entrepreneurs to take control of their fundraising timeline. With its innovative tech-enabled financing model, Capchase is empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs to scale their vision. 

• Industry: Real Estate, Property Ownership
• Founders: Amit Assaraf, Yishai Cohen
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: Debt Financing, $95 Million
• Investors Include: NFX, Viola Ventures, 83North

Landa is a mobile application aiming to make property ownership inclusive and available to all. With property becoming out of reach for more and more individuals, with property ownership feeling like it has become a luxury, Landa believes everyone should be able to invest in property easily. It’s a platform that allows anyone to invest in real estate with as little as $5 to start.

• Industry: Financial Services
• Founder: Jonathan Chen
• Founded In: 2021
• Funding: Debt Financing, $61 Million
• Investors Include: K50 Ventures, Pantera Capital, Gaingels, AME Cloud Ventures

Nitra is a brand-new New York City startup focused on providing financing for the healthcare industry. Rather than focusing on finances, healthcare providers can focus on their patients and leave all financial details to Nitra.

• Industry: Sustainability, Environmental Consulting, Environmental Engineering
• Founder: Jonathan Goldberg
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: Undisclosed, $60 Million
• Investors Include: Decarbonization Partners, Quantum Energy Partners

Carbon Direct uses its financial capital and scientific expertise to help scale up global carbon removal and management. As a result, businesses can use their management platform to effectively monitor, reduce, and remove their carbon footprint, making their practices more sustainable in the long term.

• Industry: Healthcare, Mental Health, Wellness
• Founder: Harry Ritter
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Series D, $220.5 Million
• Investors Include: Thoma Bravo, Sound Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, Cigna Ventures

Alma is a network for mental health providers that’s fully membership-based, giving them access to quality and affordable mental health care on their platform. Using their platform, providers can receive client-matching, billing functions, scheduling, education, training, member directories, and the ability to accept insurance.

• Industry: Music Tech
• Founders: Mir Hwang, Ryan Kim
• Founded In: Seed, $3.6 Million
• Funding: $3.6 Million
• Investors Include: Bessemer Venture Partners, Cosmic Venture Partners

GigFinesse is a music tech company that works with both venues and performers. Through GigFinesse's two-sided platform, venues are able to browse thousands of performers and finetune their search through helpful metrics to book the right show for their clientele while performers are able to secure much-needed performance opportunities with ease. 

• Industry: Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Software
• Founders: Ronghui Gu, Zhong Shao
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Undisclosed, $300.2 Million
• Investors Include: Tiger Global Management, SoftBank Vision Fund, Insight Partners

CertiK is a company in the cryptocurrency space that’s pioneering blockchain security by using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to monitor and protect smart contracts and blockchain protocols. The founders are professors from Columbia University and Yale University, and both have a determination and vision to secure the Web3 world with their work through CertiK.

• Industry: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Software
• Founders: Leetal Gruper, Sergey Bahchissaraitsev
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: Series A, $17 Million
• Investors Include: Sound Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Spinach Angels

Tarci delivers innovation in how small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) between 1 to 500 employees ($0 to $50 million) capture data for their businesses and use that data to drive results. Their continuous intelligence engine connects to a series of external data sources, refreshes weekly, and gets an accurate picture of different SMBs worldwide.

In addition, their platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to find warm business-to-business (B2B) prospects and opportunities based on events that happen “in the moment” in real-time.

• Industry: Wellness, Consumer Goods
• Founders: Benjamin Bernet, Charles Kim, Justin Guilbert
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Series B, $35.8 Million
• Investors Include: REDO Ventures, AF Ventures

Bravo Sierra is a performance wellness company that’s the first military-native organization of its kind. They work with a community of over 1,000+ active US military service members to test and deliver performance goods to the community and contribute 5% of all of their sales to the Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) program, which supports members of the United States Armed Forces as well as their families, veterans, and retirees. If the products they provide are good enough for the military, they should be fantastic for consumers everywhere.

• Industry: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain
• Founder: Andy Chorlian
• Founded In: 2021
• Funding: Series A, $43.9 Million
• Investors Include: Paradigm, Divergence Ventures, Robot Ventures

Tessera is a cryptocurrency and blockchain startup that allows users to mint, own, and govern NFTs (non-fungible tokens) together with other members of the community. They are simplifying the way joint NFT ownership works and providing their members with an experience that frees them from relying on centralized gatekeepers when executing decisions and actions on their behalf.

• Industry: Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Stock Exchanges, Trading Platforms
• Founders: Jannick Malling, Leif Abraham, Matt Kennedy, Peter Quinn, Sean Hendelman
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: Venture, $308.5 Million
• Investors Include: MANTIS Venture Capital, Intuition Capital, Maria Sharapova

Public.com is an investing platform focused on fractional ownership of stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), artwork, and various collectibles. Members can build a fractional portfolio of their assets of choice and use Public’s educational content to learn more about investing and the technologies they’re investing in.

Additionally, unlike other competitor investment platforms, Public never sells trade data to market makers or takes any money from Payment for Order Flow (PFOF), giving their members peace of mind and security.

• Industry: SaaS, Business Travel, Cloud Data Services, IT
• Founders: Sarosh Waghmar, Shikhar Agarwal
• Founded In: 2020
• Funding: Series B, $116 Million
• Investors Include: Durable Capital Partners, ICONIQ Capital

Spotnana Technology is helping businesses in the travel industry, particularly agencies and corporations, by providing cloud-based software solutions to assist and simplify their bookings and travel management.

