Daniel Andrews

🚨 NYC Tech Startups: Are You Ready for the Commercial Rent Tax (CRT)? If you're operating south of 96th Street and paying over $250K in annual rent, you could be subject to NYC's Commercial Rent Tax. For startups that just closed a Seed or Series A round, missing these filings can lead to penalties that cut into your hard-earned capital. Don’t let tax compliance slip through the cracks! Read our latest blog to learn how to stay compliant, avoid penalties, and make sure your growth isn't hindered by unexpected expenses. 🔗 https://bit.ly/3XSHRYZ #NYCTech #Startups #CommercialRentTax #SeedFunding #SeriesA #TechCompliance #ShayCPA #cpafirm #techaccountants #startupaccountants #techstartup #techcompany

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Somewhere between a dollar slice spot and a rooftop view... 🍕🏢 Here are a few #NYC startups hiring #SoftwareEngineers that are on the verge of something big! 👀 - - - 𝟏. 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐀𝐈 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 🚀 - With a product that is already clicking for customers, they're looking for folks of all levels to work at intersection of Product Engineering, GenAI/LLMs and Infrastructure to execute their ambitious product roadmap. 𝟐. 𝐀𝐈-𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 😁 - Looking to build and own core projects 0-1 that leverage AI to make a real-world impact? Fresh off their Seed raise, they're looking for 2 engineers! 𝟑. 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱, 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬 📈 - An NYC FinTech making headlines multiple times recently are looking for multiple Backend and Infra focused engineers interested in high ownership & deep technical challenges. 𝟒. 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 🤖 - After their recent round, they're looking for engineers experienced with things like Distributed Systems, ML, and Data to help the continue pushing the boundaries on what can be achieved with AI. Do any of these roles sound interesting to you or look like they could be a fit for someone you know? Shoot me a message here or email at [email protected] - - - #NYCTech #Startup #Hiring #SoftwareEngineer

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Check out our curated list of #New York funded startups, featuring key insights like HQ locations, founded years, and investor info. https://lnkd.in/dbw7pUqq #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #investmentbanking

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Founders from YC, A16z, TS backed startups I work with typically leverage one of these three strategies when hiring remotely Here's the breakdown: 👉 Direct Full-Time Hire: ↳Execution: Bring on board a full-time engineer with a direct contract. ↳Compensation: Pay through an Employer of Record (EOR) or directly via platforms like Payoneer or Wise. ↳Best for: Seamlessly integrating engineers into your core team who are poised for long-term growth with your startup. Ideal for roles that are central to your tech strategy. 👉 Full-Time via Employer of Record (EOR) ↳Execution: Employ a full-time engineer via an EOR, which takes care of all legal and administrative duties. ↳Compensation: The EOR manages payroll, taxes, and compliance concerns local to the engineer. ↳Best for: Startups aiming for quick scale without the hassle of navigating local labor laws and tax complexities. Perfect when expanding into new markets without establishing a local corporate presence. 👉 Staff Augmentation ↳Execution: Partner with a staffing agency that provides engineers on a contract basis. ↳Compensation: Pay the agency a rate that covers the engineer’s salary and a markup fee. ↳Best for: Startups needing to dynamically adjust their engineering teams to tackle project-specific demands or fill particular expertise gaps on a temporary basis. Ideal for short-duration projects requiring niche skills.

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YC application tip: never ask a YC founder you don't know to recommend you. It should be somebody who worked with you or knows you well. YC is much more interested in a person rather than the idea they're applying with. You can change the idea, but not the person.

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Nice overview of how we're using data to inform how we invest in early-stage founders. We'll be announcing more this summer but we're seeing some really interesting early data. https://lnkd.in/exU_Juf5

