We’re thrilled that the 2020 Inc. 5000 included alum from five ERA companies. Here they are:
- CardFlight (W’12) Derek Webster
- ettitude (S’18) Phoebe Yu
- Fund That Flip (S’15) Matt Rodak
- Negotiatus (W’16) Zach Garippa
- TripleLift (W’12) Eric Berry
New York—July 21, 2020—Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) today announced that it has selected its Summer 2020 class, which begins today. The companies selected to participate in the four-month program are innovating in a variety of significant industries, all with businesses ready to take advantage of ERA’s platform and the broader New York City opportunity.
This is the Accelerator’s 19th program. ERA’s initial investment in participant companies is $100,000.
Aires Medical is a medical device company that makes oxygen and ventilation devices for COPD patients. Our miniaturized, lightweight respirator has a long-life battery and is the only portable ventilator that produces its own oxygen. We improve the quality of life for people with respiratory disease, untethering them from breathing equipment that keeps them homebound.
Alaffia is a SaaS platform that automates health insurance claim audits. The combination of our technology and intuitive dashboard helps medical providers reduce billing errors and lets auditors instantly detect improper payments. We replace slow, inefficient, and manual processes with real-time detection, review, and reporting.
Caire is a DTC skincare and supplements brand for women 40+. The Caire Lab makes scientifically advanced formulations and delivery systems to address specific life events including menopause, aging, and critical health challenges. We bring the science of prestige and physician branded products directly to any woman for under $50.
ChalkTalk is an online platform for teacher-led classroom instruction. We turn K-12 Math and English Language Arts curricula into instructional materials, group activities, and practice exercises adapted to match individual student needs. We free teachers from lesson planning, creating teaching materials, assignments, grading, state standards reporting, and assessments, leaving more time for meaningful teacher-student interactions.
Cquence is a data-driven video editing platform. Our software makes it simple to ingest, search, and edit high-quality video, with no editing experience required. We transform how companies create and collaborate across their video editing workflows and enable editors to be more productive.
Flourish Savings is a digital engagement platform for financial institutions. We make it easy for banks, credit unions, lenders and others to implement digital solutions that attract consumers new to financial services and drive meaningful financial actions. Our system enables our customers to drive new deposits, deepen relationships, and increase revenue.
Masonry is a property management software platform. We’re starting with an automated resident portal with contactless rent collection and maintenance management that directly integrates with existing enterprise systems. We give real estate operators increased efficiencies, lower risk, and streamlined operations, and enhance the resident experience.
Mosaic is project and business management software for companies that bill time. Our platform automates time tracking, budgeting, scheduling, and staffing to make running companies easier and less stressful. Mosaic helps owners better understand their business and their work through project data, giving them full visibility into their operations.
OLIMP is a platform for on-demand warehousing solutions. Our software connects carriers and warehouses in real time for short-term service. We make it easy and cost-effective to post, find, book, and pay for services including storage as short as one day and loads as small as one pallet.
StartSure is a software platform that provides small business insurance. We have simplified the process for reviewing and purchasing affordable, comprehensive office insurance with just a few clicks. Customers instantly get quotes that are transparent and meet landlord requirements, and are then offered additional coverages to address any other needs.
Virtuleap is a virtual reality brain training app company. Our first product is Enhance, a library of neuroscience-based games to help increase attention levels and address cognitive illnesses, disorders, and learning challenges. Our integrated data dashboard allows caregivers, educators, and organizations to monitor and manage patient cognitive engagement and performance.
About Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA)
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) is New York City’s leading technology accelerator and early-stage venture capital fund. It has invested in 215+ start-ups since launching in 2011. Its alumni companies, who come from all over the world, are already playing leading roles in the evolution of virtually every major global industry. To date, ERA alumni companies have raised more than $500 million in capital and collectively exceed $2.5 billion in market capitalization.
