Welcoming the first Catalyst NYC Cohort

We are extremely excited to announce our first cohort of the Catalyst NYC program at the NYU Tandon Future Labs!

For almost a decade, the Future Labs has supported New York’s startup ecosystem through our 95 graduate companies — CB Insights, Clarifai, Spruce, TapCommerce, Vettery, to name a few — and events, like Flash Pitch, Focus, and our annual AI Summit. However, there was still more we could do to support entrepreneurs in New York City. We wanted to use the immense network of benefits at the Future Labs to support companies that may already have their own office space, are involved in other complimentary programs, or cannot move into our space; so we introduced Catalyst NYC.

The benefits of Catalyst include: access to top tier credits from partners (ie. AWS, GCP, and others), compute power from Paperspace, pro-bono billable legal office hours from our partners at Orrick, access to the NYU student talent network, NYU Tandon Faculty Engineers in Residence, pre-qualification for StartupNY, and two free desks at either the Digital or Data Future Lab. We are providing this at no cost because we understand that a healthy startup ecosystem that supports pre-seed to seed companies is good for everyone.

Upon closing the application process, we were humbled by the overwhelming interest and quality of the applicants. The decisions that led us to our final 7 companies were not easy, but we are honored to have a group of companies that we believe are poised to accomplish great things and help affect the future of technology. Before we share the cohort list, we want to thank all the companies that took the time to apply for the program.

Omnirisk
Omnirisk operates at the intersection of self-driving trucks and insurance. We assess risk of commercial vehicles and their components in an era of rapidly evolving autonomous driving technologies.

Founders: Mike Dorfman & Ian White

Why I’m excited about Omnirisk;

As Autonomous Driving Technology evolves and becomes mainstream, there will be dramatic changes in the way we do risk management and assessment. Insurance will look and act completely different and Omnirisk has the technical ability and vision to lead the charge.

— Craig Wilson

Scite.ai
Scite utilizes machine learning and a network of researchers to identify the veracity of scientific work and scientists.

Founder: Josh Nicholson

Why I’m excited about Scite;

Scientific research papers are riddled with false, unverified claims and for decades reproducibility studies had little interest and no platform to refute claims. Scite represents a new paradigm for research validation, one where there is reliability in research and a trustworthiness in translating that research to real world applications.

— Steve Kuyan

Skopos Labs
Skopos Labs has built an AI software platform that turns unstructured data into accurate predictions of risk and opportunity for companies and financial markets. The team — including computer scientists, data scientists, former Capitol Hill staff, and former partners at large law firms — is advancing the state-of-the-art for automatically forecasting events and their impacts.

Founder: John Nay

Why I’m excited about Skopos Labs;

Research and risk modeling with government legislation has long been a time-consuming, laborious process. Skopos parses both public and proprietary datasets to help predict legislative and regulatory impacts across sectors. Unlike preexisting attempts at this, Skopos has the right team and knowhow to build a truly paradigm shifting tool. I easily see their software becoming a must-own product for any industry monitoring political risk, including and especially finance.

— Teal Willingham

LandWright
LandWright is creating a commercial real estate securities marketplace, bringing a new form of equity financing to real estate owners and access to individuals priced out of the market.

Founder: Jonathan Awad

Why I’m excited about Landwright;

Today we live in a world where access is everything. Access to information is common but access to opportunity is still rare. The prospect of democratizing access to an asset class like commercial real estate, which has traditionally been an investment ascribed to the Uber rich, is a venture which can change the fortunes and future of many. LandWright’s ability to bring both accredited and non-accredited investors into the market something that excites us.

— Mina Salib

Ursa
Ursa brings context, efficiency, and actionability to your meeting notes by recording your notes and conversations side by side, syncing your captured content, and letting you search and share key moments from meetings.

Founder: Gabriel Ruttner (CEO) & Vince Wong (COO)

Why I’m excited about Ursa;

Ursa’s AI technology portends the ability to make us superhuman in the workplace. Live transcription and annotation of conversations to highlight the most useful and critical insights means never missing important details from meetings again. Ursa has huge implications for enhancing the efficiency of large teams and organisations, enhancing outcomes, and ultimately driving higher revenues.

— Teal Willingham

Cherrypick.ai
CherryPick.ai is the first-to-market solution to enable brands to drive sales directly from social media comments. By tracking consumer intent for every product SKU across an industry, the software platform provides deep, real-time product and customer-level insights and triggers social intent-based marketing actions to drive incremental revenue.

Founder: Justin Stewart & Melissa

Why I’m excited about Cherrypick;

The ability to analyze user behavior, and give brands the ability to interact with customers based on their own social feedback on a product or product level, allows brand’s to optimIze each outbound campaign whether it be through email or directly on social. Ultimately increasing brand engagement and customer loyalty across a brands line.

— Mina Salib

Trash TV
TRASH is building predictive video editing in real time, with a next gen stock video library and content platform.

Founder: Hannah Donovan & Anton Marini

Why I’m excited about Trash TV;

Content creation is democratizing. More people have access to smartphones and, therefore, a video camera. Making great content is hard. Trash is making it easy by using AI to help the next generation of content creators make better content quickly and easily.

— Craig Wilson

Our goal for Catalyst NYC is to give startups unique access to University, city, and state resources that have until now remained exclusive to companies from our other flagship programs.

Keep an eye out for this cohort’s progress and an opportunity to meet them at an event we will host to celebrate and conclude the program.

Lastly, if you’re interested in learning more about the program, how to get involved as an enterprise partner with our companies, or want to give back to the ecosystem as a mentor, email me at kuyan@nyu.edu and we’ll find a way for you to engage.

Steve Kuyan & the entire Future Labs team