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Hot take on a lot of early-stage digital health companies out there: You're not a tech company. Most tech-enabled care companies I've seen over the past two years are only tech-enabled in the sense that they use telehealth as their delivery mechanism for care. There are exceptions to this, of course - companies who build computer vision and applied AI tools to better the doctor-patient experience, companies who build tooling around risk scoring and stratification to enable more personalized medicine, companies who build truly novel intakes to better route patients to the appropriate care, etc. These companies have real technology chops and, if they sell it right to the market, can get credit for this from investors. But if you're truly a telehealth provider, you need to realize now that the goal post has shifted dramatically from 2021 and you're going to be valued at maturity at something like 3x EBITDA. That's profit. Not revenue. Throw a revenue multiple out the window. That's not the world we live in if you're a virtual doctor's office. Think of how that impacts venture math. If you're raising a seed round at $15M post-money (or $12M pre-money), it means you'll have to generate something like $150-200M in annual EBITDA to be a fund returner for your seed investors. Maybe even more with dilution, since telehealth businesses are not traditionally capital efficient and will likely need to raise material additional capital to reach that scale. You need to be ridiculously profitable (probably on $800M-$1B in annual revenue since you're likely going to be a 40% gross margin business). Here's the good news: you can set yourself up well (and probably be a contrarian founder relative to your peers), by talking about EBITDA growth and how you can grow into a fund-returning outcome based on realistic mature market comps. This will stand out for the investors you're pitching, even at the early stage. This is how you can beat the malaise of the tech-enabled care market. Focus on the right metrics and the right type of growth. You don't have to have all the answers (no founder does), but you need to make sure the ship is headed in the right direction. A focus on profitability for "tech-enabled care" (*ahem* telehealth) businesses is a good first step.

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🔮 What's the future of developer platforms? ☠ Or the death knell for open core companies? Get the answers (and more) from Ethan Kurzweil; longtime partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and soon-to-be founder of a new, early stage venture firm. In his time at Bessemer Ethan invested in Launchdarkly, Twilio, PagerDuty, Intercom, Twitch, SendGrid, HashiCorp and npm. He's seen it all, you won't want to miss his takes on what's next and what isn't going to work. I'm sharing our closing lightning round questions here, but the full interview (which is much juicer) can be found at calyx.substack.com. ⚡Lightning round questions!⚡ *What's the developer platform that you respect most?* 🔶 Zapier. It's the ultimate democratizer of development for 4,000 different esoteric use cases and some not so esoteric use cases. And they built it in a way to allow anyone to use it. *Who is a developer GTM leader you respect?* 👨 Adam FitzGerald at HashiCorp. Disclaimer - he’s a Bessemer operating advisor. He is the best thinker to help companies structure developer evangelism programs at scale. *Unpopular opinion re: dev tools?*  💼 That a lot of dev tools shouldn't be businesses. Many should be free or part of a larger developer platform offering. The difference between tool and platform can make a big difference as to whether you have a sustainable business. *How do you feel like you’re able to uniquely work with developer-first companies?* ⚾ I’ll keep it to one for the lightning round: I’ve gotten lots of experience with false signals. If you’re a founder working on a startup sometimes you’ll respond to a false signal and it’s hard to go back and unwind those choices—we have lots of experience with developer platforms and can help founders avoid those pitfalls. Disclaimer: Ethan would never use emojis like this. He actually...doesn't use emojis!? I've just added them in an attempt to improve readability on LinkedIn... enjoy!

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It was another action packed quarter at MGMT Boston. Here are the standout startups we highlighted in Q3 2024.. Sequentially: Sense, mabl, Customers.ai, Wicket, Form Health, EnFi, Inc, Crunchtime, OfferFit Native AI: EnFi, OfferFit ClimateTech: Sense Vertical & Horizontal SaaS (+AI): mabl, Customers.ai, Wicket, Crunchtime HealthTech: Form Health Seed Stage: EnFi Growth Stage (A-C): Customers.ai, Wicket, Form Health, OfferFit Late Stage (>C): Sense, mabl, Crunchtime Sense - a growth stage software company bringing better intelligence to the edge of our electrical grid mabl - growth stage software company building a unified platform to streamline testing across web, mobile, API, accessibility, and performance to bring innovation to QA testing because all software should be shipped quickly with enterprise level quality Customers.ai - a provider of website visitor identification and remarketing solutions that turn anonymous prospects into customers, using smart identification capabilities Wicket - changing the stadium experience through advanced facial recognition software technology so fans can get to their seats faster, enjoy themselves, and stadiums get to improve their operational rigor too Form Health - a virtual obesity medicine clinic that provides science-based obesity care to help patients achieve their weight loss and health goals EnFi - building an agentic, native AI software platform for financial institutions to give complex credit lenders the power of 10,000 analysts Crunchtime - a late stage vertical software company at $100M+ ARR that serves multi-unit restaurant brands, helping them deliver industry leading operational excellence in every location OfferFit - building an AI Decisioning platform that enables lifecycle marketers to automate personalization at scale, taking the tedium & pain out of A/B testing More to come in Q4!