These past few months have been a time of crisis for our New York community and our country. The senseless killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, along with too many Black Americans before them, have only highlighted racist attitudes and institutional racism that have plagued us as a country for far too long. As a melting-pot community of founders that has always valued inclusiveness and diversity, we condemn racism and injustice in all their forms. Such beliefs go against the core values of ERA and have no place in our community. We have always sought to create a platform and community where all founders have access to the resources and support they need to build their dreams. We reaffirm that commitment and vow to make sure it applies to founders of all backgrounds, especially those who have been historically underrepresented in venture capital funding. We believe entrepreneurship has never been more important as a way to expand economic mobility and opportunity and will do our part to make sure these opportunities are available to all. For us, this will include expanding outreach to these underrepresented communities and to organizations committed to similar goals as a first step. We are also making donations to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Education Fund, Digital Undivided, and The Hidden Genius Project to support their respective efforts in furthering equality, justice, and economic opportunity.
Our companies are working hard to meet the challenges of COVID-19. From telemedicine and wellness to takeout and home goods to purchasing and sales, our companies have created both free resources and special offers. We will update this list as new resources/offers become available. Latest update: August 21.
Bespoke Post is buying $20,000,000 of products from emerging brands and small manufacturers over the next 12 months to help their fellow small business community get through the COVID-19 crisis. Brands & manufacturers can learn more here.
Bikky has launched Project Quarantine, an initiative where diners can directly support local restaurants by ordering takeout + delivery, commission-free. Learn more here.
Bonbouton is offering its breathable, reusable graphene masks and graphene-coated filter replacements at 13% off. Use code ERANYC13. Learn more here.
CardFlight has created “Small Business Impact Report,” which monitors the impact of social distancing restrictions on small businesses using real-time transaction data from its customer base. Lean more here.
CaterCow is raising funds to donate meals to hospitals from their restaurant partners, who receive 100% of the proceeds. Learn more here.
Confetti is offering a collection of Virtual Team Building experiences (starting at $20) including games, workshops, and activities to help your team stay bonded remotely. Learn more here.
ettitude, a sustainable lifestyle brand offering home essentials, is offering 15% off sitewide to make staying home more comfortable. Use code ERANYC15. Learn more here.
HighSide is offering its ultra-secure team collaboration platform free of charge until September 1, 2020 to help organizations make a secure transition to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Learn more here.
HoneyFlower Foods has partnered with World Central Kitchen, City Harvest NYC, Rethink FoodNYC, Hook Hall DC, and HNGRY to produce and deliver 30,000 meals per week to hosptial workers, hungry children, families, and communities impacted by COVID-19. Learn more here.
Hyro is offering a complimentary chatbot/voice assistant for healthcare organizations/government agencies that can answer FAQs regarding COVID-19 as well as assist with initial diagnostics. Learn more here.
iSharingSoft has launched a live tracker that provides updates on the latest COVID-19 cases around the world. Learn more here.
Iterate Labs has launched a real-time location awareness and contact tracing platform, which offers core OSHA response measures. Learn more here.
KidzToPros is offering a 20% discount on their live, online programs in STEM, arts, and sports for kids in grades K through 8. Programs are taught in real-time by expert instructors to groups of no more than 10 students. Use code ERA20P. Learn more here.
Lately is offering a 70% annual subscription discount to automatically turn videos into droves of AI-generated social posts– proven to increase clicks by 245%, engagement by 12,000% and convert sales at a rate of 87%. Use code ERA. Learn more here.
LVRG has partnered with Project N95 to launch a PPE marketplace for healthcare and frontline workers selling medical equipment sourced and purchased from vetted suppliers. Learn more here.
Mastermind is offering 30 days of unlimited access to their AI Assistant that saves software developers and team managers at least 45 minutes a day by automating repetitive tasks, improving team productivity while working remotely. Learn more here.
MyWellbeing has created a list of coronavirus-specific offerings from their community of therapists and mental health providers, and all of the clinicians they work with are now available for remote therapy. Learn more here.
Navimize is offering a 10% discount on their virtual waiting room platform. Learn more here.
Nayya is offering remote open enrollment software and decision support, as well as doctor navigation tools. Use code ERACARES. Learn more here.
Negotiatus is offering two months’ free access to their purchase/pay platform to help businesses source hard-to-find cleaning/sanitizing products (at reasonable prices) and get set up at home with WFH essentials. Learn more here.
Pawlicy Advisor has partnered with veterinarians to create a pet parents guide to keeping your pet happy and healthy during COVID-19. Learn more here.
