Top Startups To Work For In New York

Categories: Workplaces

There’s something hard to resist about a startup narrative. Flashy, TV-ready startup stories are the stuff of the American dream: hard work and ingenuity can net you millions in no-time. Of course, it doesn’t always work out this way, and most startups fail horribly. (As many as 90% of startups crash and burn, according to a 2014 report from Fortune.) But that doesn’t make working at a startup any less alluring to most of us. After all, we’ve filled our heads with the rags-to-riches stories of the booming Internet: Facebook, Twitter, Pied Piper. It’s hard to shake the feeling that, “Maybe I could do that too.”

While we wouldn’t want to blindly advertise working at a startup as a smart career choice, there’s no denying that there’s a certain appeal and charm for millennials at these companies. And while they don’t always work out, startups can look great on a resume if you’re moving in the right direction.

With all that in mind we’ve compiled a short list of startups to work for in New York below.

Venmo is a quintessential startup, the type that offers a product that you never know you needed and making it essential immediately. The mobile payment platform might have gotten acquired by Paypal for almost a billion dollars in 2013, but it’s still boasts a self-operated and hip New York central office.
DWNLD is meant for media companies and brands, but its thrust is democratic: make mobile app-building accessible. After being founded by Alexandra Keating and Fritz Lanman in 2014, DWNLD has since received more than $10 million in an initial round of funding and, according to TechCrunch, has reportedly published more than 2,000 apps.
In the wake of runaway success stories like Uber, startups like Alfred are pushing the gig economy forward in even zanier ways. Alfred allows you to hire a temporary errand runner for a monthly fee, and after a first round of funding brought in more than $10 million last May, there’s obvious room for growth.
For non-tech folks (including this writer), MongoDB is a convoluted service used mostly by big companies. The New York-based tech startup began in 2007 as a company called 10gen before moving to an open source model and undergoing a name-change in 2013.
Zerve is sort of like OpenTable for events, and while the company has been around since 2003, they’ve maintained a startup air about them.