Companies to Watch - February 2020

Five New York Companies That Are Helping New York

February 21, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Five New York Companies That Are Helping New York

There are a lot of ways tech companies can (and have!) contributed to the city’s fabric, and the five startups we’re spotlighting in this month’s Companies to Watch are perfect examples. Whether it’s to support solutions on public transit, energy efficiency, housing infrastructure, or emergency response, NYC is home to a flourishing sector of companies that are making the business case for being more civically engaged.Figuring out how a city as complex as New York functions — and how best to get involved — can feel daunting, but also incredibly gratifying. To that end, we’re excited to launch the next season of Functions.NYC, a series we piloted with our members last year. Functions.NYC is a series of roundtable dialogues open to all employees of Tech:NYC member companies to talk with the civic and government leaders who really know what it takes to do just that — make a place like NYC function. Learn more about the discussions we have planned in the coming months, and sign up to get more updates directly, here.Until then, here’s five companies making a real difference here in NYC and across the country. Get a peek at their work below, and read more about them here. 

Stae

What does your company do?Stae CEO Dan Barasch: Stae is a modern data toolkit for local government leaders.What is one of the most common problems that cities are trying to resolve with the help of Stae’s platform?DB: Cities and local governments are increasingly challenged by making sense of new sources of data — from private vendors operating in the public realm to new data sensors on buildings, buses, and even streetscape features. As cities increasingly move to new "smart city" technologies, they increasingly need more sophisticated ways to make sense of all that new data. 

 

Blueprint PowerWhat does your company do?Blueprint Power co-founder and CEO Robyn Beavers: Blueprint’s platform uses advanced data analytics to help buildings cut carbon, while generating revenues from onsite renewable, distributed energy. As a result, we are helping buildings to become active participants in the power grid and we are lighting up new distributed energy networks city by city. You led Google’s first environmental strategy group. How has cleantech evolved since then? What best lessons did you take from that into founding Blueprint?RB: When I first began in this industry, we saw pockets of innovation across sectors and geographies. The nascent clean energy industry was still figuring itself out, experiencing some major ups and down, and in many cases, was still in a commercialization phase that lacked scalability or more importantly, organized and focused capital needed to grow solutions into widespread integrated programs. In 2020, what has changed is that there is more capital and interest across all sectors of the economy. We are encouraged by similar cross-cutting trends in federal, state, and local regulatory activity (although always much more work to do there). We hope that this is the case on many levels — most of which, our planet doesn’t have time for us to delay. 

 

 

BlocPowerWhat does your company do?BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird: BlocPower is a platform to analyze and finance energy upgrades in 5 million U.S. buildings. Right now, in partnership with Con Edison and the New York State government, we are working to remove apartment buildings in the Bronx entirely off of fossil fuels.Your platform is specifically working to retrofit buildings in inner cities. Why are you focused on that environment?   DB: Buildings cause 67% of NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions. Underserved buildings and affluent buildings waste the most energy per square foot. Affluent buildings have the capital to reduce fossil fuel consumption, underserved buildings don’t. There’s a significant white space serving neglected urban buildings, and we are filling it. 

 

Near Space LabsWhat does your company do?Near Space Labs co-founder and CEO Hripsime Rema Matevosyan: Near Space Labs delivers affordable and large scale imagery, that is both highly detailed and frequently updated. We provide actionable intelligence to decision makers in businesses and municipalities where and when it matters.What sorts of partnerships has Near Space had with municipalities? How are they using your data to inform policy decisions they may be working on?HRM: Our imagery product can help municipalities track the status of urban infrastructure, including roads, coastal barriers, etc.; provide real-time and actionable insights for efficient emergency response; help public works departments track progress of their projects all across the city; and many others. All this with one single product, that is able to provide city-wide data and insights.

 

SimpleSenseWhat does your company do?SimpleSense co-founder and CEO Eric Kanagy: Each workday, 7,000 U.S. employees experience an emergency at work, and 597 die. The time it takes first responders to reach victims is the most significant factor in this life & death situation, made worse by an antiquated 911 system. SimpleSense solves this problem and saves lives. We integrate data from 911 into corporate and military security operations, enabling the transfer of critical information that saves precious time per incident.Is IoT technology, like keyless entry, creating new obstacles for first responders to respond to emergencies?EK: Absolutely! We started in the IoT space and while IoT promises and is making progress towards connecting everything, we learned early on through conversations with firefighters and police that emergency response has seen little improvement. It’s super frustrating for first responders to know that critical data exists in a web service or database somewhere but can’t be accessed at a critical time. So this became our mission — to connect the world’s critical information in the pursuit of saving lives. 

 

Join Us

If you’ve been thinking about joining Tech:NYC as a member, now’s the time.

, and let us know if you have any questions.

All illustrations by