Polymer created Corona Guide, a high-quality searchable resource for important topics regarding safety, latest COVID-19 research, giving and finding help for businesses, medical communities, and families. Learn more here.
Popwallet is offering complimentary deployment services through August 2020 for businesses that want to enable safe, contactless mobile wallet consumer experiences for coupons, loyalty and gift cards, identification, tickets, and more. Learn more here.
ProdPerfect is offering 25% off data-driven autonomous E2E testing for web software teams that suddenly need to do more with less. Learn more here.
Recapped is offering non-profit teams six months of free service to easily collaborate with clients, consolidate communications in a single place, and create transparency on partnerships and projects. Learn more here.
Rockerbox has created “COVID-19: Updates & Analyses on DTC Performance.” They’re monitoring the impact of the coronavirus on DTC brands and are updating daily. Learn more here.
Scopio is offering a 90% discount on a 12 month unlimited image subscription for their library of authentic photos sourced directly from photographers in 160 countries. Redeem by 1/1/2021; use code ERAFAM. Learn more here.
Soundmind is offering free access to their secure care portal for one month, plus a free fully configured, video-enabled Alexa device to send to isolated older adults for simple, instant, voice-activated video calling. Use code ERANYC16. Learn more here.
SquareFoot is offering a variety of flexible options for new and existing clients on potential solutions for cutting real estate spend, and for businesses not ready to sign a long-term lease in the face of uncertainty. Learn more here.
Stix has launched “The Sanity Series,” a series of virtual events to help women through this time. Learn more here.
Tembo Health, a telemedicine practice that partners with nursing homes to provide residents with hard-to-access specialties like psychiatry and cardiology, is offering several COVID-19 initiatives to allow nursing home residents to stay connected, safe, and healthy. Learn more here.
Thirty Madison has launched Thirty Madison Urgent Care, a pay-what-you-can online urgent care that’s treating common conditions from the safety of home while reducing the strain on ER resources. It will remain open for as long as it’s needed. Learn more here.
TripleLift is partnering with World Central Kitchen to feed COVID-19 relief workers. Every client meeting during the month of April will unlock three meals for healthcare workers on the frontlines. Learn more here.
TWOSENSE.AI is offering free continuous authentication to improve remote employee security against cyberattacks with a better work-from-home experience through July 2020. Learn more here.
VOIQ is offering government officials, health, and senior care organizations free use of their AI VoiceBot Call Platform, to reach out to COVID-19 impacted communities to ask critical questions to help detect new cases, provide up-to-date safety information, and refer community members to nearby healthcare services. Learn more here.
Welnys is offering affordable, comprehensive return to work services including temperature taking, COVID testing, and antibody testing. Learn more here.
If you’re concerned it will be harder to recruit participants for in-person studies in the current environment, remote sessions can be a great way to mitigate any lost research. Additionally, remote research sessions tend to have higher fill rates, lower no-show rates, and require lower incentives. We LOVE remote research if it’s a viable option for you, and even if it isn’t your typical go-to, there’s no time like the present to give it the old college try.
This has been one of our sleeper hit episodes of Awkward Silences. Sonya Badigian has years of remote dominant research experience. Listen or read her top tips for making remote sessions as successful as possible.
In this article, Ritika Puri, also experienced in remote user interviews, offers three simple tips to make remote research effective.
A hallmark of remote user research is video conferencing software. Here we share our top pick for remote research. For more user research tools to round out your remote tech stack, check out our in-depth resource on user research tools, or our user research tools map.
When you cut commute time, the inconvenience of actually going somewhere, fighting traffic, or now, braving the potentially scary world of humans and germs, you’re fundamentally asking less of your participants, all things being equal. And asking less means you can pay less. You may be able to do more research in less time for less money. Turn those lemons into lemonade. Check out our incentives guide for specific guidance on how much to incentivize, depending on who you are recruiting, and how long your test is.
If you or your team are new to working remotely, don’t feel like you need to start from scratch. As remote becomes more and more popular, there are better and better tools, frameworks, advice to make it work well for every kind of team.