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How did a YC founder scale from $0 to $4M+ ARR in 6 months? What I learned surprised me: Getting to $200k ARR is possible through just hacking something together. But to break past the $1M ARR mark and keep scaling? To sign enterprise contracts with name brand companies? That's a different milestone. The fact that a technical founding did this and handled it all through founder-led sales is even more astounding. Surely, there must be some kind of secret sauce, some kind of unexplained context, I wondered. How did 2 technical founders who graduated college recently build something so robust, so performant and scalable, that they had enterprise companies lining up left and right? But no -- the founder let me know they did this through great engineering and sheer force of will. No proprietary edge. No silver spoon. No past domain experience. And in that moment, that simple answer made sense. We've also been speaking with amazing product engineers, many of them former founders, for whom things are just easy. Sometimes they cite great engineering mentorship as the key to their success. But more often than not, they simply "get it." And my team and I have over time honed our ability to naturally spot what makes a certain candidate special. It's a unique combination of high horsepower, high grit, incredibly sharp slope growth, and an ability to parachute into any problem and just figure things out. What seems like a quarter-long epic to some folks is a one-week project to others. New domains are never daunting. Never learned GPU inference optimization? No problem. I'll figure it out. This is the kind of talent that all startups need -- but understandably is truly rare to secure. This is the truly great, truly unique product engineer. And startups are rapidly learning how this kind of talent changes their own growth trajectory.

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Solve for information asymmetries! Architecture & Civil Engineering - Layout interpretation ~other industries: Healthcare - <Prescription> interpretation Financial Products - <Subject to market risks documentation> interpretation Loans - <Fine print> interpretation There’s going to be a slew of startups commercialising this year with a value prop of simplification using AI

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Founders and VCs everywhere should collectively put a bullet in the term “unicorn”. If you sell your company or go public for $1B, then sure, you're a unicorn. Implied valuations based on minority investments? Different story. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Operate like your company is worth nothing. Keep your leaders, your board, your team, etc focused on long-term equity value - not your paper valuation today.

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For any #edtech app to realize its potential, data must flow seamlessly and securely. But data integration is deceptively complex and costly. It’s also *not* what gets edtech developers and engineers out of bed... ...except perhaps for Mick Hewitt Doug Weber and the team at Ednition, who are building the critical infrastructure to help schools and companies to solve rostering and data interoperability challenges in education. Already Ednition has processed billions of rostering records for edtech companies working with school systems of all sizes. As Mick once said: let’s compete on apps, not infrastructure. We’re incredibly excited to join GSV Ventures Avalanche Array Education and others in this seed round. On the roadmap are even more robust integrations with LMSs and other features that will unlock data silos. If you’re building in #edtech and find yourself wrestling with data challenges, give Ednition a look (or hit me up for an intro)! Many Reach companies are happy customers.

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I often get asked what are the differences between YC and Techstars, and which one is the best? 👇 Here is a breakdown and tips on which one you should apply to? 🟰 Similarities - Focused on software companies through a 3-month program - ~$150k check for about 6-7% equity - Deals with most SaaS providers (AWS, Digital Ocean, etc.) 💥 Differences - YC is based in the Silicon Valley while Techstars has (40-ish) programs all over the world - YC brand is stronger with demo day attracting 1000+ investors - Techstars’ program is built around mentors (~100 per class) to accompany you through the program; YC basically leaves you alone and you check in with a partner once a week - Techstars creates a real bond among the group of 10 startups because they live together for 3 months To summarize (and this is my opinion)! First-time founders, who did not experience what a startup is before, will learn a lot more at Techstars. There are more interactions between founders, mentors to accompany you and the Managing Director is always available to discuss, brainstorm and support. If you've lived through a startup experience before (yours or another one) and kind-of know what you're doing, YC is (by far), the accelerator that will bring the most visibility. This will help you raise capital but also attract talents worldwide.

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Blind optimism vs. pragmatism, the psychological patterns that lead to failure, the future of "moats" in the age of AI, and images of me apparently staring wistfully into space.... Thanks Brian Ondrako for a great podcast!

