new-york-city
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The People You Call Before the Jackhammer Arrives
Burtis Consulting Group does the municipal work most people notice only when it goes wrong: translating construction plans into notices, meetings, permits, detours, and fewer nasty surprises.
The Agency That Learned to Turn Up the Right Kind of Noise
NOISE began with a six-second lesson about attention. It grew by turning that lesson into a full-service agency, a venture studio, and a culturally specific bet on the many meanings of Latin America.
The Cookie That Asked the Publicist to Stop
Nicholas & Lence sells a rare New York combination: the ability to make a story travel and the judgment to know when enough people have heard it.
WinIt Turned New York’s Orange Tickets Into a Legal-Tech Wedge
A photo of a parking ticket became the front door to a larger business: consumer disputes, attorney access and the software plumbing behind high-volume legal work. The clever part is not the app - it is how WinIt packaged delay, paperwork and uncertainty into a workflow people will pay to avoid.
Relay Cut the Apps Out of Delivery - Then New York Repriced the Ride
Relay gave restaurants a clever bargain: keep the customer, rent the courier. Its rise, acquisition and New York exit show both the power - and the hard limit - of unbundling food delivery.
FreshDirect Bet the Grocery Aisle Could Be Rebuilt as a Supply Chain
Long before grocery apps became ordinary, FreshDirect built a Bronx food machine that could taste a peach, portion a salmon and route both to a New York doorstep. Its next act is testing how far that tightly controlled system can open up without losing the quality that made it matter.
OUTFRONT Media
The billboard business used to sell rectangles by the roadside. OUTFRONT is turning those rectangles - and thousands of screens below the street - into a measurable, programmable media network built for the real world.
Century 21 Stores
Century 21 Stores is a New York City off-price fashion retailer, founded in 1961, known for selling designer and luxury apparel, footwear, handbags and accessories at deep discounts. After filing for bankruptcy and closing all 13 locations in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gindi family reacquired the brand and reopened its Financial District flagship at 22 Cortlandt Street in May 2023. Rebranded 'Century 21 NYC,' the retailer pairs its trademark 'treasure hunt' in-store experience with a growing e-commerce presence, live shopping and a TikTok Shop.
Daisy
Daisy is an AI-native property management company for condos, co-ops and HOAs, founded in 2020 in New York City. It replaces the manual workflows and patchwork of tools legacy managers rely on with a single platform that unifies building finances, maintenance requests, compliance, board decisions and resident communication. Pairing proactive human managers with automation and AI agents, Daisy manages more than 4,000 units across nearly 200 buildings in NYC and has begun expanding into New Jersey, with a stated goal of national and global reach by the end of the decade.
Orenda, Inc
Orenda, Inc is a Brooklyn-based renewable energy company that develops, builds, and operates standalone battery energy storage projects across densely populated Downstate New York. Founded in 2020, Orenda handles the full lifecycle - site diligence, permitting, interconnection, engineering, construction, financing, and ongoing asset management - and pairs it with an AI/ML software platform that forecasts energy prices and optimizes when its battery fleets charge and discharge. The company claims roughly a 34% market share in New York City with a development pipeline of about 920 MW / 2.7 GWh, and is co-developing roughly 675 MW of distributed storage with the New York Power Authority.
Runwise
Runwise is a New York-based smart-building company that retrofits aging heating, cooling, water, and electrical systems with proprietary wireless hardware, sensors, and cloud software. Its platform learns each building's behavior and automatically runs core systems at the minimum needed, cutting fuel use 20-25%, lowering carbon emissions, and helping owners comply with climate laws like NYC's Local Law 97. Used in over 10,000 buildings across the U.S., Runwise has saved customers more than $100 million in energy costs and positions itself as the operating system for buildings still running on 1960s technology.