When you’re shipping product, not all user stories, requirements, what have you, are created equal. When it comes to working remotely, make sure your base needs are covered, and work your way up the pyramid of needs. If you’re new to remote work, don’t expect to find self actualization on your first day. Do expect to enjoy not commuting.
Remote work isn’t all ponies and rainbows all the time for everybody. Here we get real about the best and worst parts of remote work. Depending on how long you’re working remote, you may experience a large or small number of these, but we hope this will give you a sense of what you can expect.
Nearly a year ago we penned v1 of our culture handbook. Since we’re a fully remote company, remote work plays prominently in our culture. Here, among other things, we talk about how we make remote an asset to our culture, with tips you can steal on communication, and being effective.
We don’t claim to be the very foremost experts on remote work yet. Here are a few excellent resources on remote work to peruse as well.
While we hope life returns to “normal” as soon as possible, we’re also bullish on people, teams, and organizations getting a positive taste of the benefits of remote research and work, and maybe wanting to hold onto some of that more permanently. Put those hours of commuting into your work, family, or self. Turn those carbon emissions into…. fewer carbon emissions. Get more done. Live your best life.
Brian Cohen, champion of NYC tech, entrepreneur, angel investor, and author, was honored with the first ER Community Award on January 22, 2020. We’re fortunate that he’s been part of the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Community since we began hosting events in 2007.
As Founding Partner, New York Venture Partners and Chairman Emeritus, New York Angels, Brian’s impact on NYC tech is extensive. He’s a lifelong New Yorker who has championed startups and entrepreneurship, guiding young startups and helping them to understand the complexities of building venture businesses.
Nearly 100 attendees mingled and shared stories of Brian’s insights, expertise, and endless energy. Our host, Hollie Haggans, DigitalOcean’s Global Partnerships head, opened the evening. After a welcome from Murat and Jon, Murat MC’d the evening. Speakers honoring Brian included Owen Davis, Partner at Contour Ventures Partners, who delivered remarks about Brian’s many contributions to NYC tech; Comixology’s David Steinberger, who reflected on the immense value of receiving investment from Brian; and David Rose, Founder of New York Angels who provided a history of New York tech all the way from New Amsterdam to Brian Cohen. Murat and Brian closed the evening with a Q&A, followed by the presentation of the award.
New York—January 13, 2020—Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) today announced that it has selected its Winter 2020 class, which begins today. The companies selected to participate in the four-month program are innovating in a variety of significant industries, all with businesses ready to take advantage of ERA’s platform and the broader New York City opportunity.
This is the Accelerator’s 18th program. ERA’s initial investment in participant companies is $100,000.
ArtistOnGo is a marketplace that allows wellness and beauty artists to rent unutilized spaces in premium salons by the hour and work directly with their clients anytime, anywhere. Clients pay less, artists make more, and salons monetize unutilized capacity.
Coinapoly is an alternative asset management platform for fractional real estate ownership in global markets including India. Our technology simplifies granular real estate investing with our app to buy, sell, and manage properties. We deliver a better ROI by managing risk through transparency and liquidity.
FieldCLIX is a SaaS platform for wireless infrastructure installation projects. We help customers manage complex workflows for 5G buildouts and allow them to collaborate in real-time on project planning, field resource management, cost tracking, and more. FieldCLIX maximizes field productivity, improves project profitability, and helps accelerate infrastructure buildouts across the wireless industry.
Hailify is a mobility data company for rideshare drivers and fleets. Our proprietary data intelligence and infrastructure technology helps customers optimize utilization and identify high-demand pickup locations, and allows us to offer affordable rideshare insurance to customers. Hailify increases efficiency, improves logistics, and boosts revenue for customers.
Hazel is a personal care brand for women aged 50+. Starting with incontinence, we are reengineering disposable underwear – designing for fit, comfort, and style. We provide women a new option for buying and wearing underwear that is discreet, fashionable, and functional.
Mouth Off Health is a consumer wellness brand. Our first product is a dissolving gum that eliminates bad breath for up to four hours. We are innovating in how active ingredients are delivered with products that are convenient, environmentally friendly, and have superior efficacy.