Spotnana has built a travel ecosystem that provides its customers with a “travel-as-a-service” platform to make travel more accessible and easier globally. Corporations can easily reduce their travel costs, manage traveler safety, track carbon emissions, and manage global travel policies. Travel agencies and travel management companies can deliver excellent customer experiences to their clients by giving them powerful booking tools that maximize their operational efficiency.

• Industry: B2B, Financial Services, Fintech, Payments
• Founders: Eran Katoni, Oded Zehavi
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Undisclosed, $126 Million
• Investors Include: Alpha Wave Global, Tiger Global Management, Meron Capital

Mesh Payments is a financial technology (fintech) startup that provides cardless corporate payments solutions for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and helps their finance teams maintain control and have superior visibility over the state of their finances.

By using Mesh, businesses can replace their corporate card and implement a fully unified and automated financial management platform, giving them access to spend management, SaaS payment management, travel payment management, and more. Mesh Payments offers something no other company has before — unmatched spend visibility and optimization capabilities.

• Industry: Cryptocurrency, Financial Services, Fintech, Trading Platform
• Founders: Anton Katz, Ethan Feldman
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Series B, $145 Million
• Investors Include: General Atlantic, Andreessen Horowitz, Notation Capital

Talos is a cryptocurrency trading platform that provides end-to-end digital asset trading and management technologies for investors, brokers, and lenders. Their vision is to remove crypto barriers to entry and help foster wide-scale adoption by providing service providers and by-side institutions with the infrastructure and tech they need to power a full trade lifecycle.

Talos's web-based graphical user interface (GUI) and application programming interface (API) allow all members of the cryptocurrency ecosystem to confidently and efficiently interact and interface with one another. As a result, Talos is at the forefront of the digital asset revolution at a time when they are transforming markets on a scale never seen before.

• Industry: Enterprise Software, Martech, Marketing & Sales Automation
• Founders: Alex Levin, Rebecca Greene
• Founded In: 2020
• Funding: Series A, $42.1 Million
• Investors Include: Emergence, Homebrew, Inspired Capital Partners, Flex Capital

Regal.io is a software development startup company that offers SMS and outbound phone sales solutions to its clients to help them drive an increased number of conversations and hit their growth targets. Today, most customers are consistently on their phones – why not remove marketing friction and reach them directly where they’re at? Regal.io helps its clients build relationships that translate to trust and better customer experiences, ultimately realizing better customer retention and more sales.

• Industry: Credit, Financial Services, Fintech
• Founders: Abbey Wemimo, Jeph Acheampong, Robert Henning, Samir Goel
• Founded In: 2016
• Funding: Series B, $145 Million
• Investors Include: SoftBank Vision Fund, Next Play Ventures, Serena Ventures

Esusu Financial is helping renters build brighter financial futures and open a world of financial opportunity through improved credit scores. This is done by reporting rent payments to all major credit bureaus, allowing renters everywhere to capitalize on their rental payment histories and on-time payments to maximize returns. Using Esusu is a win-win situation where property managers and residents benefit together.

• Industry: Fertility, Health Care, Medical
• Founders: Gina Bartasi, Joanne Schneider
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: Venture, $306.3 Million
• Investors Include: Claritas Health Ventures, Rock Springs Capital, Offline Ventures

Kindbody is a health and wellness startup providing fertility and wellness services to its clients. Some of the services they offer include IVF and egg freezing, wellness, gynecology, fertility treatments, and LGBTQ care. There’s no better way to receive support in the family-building journey than through the excellent services Kindbody provides its patients; they are making care accessible and providing employee fertility benefits to employers where Kindbody provides direct care.

• Industry: Environmental, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency
• Founders: Adam Neumann, Caroline Klatt, Dana Stern Gibber, Phil Fogel, Rebekah Neumann
• Founded In: 2021
• Funding: Venture, $71.6 Million
• Investors Include: General Catalyst, Celo, Allegory Labs

Flowcarbon is a New York startup using blockchain technology to place carbon offset credits on-chain, with the vision of accelerating and scaling up climate change solutions globally. With their tech, users can keep track of their live carbon credit balance, tons of carbon emissions that were offset, and the current projects being supported.

• Industry: Biotech, Healthcare 
• Founders: David Benshoof Klein, Victor Gao
• Founded In: 2012
• Funding: Debt Financing, $926.4 Million
• Investors Include: Hikma Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank 

Click Therapeutics’ Digital Therapeutics platform commercializes software for patients with unmet medical needs — empowering them to heal in tandem with and independently of prescription medical treatments.  

• Industry: Apps, Food & Beverage, Foodtech
• Founders: Andrew Boryk, Hadi Rashid, Mohammad Afzal, Nabeel Alamgir
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: $72.1 Million
• Investors Include: Sweetgreen, DoorDash 

Lunchbox Technologies is an open-source enterprise order management solution for restaurants that helps facilitate catering operations, customer loyalty programs, and multi-channel ordering with ease. The platform integrates with every major point of sale (POS) system and provides helpful features for email, SMS, and push marketing.  

• Industry: Healthcare, Software
• Founders: Aniq Rahman
• Founded In: 2021
• Funding: $20 Million
• Investors Include: Thrive Capital, GV

Florence is a healthtech startup streamlining the healthcare industry to reduce administrative burden, improve patient care, and maximize clinical capacity. Their platform works to optimize the patient intake process, improve access for patients, and easily include data to patient files for better care overall — all reducing the administrative burden and allowing for more time for patient support. 

Recommended: Check out our full list of the top startups to watch!