Meet Catalyst NYC 2022

The Data Future Lab at NYU Tandon is immensely excited to welcome our newest cohort of Catalyst NYC. This is our no-cost/equity-free accelerator for pre-seed to seed startups offering access to our vast network of benefits that include pro-bono billable hours from Goodwin, AWS credits, NYU student talent, two free desks at our Downtown Brookly office, and more. We’re proud to see companies use these resources to succeed and scale or exit — commercial real estate securities platform Lex recently raised $15M Series A to take more buildings public; Edquity distributed $50M in emergency student aid in one quarter last year; CherryPick AI, the predictive intelligence platform for product development, was acquired, as was AI-powered video editing tool TRASH.

To all the founders who applied to the program: Thank you. We love meeting new companies and we are consistently blown away by the talent out there. If you didn’t make it to this (very selective) cohort, please stay in touch so we can track your company updates and be ready for you when you’re ready for us.

In Catalyst NYC 2022, each of the companies is tackling a unique problem that’s moved into the spotlight due to the *unprecedented* events of the past few years. We have startups across a variety of verticals, from healthcare and web3 to metaverse and fintech, and they’re all poised to scale.

Avonya

The pandemic strained a range of industries, and movement instruction has been particularly badly hit. Online education may have become increasingly prevalent across a range of subjects over the years, but there hasn’t yet been an effective way to learn movement online. The usual TV-style tutorial just isn’t cutting it. Avonya brings dance- and movement-based learning into the digital world in a meaningful way, making it universal, and easily accessible. Using AI, the app guides users through any movement class while also helping artists easily create these digital lessons.

We have been tracking Avonya, founded by Sabina Sebastian, an experienced marketing executive, since 2021, and have seen the product evolve and its traction grow. With remote learning here to stay for the foreseeable future, we are bullish on Avonya’s prospects.

Arium

Arium is a web platform for artists and curators to create interactive live art experiences and connect with their communities in a shared social space. Cofounders Aidan Nelson and Dan Oved, who met as researchers at NYU, started building this platform for their own community of art lovers and artists to meet and hold art shows and events during the pandemic.

They soon found a wider need among digital artists to build engaging social experiences around art, and to develop sustainable ways of monetizing their work. In Arium, creators use a web-based editor to design unique 3D environments, showcase digital artwork and NFTs, and host interactive live events. Art lovers and collectors access installations, exhibitions, and performances directly from their web browser, connecting with the work — and each other — in an organic social environment using spatial audio and video.

Also exciting about Arium is the founder-market fit of Aidan and Dan, who have both worked in the international art community — Aidan helped set up interactive installations for artists such as Ai Wei Wei, and Dan collaborated with researchers from Google to build open-source libraries for creatives.

Deliberate AI

Deliberate AI is pioneering data-driven diagnostics and monitoring for mental healthcare and clinical trials. A pivotal problem in mental health is the subjective nature of assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients — instead of being able to take an X-ray, for example, clinicians and researchers must primarily depend on what patients report. This leads to higher rates of misdiagnosis, trial-and-error approaches to treatment, and the lowest FDA approval rates for new medications.

Deliberate’s multimodal machine learning platform enables the objective quantification of symptoms (using digital behavioral biomarkers such as prosody plus facial and eye movement) and measurement-based care. Its solutions empower clinicians to improve patient outcomes and enable better signal detection as well as better success rates for clinical trials.

In March 2020 when we first met, founder Marc Aafjes had a powerful idea. Fast forward almost 2 years, and he has transformed it into a great product with an equally great team. A 20+-year startup veteran, Marc has brought together an extremely experienced team with leading minds in data science and clinical psychology. We’re anticipating large-scale impact.

One Creation

Data privacy and governance have always been important, but with a rise in cyber attacks, corporations are fearful of giving institutions unfettered access to their data. This is where One Creation helps organizations overcome the sovereignty and governance barriers that impact data collection and distribution.​ The cybersecurity startup provides a secure, scalable, and transparent solution to remove the barriers to data use and eliminate data misuse, all while establishing the utmost trust across users.

We have been tracking One Creation for a few years now, and are impressed by the team founder/CEO Zohar Hod has assembled (which includes DFL alum Yang Cheung as CPO). Also impressive: One Creation’s traction in signing on large financial institutions as clients in a relatively short period of time.

​​SPIN Analytics

SPIN Analytics is growing quickly. Founder/CEO Panos Skliamis recently added to the board heavyweights Sue Harnett (Ex-senior exec of Citigroup) and Gautam Mukharya (Chief Risk Officer, for HSBC Singapore) while doubling the company’s customers.

SPIN Analytics has developed RISKROBOTTM to help banks industrialize credit risk modeling functions. It provides process automation for all the tasks of credit model development, from data cleansing and database integration to model development, validation, and documentation. Plus, it functions as a uniform platform for all modeling projects, so that files, data, code, and decisions are stored consistently. This makes it easy for management and credit risk experts to review decisions and allows the seamless transition of projects from one analyst to another.

Current clients include tier 1 banks and Fortune 500 organizations including Microsoft and Accenture. SPIN Analytics is expanding to the United States over the next few months, and we’re excited to be on this journey with them.

We’ll continue to highlight this cohort’s progress in our DFL newsletter, where you’ll also get updates on other programs and events. If you have questions about our programs, want to get involved as an enterprise partner, or are looking to give as a mentor, email us at hello@futurelabs.nyc.