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Did you know that YC founders get a secret weapon… and it’s not what you think. “Bookface” is YC’s internal social network. It was needed because YC had funded larger batches and the hardest part of a community is knowing who is in it and who you can trust and ask for help. On the platform, founders share real methods and advice that would break if it were shared widely It’s secret knowledge shared with a trust-first community - answering 80% of the questions a founder can have about building and selling a product, be it to clients, candidates or investors. Before the platform, if you had a B2B startup, you had to reach out cold to potential customers. Now there are over 1000 YC companies you can sell your service to and all of their contact information is in Bookface. As a result, YC alumni companies are often over 50% of your new sales during YC. It’s superpowers like this that make YC deals so attractive compared to the norm. You are investing in a founder with a 10x network already!

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Inspired by what we’re building at Build Momentum. We realized tech recruiting is broken—non-technical recruiters struggle to find and attract the best talent. That’s why we’ve flipped the script and developed a community-based recruiting approach: a trusted network of elite engineers, embedded within Latam’s top tech communities. The best engineers know the best engineers, and we tap into these deep, authentic connections to deliver top talent faster and with better fit. Want to see how we’re doing it differently? Check out our post

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𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐒𝐀 🇺🇲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐎𝐰𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 This is a step-by-step short guide based on my own experience building Gala and moving to SF (for fellow immigrant founders) Let’s dive in 👇 1-𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐔𝐒 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 For startups the best option is a C-Corp in Delaware. For solopreneurs LLC may be a better fit. But do your own research for your case. You can do all the process through app.firstbase.io or Clerky.com 2- 𝐓𝐚𝐱𝐞𝐬 Contact Fondo or another platform to get your taxes in order. They will help with you federal and state taxes. 3- 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐒 To enter the US, you may need a B1 visa to stay there for the first 6 months while you start the process for the visa you actually need, which is the O-1 Visa. Make sure to plan ahead, as getting an appointment at the embassy can take several months. 4- 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎-1 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐚 You can look into tryalma.ai, lighthousehq.com, or contact an immigration lawyer. (Ask for a referral) This process can cost between $8K and $15K, so you should be financially prepared to cover these expenses 5- 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 The best option is to get a sublease until you establish yourself in the city. You can look into Michelle Fang's guide to find the best places to stay in SF: startertosf.guide TIP: Stay away from the Tenderloin 6- 𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 Uber and Waymo are expensive, so make sure you download the MuniMobile App to get tickets for the public transportation bus. 7- 𝐏𝐫𝐨 𝐭𝐢𝐩 The most overlooked step in moving to the US is actually buying a flight and going there. You’re not truly committed until you land at SFO. 8-𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬 If you're a spanish top talent student or tech builder looking for an internship in San Francisco, you should apply to https://goexponential.org/ 9-𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 If you have any questions or doubts, feel free to comment here or DM me. Happy to help! If you found this thread helpful, engage with the post to help fellow founders start their journey And if you planning to get fit or lose weight this September, try gala for free here: gala.coach

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Updated overview of a few of our active searches @ Coastal Recruiting All opportunities are full-time with Seed, Series A, or Series B VC backed companies - looking for those that want to build and scale. NY Ops: - Head of ML - Seed (Raising Series A) - Massive growth $2m arr -> $10m arr this year - 1st ML hire - ton of autonomy - Gen AI - $250k(flex) + strong equity - 3x full-stack - Series A (a16z) - HealthTech - $1m arr -> $4m arr this year - $180k - $220k + strong equity - Incredible founders - meaningful work - BE (Data + MLops) - Seed - "Deploying AI to eliminate the trillion dollar waste in healthcare admin work" - $200k - $250k + strong equity - Early engineer - bootstrapped Prop trading firm - $10m profit year 1 - $400k+ TC - Early Engineer - Seed (OpenAI backed) - $200k + strong equity - AI Infra SF Ops: - AI Eng/ Infra/ Platform / BE / Fullstack - Hiring across the board - Series A (Sequoia) - $200k - $300k + equity - AI for Eng - Incredible team and founders - Sr. FS - Series A - Web3 - $200k + equity - Team/Founders w/ previous exits - Product Lead - Series B ($60m) - Gen AI - $220k+ Strong equity LA Ops: - Sr. FS - Seed (raising series A) - AI - Core team of startup veterans - $200k+ equity - Beautiful office in Venice Beach Remote: - Principal Eng - Series A - AI Security - $250k - $300k + equity - AI BE - Seed/Series A (Open AI backed) - AI Productivity - $200k+ equity If interested in learning more - shoot me a message here or feel free to reach out to anyone you are connected with at Coastal. 🌊

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