Rho

The Rho Ice Cream Truck has been visiting startups all week long for TECH WEEK by a16z. Today, we made a stop by our friends at Justworks! We'll be making a few more stops tomorrow to round out an exciting week of meetups and meaningful connections. To all who celebrate, happy NY Tech Week! ❤️ 🗽 Great seeing you Brian Lo & Arthur Shalagin!

Startup founders have unprecedented access to capital and support. So, how can a venture community stand out? 🤔 I interviewed Matthew Harrigan on the Rho NY Seed Round pod to find out. Company Ventures has always had a crystal-clear perspective on the question. You need four things: 1. Capital, but as companies NEED IT vs. at the beginning of the relationship. 2. Community. Surrounding yourself with other impressive builders can be game-changing. 3. Space. This is critical, especially in NYC where commercial rent prices are high. 4. Principles. My full interview with Matt is a goldmine of insights for founders and investors. Linked it below in the comments for easy viewing!

Last week, we announced a new partnership with our friends at Navan To celebrate, the Rho Ice Cream Truck added a special stop to our Tech Week route📍 Rho'ers handed out LOTS of ice cream (pup cups, included). Want the Rho Ice Cream Truck to visit your startup? Comment below! We’ll be driving around tomorrow and Friday. And we might stop by!

At Rho, we believe in NYC's tech ecosystem. ❤️ 🗽 We figured- what better way to support than co-hosting a legendary night with Andrew Yeung. Don't miss live music, interactive games, and top-tier entertainment- all with a stellar community of founders, investors, and operators.

Last night was so much fun as we kicked off New York Tech Week with a killer AI Demo Day!! We showcased 8 incredible early stage AI startups who honestly blew us all away. Here they are - the 8 AI startups to watch - the 2 honorable mentions - and the 1 who won the grand prize of a $50k investment from Next Wave NYC! <<8 AI Startups to Watch>> + Jammy combines AI-driven personal coaching with tailored music recommendations to enhance social connectivity among Gen Z + Glist makes transportation management & policy planning seamless, by delivering digestible roadway data and accurate predictive analytics leveraging artificial intelligence advancements + Rosette Health delivers an AI-enhanced patient engagement platform for maternity featuring human-in-the-loop oversight, reducing costs by educating patients on their health, minimizing expensive procedures, and serving as a digital safeguard - Gülin Yilmaz (Posokhow) + Path is an AI-powered career mentor and skills trainer designed to help individuals navigate the rapidly changing education to employment pipeline + Workplace AI (by Soar.com) is “Game film” for managers, leaders, sales, customer support, and knowledge workers - a collective of AI-driven Performance IP to give employees rapid feedback, insights, and actions to improve business outcomes + Abood Hannoon's Odyssey is building the AI and compute infrastructure for space starting with AI for GEOINT and scaling to orbit from there. Aka custom vertically-integrated space supercomputers + DeepLeads.ai is building superhuman AI to automate B2B sales + CAPSULE is Shazam for shopping – our cutting-edge vision AI outperforms visual search giants like Google and Pinterest and enables our users to go from inspo to purchase in under a minute <<Two Honorable Mentions>> + pre.dev is your product management co-pilot - a platform to instantly translate product ideas into full project plans including - Software Architecture, Tech Stack, Statement of Work, Infinite Depth Development Plan, and UI Wireframes + In The Loop helps resellers automate the tedious process of identifying and listing used items for sale on secondhand marketplaces. Our proprietary tech reduces the time it takes for resellers to get an item listed by > 90% <<and the winner of the night, earning a $50k investment from Next Wave NYC>> CAPSULE! The image recognition app makes it easy for anyone find and buy a piece of clothing based on a photo - and also makes it possible for brands to advertise based on visual likeness. The product-market and founder-market fit are strong and we're extremely excited for them. Thank you to my fabulous co-host Shriya Nevatia and all the co-organizers: Andrew Chang / Lynx Collective, Jesse Middleton / Celestine Maddy / Daniel Porras Reyes / Cherae Robinson / Next Wave NYC and Amber Illig / The Council! Thank you as well to our amazing sponsor, Rho & Justin Wolz. And thank you to the gorgeous Civic Hall with views for days. Thank you James Dunn!

We are excited to announce that Eric Woersching, CFA has joined Rho’s Board of Directors as an independent director. A respected advisor to startups and public companies, Woersching will support Rho as the company transitions into its next stage of growth. Some notable highlights on his background: • Board member and chair of the audit committee at Palantir Technologies since 2022. • Led corporate development at EasyPost and served as a General Partner at Initialized Capital. • Former portfolio manager and head trader at Peter Thiel’s macro funds, Thiel Macro and Clarium Capital, from 2008 to 2016. Read more about the news today: https://lnkd.in/eh56ZcNF

Something sweet just hit the streets. We're ushering in a Summer of Rho with our ice cream truck at NY Tech Week's hottest events. Catch the truck for an exclusive offer for startups. 👀

Our TECH WEEK by a16z is off to an incredible start at Humming Puppy this morning. 🍶 Rho's Justin Wolz and Kaila J. Lim of Antler kicked off our Slow-Start Soundbath with connection, centering yoga, and of course- tea. With a jam-packed week ahead, it was a great opportunity for guests to take a much-needed breath, meet like-minded founders, and prep their minds and bodies for the week ahead. Stay tuned!

NY TECH WEEK by a16z starts THIS WEEK we have a fourth and final NYC Expedition winner to celebrate! Congratulations Alyona Mysko! 🎉 Alyona and her team are building Fuelfinance, a financial management solution that empowers SMEs to track their financial health, all with the power of AI and built-in CFO consultants. They launched from a bomb shelter after war broke in the Ukraine, saved their team, and grew to $1M ARR in less than one year. Alyona, Rho and Andrew Yeung can't wait to sponsor your trip to the city and show why we're so bullish about NYC's ecosystem. Stay tuned for more with our NYC Expedition winners! 👀

With NY TECH WEEK by a16z right around the corner, we're proud to announce our THIRD NYC Expedition winner! Congratulations Anand V Lalwani! 🙌 Anand and his team are building Cardinal Robotics, a team of PhDs, MBAs, and robotic experts creating cutting-edge robotic disinfection solutions. Their robots-as-a-service cover the entire deployment lifecycle, from scheduling to maintenance and more. Anand, the Rho team and Andrew Yeung can't wait to sponsor your trip and pull back the curtain on what NYC has to offer!