Nayya is a software platform that enables insurance companies to better understand their customers. Using data science and machine learning, we allow insurers to more easily develop and customize new products while also identifying the right customer segments to sell them to.
Parento is an insurance agency that obtains and sells a proprietary insurance product for company-paid maternity and paternity leave policies. Our policies cover payroll expenses to let employers offer employees 100% of their salary from the day they begin their leave for up to 16 weeks. We help most employers offer paid leave and provide cost certainty, risk management, and parental leave administration.
RillaVoice is voice recognition software that captures insights from conversations shoppers have with salespeople in retail stores. Using our AI technology, RillaVoice analyzes conversations collected using lapel mics to better understand the store experience, demographics, conversion, and more. We give brick-and-mortar merchants a new way to analyze customer behavior that’s secure, compliant, and anonymous.
Salusion is a financial services platform for health savings accounts (HSA). We advance HSA contributions to households with eligible health plans. Salusion allows people who are financially unable to contribute to their HSA deduct their medical expenses saving a family of four an average of $700 per year.
Spotter is a software company for the long-haul trucking industry. Our AI model selects loads based on criteria including rate, schedule, and fuel costs to automatically find the best shipments for fleet owners and provide drivers with pickup and dropoff instructions. We help carriers reduce costs by automating repetitive tasks and increase revenue by improving load selection.
Top Corp is a SaaS company for brands to acquire opt-in data. Our technology lets brands collect privacy-compliant, first-party data via Topvote, our consumer engagement platform. Topvote uses branded incentives and rewards to run voting competitions in real-time across all channels, resulting in up to 5X increase in advertising engagement.
Undock is a SaaS platform for scheduling, coordinating, and hosting meetings. Our AI model automatically discovers the ideal meeting time for participants by comparing availability, preferences, and behavior. Undock makes meetings sharable and searchable, giving teams a single place for collaborative agendas, notes, and built-in conferencing.
About Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA)
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) is New York City’s leading technology accelerator and early-stage venture capital fund. It has invested in more than 200 start-ups since launching in 2011. Its alumni companies, who come from all over the world, are already playing leading roles in the evolution of virtually every major global industry. To date, ERA alumni companies have raised more than $500 million in capital and collectively exceed $2.5 billion in market capitalization.
We’re thrilled that the Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2020 included alum from six ERA companies. Here they are:
Growing up in a Maryland construction family, Joe Leiva had mud on his workboots even before heading off to college for a civil engineering degree.
After returning to help with the family business, Joe saw firsthand how public works subcontractors were quickly buried by government red tape. Every contract required 20+ different forms, such as workforce demographics and daily reports, that were submitted throughout the course of a job. Worse yet, don’t follow the rules and you don’t get paid.
“I wanted to help these folks avoid compliance issues, to help shorten payment cycles because it’s so critical for these small businesses to meet payroll,” Joe said of his motivations on launching ProTrakr in 2015.
But the same industry knowledge gained from years of literally being in the trenches — “almost everything we did was underground” — also blinded Joe to what the market really needed, teaching him his first, hard lesson about building products: talk to customers frequently, even if you think you know what they’re going to say.
“We had a little bit of fire,” recalled Joe of ProTrakr’s early success, “so we just threw fuel on it without really taking a step back and questioning clients on what they really needed.”
But as growth leveled off for its project management suite — proving a complex sell to SMBs — a revelation appeared last year as several ProTrakr subcontractor customers were building Washington’s $5.6 billion Metro expansion.
A call came one day from an executive with the prime contractor coordinating the entire project. ProTrakr automated submission of work performance docs to the prime contractor for Joe’s sub customers, helping get their ducks in a row. But the prime had bigger worries.
“He told me, ‘How great it would be if all 200 of our subs were on your system, and I was just receiving data free-flowing in real time,’ ” Joe said. “That’s when the “aha!” moment came. I had always been looking at the problem from the eyes of the subs submitting to the primes, and I didn’t realize just how fragmented and disorganized it was for the larger companies.”
“We had to pump the brakes a bit and approach the bigger problem with a blank slate,” Joe said of a barnstorming effort to reset his team’s understanding of customer needs through dozens of interviews throughout the country.
