As enterprise Seed investors in NYC, we keep a pulse on all of the new founders and startups entering the ecosystem (and track them in our Enterprise Weekly Newsletter). To highlight the breadth of this local early-stage enterprise ecosystem, we started an annual tradition of amplifying some of the youngest, top NYC enterprise startups to watch for the coming year (see past Seed lists from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019).
While we expect the frosty funding environment to continue this year, in challenging markets like these, we’re seeing a renewed focus on building the fundamentals, arguably forming a more sustainable crop of startups, ready to take on hypergrowth in the years to come.
See below for the top 11 NYC Enterprise Pre-Seed Startups to Watch in 2024:
Cake AI (Stealth) powers AI infrastructure with a curated suite of open-source components, ensuring comprehensive security from compute to pipelines, fine-tuning, and limitless scalability for training and inference. Investors include Primary Venture Partners. The founder, Misha Herscu sold his first startup, EnvoyAI, in 2018.
Data Ex Machina (Stealth) transforms cloud observability by integrating dynamic instrumentation with debugger-like interactivity, offering real-time insights for mission critical systems in production. Investors are undisclosed. The founders Andrew Werner and Andrei Matei were formerly engineers at Cockroach Labs*.
Kay.ai curates vast datasets into high-quality embedding APIs, enabling LLM-powered apps to efficiently retrieve context. Investors include Wing VC and South Park Commons. The founder, Achyut Joshi was previously at Relyance AI and Amazon where he worked as a data scientist.
Ellipsis empowers engineering teams with an all-in-one virtual teammate, handling everything from feature implementation to bug fixes and code reviews. They are currently in YC. The founders are Hunter Brooks and Nick Bradford, both hailing from the AI and Machine Learning world. Hunter was formerly a ML engineer at Amazon and Nick was formerly an engineering manager at Hyperscience.
Ethos AI is a tool that navigates AI ethics and compliance complexities, ensuring regulatory adherence while fostering innovation through responsible AI practices. Investors include Better Tomorrow Ventures and Capital One Ventures. The founders are Mike Fotinakis and Jett Oristaglio. Mike was formerly the founder and CEO of Percy, a visual testing company that was acquired by BrowerStack in 2020 and Jett worked at DataRobot as their Data Science and Product Lead for Trusted AI.
Dealops (Stealth) optimizes B2B deal pricing, combining historical CRM data and finance rules to help sales reps price deals 10x faster while curbing over-discounting. Investors include General Catalyst, Allison Pickens, and 20SALES. The founders are Spyri Karasavva and Fay Wu. Spyri formally led Growth at Stytch and Product, Finance and Strategy at Stripe, and Fay was a Senior Software Engineer at Notion and Stripe.
Moonshot AI is a no-code solution focusing on building AI-driven conversion rate optimization for ecommerce. Their investors include Oceans Ventures, Garuda Ventures, and Almaz Capital. The founders are Aviv Frenkel and Evyatar Segal. Aviv was previously the co-founder and CEO of a mobility company and Evyatar was one of the first employees at Via and led their first development team.
MobyTrade offers electronic billing documentation and workflow process management for the shipping container industry. Investors include Nextview Ventures. The founders are Jeb Pierce and Jose Rivera. Jeb was previously the VP of Revenue at Billy and Jose, VP of Engineering at New York Shipping Exchange.
M7 Health informs nursing workforce management, equipping health systems with data and tools to optimize individual nurses' work-life balance. Investors include 25madison and January Ventures. The founders are Ilana Springer Borkenstein and Eric Gruskin. Ilana was formerly a registered nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Eric, a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group.
Narrative automates compliance and operational workflows with the power of AI, empowering teams to focus on growing their business. Co-founded by Gokul Dhingra, a former head of product at Ethos Life, investment banker and investor, and Jeff Silver, a lawyer and compliance leader who worked at PayPal, Capchase, and Lending Club, its investors include Blank Ventures, Slow Ventures, Sunflower Capital and 20SALES.
Peerbound is an AI-powered customer voice platform that harnesses, analyzes, and amplifies the voices of customers. Investors include Bling Capital, m]x[v Capital, Forum Ventures, and others. The founder is Sunny Manivannan who was previously the SVP of Global SMB at Braze.
*Work-Bench portfolio company.
If you’re an early-stage enterprise founder — connect with us directly to chat about anything GTM or fundraising and check out our events page to stay in the loop on all things happening in the Work-Bench community.