The discovery journey quickly uncovered that subs and primes alike were relying solely on unsophisticated email and storage tools to keep track of the blizzard of required documents submitted on a regular basis.
ProTrakr already had the solution in hand, embedded in its larger platform. Launching a new, more targeted product meant carving out the document management module and giving it to all parties to serve as a centralized hub for all incoming file activities. 
Pivot is too strong a word for the change; Joe prefers “focus shift, as we are focused on the same industry, but we zeroed in on a critical need and tweaked our solution to meet it.”
And there were other benefits, such as a 6x expansion of target market beyond public works contractors to any company working on government-funded construction projects that require intensive document exchange.
As part of the shift, Joe renamed the company to TargetDocs and grappled with how to market its narrowed capabilities, since their solution didn’t cleanly fit into existing product categories — “there’s no construction lingo for it.”
And while the prior platform required a high-touch sales and implementation approach, the lighter-weight product is mostly self-service and relies a wider array of acquisition methods. There remains an upsell path to the legacy product for subs needing more power, but the sales team is squarely focused on the file hub. All of which required Joe to retool how TargetDocs did business, which proceeded relatively smoothly once the strategy was clarified.
“Hopefully we’ve landed with this change,” Joe said, “but this has made us much smarter going forward in so many other ways.”
TargetDocs is a portfolio company of the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), New York City’s largest and most influential accelerator that has guided nearly 200 US companies through their early stages with its impressive mentor and investor network.
Heyday is a popular skincare company with locations in New York and California. After their doors first opened in 2015, Heyday experienced quick growth with a $3mm seed round followed shortly after by an $8mm Series A.
Maxwell Bennett, Operations Manager, is responsible for overseeing operations at the company, focusing on all aspects of purchasing and procurement in addition to other organizational and HR-related roles.
We wanted to cut back on spending… as well as having one go-to place.
By late 2017, it became apparent to Heyday that a scalable system was needed to manage increasingly complicated operations and finance processes. Heyday needed something that could better handle and visualize the multitude of invoices the company was receiving. “We used Google Sheets to track spending by location, and at that time we only were two locations,” Maxwell recalls, “We would submit the sheets to the CEO and the he would cross-check the credit card statements and the sheets.”
In evaluating systems, Heyday needed a partner that would assist with the invoice volume in addition to providing value on the purchasing and operations side. “We first looked at invoice management platforms,” Max describes, “However, the main deciding factor for Negotiatus came from us spending a lot on disposable goods like office supplies. We wanted to cut back on spending through the sourcing and substitution program and wanted one go-to place instead of having all of our purchasing managers manage a login for Amazon, WB Mason, Webstaurant and all the other places we order from.”
First and foremost, it is a huge time saver.
Heyday immediately benefited from consolidated ordering across all their vendors ranging from their office and cleaning supplies to retail. “First and foremost, it is a huge time saver,” Maxwell says, “Going to one place for all the treatment supplies and office supplies – everyone knows exactly where to go. For retail alone, we have products from 10 different vendors, so instead of filling out order forms for each vendor for each location we can go to one place. Without Negotiatus it would have taken us three days to place all of our orders and now it takes just a couple hours.”
Controlling and adding to an approved product catalog was simple: “There are so many ways to link vendors and products… I love using the Chrome extension to add products on the fly. I can be on Amazon and just press the Negotiatus button to add a product right to my catalog or add it directly to my Negotiatus cart right there. And then it’s in Negotiatus and ready to order whenever we need it again.”
It’s amazing for organization.
To better optimize processes internally, Maxwell and his team took advantage of Negotiatus’ real-time analytics: “Being able to see on the ‘Analytics’ page the breakdown by Cost Center, filter month to month or pay period to pay period, and look at our spend by location is so handy. Seeing the top products we spend money on is so helpful as well.”
Negotiatus also increased accountability within Heyday and made it easy to track down any purchases. “I am able to go into ‘Completed Orders’ and search for that one cabinet someone bought in February from Ikea, and I can easily look at the date, location, and who purchased it to quickly get to the bottom of any issue.”
“It’s amazing for organization,” Maxwell summarizes, “To see everyone’s orders in one place – to see and categorize our spend data – it is really great.”